What Does It Mean to Be Born Again? by R. C. Sproul

Author:R. C. Sproul
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Reformation Trust Publishing
Published: 2010-10-07T06:08:00+00:00

ere is a theological formula that may strike you as strange: "Regeneration precedes faith." We have seen that regeneration, or spiritual rebirth, is the beginning of the Christian life. If regeneration is the first step, obviously it must come before the second step. Spiritually dead people do not suddenly develop faith, causing God to regenerate them. Rather, faith is the fruit of the regeneration God performs in our hearts: "Even when we were dead in our trespasses, [God] made us alive together with Christ" (Eph. 2:4b). We are born again (regenerated), then we come to faith, then we are justified, and then we begin to undergo the lifelong sanctification process (Rom. 8:30). All these events comprise the whole complex of the Christian life. But the starting point, the first act in the chain, is all of God-it is a monergistic work, as we saw in the previous chapter.

In short, regeneration is a sovereign work of God. In other words, God exercises His power and His authority over you in His time and His way to bring about the regeneration of your heart. I stress this because many people understand regeneration as merely an activity of moral persuasion whereby God woos or entices us to change and to come in His direction. I am suggesting, following the thinking of Augustine and other giants of the Christian faith, that regeneration is not just God standing apart from us and trying to persuade us to come to Him, but God coming inside of us. He invades the soul, because there has to be a substantive change in the heart before we can come to Christ. In order for us to desire the things of God, we have to be made alive, and to be made alive requires a sovereign act of God.

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