REGENERATION . In the language of theology, ‘regeneration’ denotes that decisive spiritual change, effected by God’s Holy Spirit, in which a soul, naturally estranged from God, and ruled by sinful principles, is renewed in disposition, becomes the subject of holy affections and desires, and enters on a life of progressive sanctification, the issue of which is complete likeness to Christ. The term, however, to which this word corresponds (Gr. palingenesia ), occurs only twice in the NT ( Ephesians 2:5-67 , Psalms 14:1-33 ), and in the first instance denotes, not the renewal of the individual, but the perfected condition of things at the Parousia (cf. Acts 3:21 , 2 Peter 3:13 ; see Restoration). In the other passage ( Titus 3:5 ), the expression ‘the washing ^[1] of regeneration’ connects ‘the renewing of the Holy Ghost’ with the rite of baptism, which is its outward symbol and seal (see below). The doctrine, nevertheless, is a thoroughly Scriptural one, and the change in question is expressed by a great variety of terms and phrases: ‘born,’ ‘born anew,’ ‘a new creation,’ ‘renewed,’ ‘quickened,’ etc., to which attention will immediately be directed. The fundamental need of regeneration is recognized in the OT as well as in the NT ( e.g. Psalms 51:10-11 ), though, necessarily, the prophecies speak more frequently of national renewal ( Acts 16:29-300 ff; Jeremiah 32:38-40 , Ezekiel 36:25-28 , Hosea 6:1-3 etc.) than of individual. The classical passage on the need of regeneration is John 3:3 ff. Spiritual life, it is taught, can come only from a spiritual source, and man, naturally, has not that life ( John 3:6 ). Hence the declarations: ‘Except a man be born anew, he cannot see the kingdom of God’; ‘Except a man be born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.… Marvel not that I said unto thee, Ye must be born anew’ ( John 3:3 ; John 3:5 ). The miracle is wrought by the Spirit of God, whose action is sovereign ( John 3:8 ). Many do marvel, like Nicodemus, at the strangeness and universality of this demand of Christ; yet the strangeness will disappear, and the need of a supernatural agent to effect the change will be felt, if due consideration is given (1) to the vastness of the change, and (2) to the condition of the human nature in which the change is to be made. (1) It is sufficient, to show the vastness of this change, to reflect that here, and elsewhere, regeneration means nothing less than a revolution of such a kind as results in the whole man being brought round from his ordinary worldly way of feeling, and thinking, and willing, into harmony with God’s mind and will; truly brought round to God’s point of view, so that he now sees things as God sees them, feels about things as God feels about them, judges of things as God judges of them, loves what God loves, hates what God hates, sets God’s ends before him as his own. Who can doubt, if this is the nature of the change, that it does not lie in man’s own powers to produce it; that it can be effected only through a higher power entering his being, and working the change? (2) The need of a supernatural agency in the change is further evident from the condition of the human nature in which the change is wrought. The testimony of Scripture is uniform that man has turned aside from God (1618533648_50 , Romans 3:9 ff.), and that his nature has undergone a terrible depravation ( Genesis 6:5 ; Genesis 8:21 , Psalms 51:5 , Isaiah 1:2-4 , Romans 7:14 ff., Ephesians 2:1-3 ; Ephesians 4:17-18 etc.); that the bent of the will is away from God ( Romans 8:7-8 ); that the love of God has been replaced by love of the world, and the self-seeking principles connected therewith ( 1 John 2:15-16 , cf. John 5:42 ; John 5:44 ); that the better nature is in bondage to a law of sin, which works lawlessness in thought, feeling, and desire ( Romans 7:22-23 , 1 John 3:4 RV ^[2] ). Is it not obvious, leaving out of account altogether the darker forms in which evil manifests itself, that this is a condition of soul which only a Divine power can rectify? Nothing, therefore, is more plainly taught in Scripture than that this spiritual change we call regeneration is one which nothing short of Divine power can effect. It is spoken of as a being born of God (John 1:12-13 ; John 3:5 , 1 John 3:9 etc.); as a new creation ( 2 Corinthians 5:21 ); as a being raised from the dead ( Romans 6:45 ). It is compared to that great work of the omnipotence of God in raising Christ Himself from the dead ( Ephesians 1:19 ; Ephesians 1:22 ; Ephesians 2:1 ; John 16:14-150 ). It is a complete renewal, transformation, of the inner man ( Romans 12:2 , Ephesians 4:23 , Colossians 3:10 , Titus 3:15 , 1 Peter 1:22-23 ). Yet, while so distinctively a supernatural work, it is made equally clear that it is not a magical work; not a work bound up with rites and words, so that, when these rites and ceremonies are performed, regeneration is ipso facto effected. This is the error of sacerdotalism, which binds up this spiritual change with the rite of baptism . It would be wrong to say that baptism has no connexion with the change, for it is often brought into most intimate relation with it ( 1618533648_8 , Titus 3:5 , 1 Peter 3:21 ; perhaps even in Christ’s words, John 3:5 ; with the historical examples of the connexion of the receiving of the Spirit with baptism, Acts 2:38 ; Acts 19:2-8 etc.). Baptism is connected with regeneration as outwardly representing it, and being a symbol of it; as connected with profession ( 1 Peter 3:21 ), and pledging the spiritual blessing to faith; but it neither operates the blessing, nor is indispensable to it, nor has any virtue at all apart from the inward susceptibility in the subjects of it. In some cases we read of those on whom the Spirit of God fell, that they were baptized afterwards ( Acts 10:44 ; Acts 10:48 ), and in all cases faith is presumed to be already present before baptism is administered; that is, the inward decisive step has already been taken. On the other hand, when we look to the means the instrumentality by which the Holy Spirit effects this change, we find it always in Scripture declared to be one thing, namely, the word . This is what is meant by saying that regeneration is effected, not magically, but by the use of. rational means. It is connected with the outward call of the gospel (hence the older divines were wont to treat of this subject under the head of ‘vocation,’ or ‘effectual calling’). We speak, of course, only of adults, of those who are capable of hearing and understanding the call, and are far from limiting the grace of God in infants, or others whom this call does not or cannot reach. What is affirmed is, as regards those who have come to years of intelligence, that God’s dealing with them is through the word, and this is the constant representation. The OT equally with the NT extols the saving, converting, quickening, cleansing, sanctifying power of the word of God ( e.g. Psalms 19:7 ff., Psalms 119:1-176 ). Jesus declares the word to be the seed of the Kingdom ( Luke 8:11 ). He prays: ‘Sanctify them in the truth; thy word is truth’ ( John 17:17 ). Conversion, regeneration, sanctification, are connected with the word ( Acts 11:19-21 , Ephesians 1:13 , Colossians 1:5 , 1 Thessalonians 2:13 , 2 Thessalonians 2:13 , James 1:18 , 1 Peter 1:23-25 ^[3]) If this is the nature, generally, of regeneration, then it has what may be termed a psychology; that is, there is a process which the mind goes through in the experience of this spiritual change. The Spirit of God, doubtless, has innumerable ways of dealing with human souls; still, if we look closely, it will be found that there are certain elements which do in some degree enter into all experience in regeneration, and furnish, so far, a test of the reality of the change. There is first, of necessity, the awakening of the soul out of its customary spiritual dormancy out of that deep insensibility to spiritual things in which ordinarily the natural mind is held ( Ephesians 5:14 , cf. Romans 14:11-12 ). Especially there comes into view here the peculiar awakening of the soul through the conscience, which takes the form of what we call conviction of sin towards God (cf. 1618533648_83 ). Probably no one can undergo this spiritual change without in some degree being brought inwardly to the realization of his sinful condition before God, and to the sincere confession of it ( Psalms 51:4 ). The law of God has its place in producing this conviction of sin; but law alone will not produce spiritual contrition. See Repentance. For this there is needed the exhibition of mercy. Hence the next stage in this spiritual process is that described as enlightenment growing enlightenment in the knowledge of Christ, This also, like the preceding stages, is a Divine work ( 1618533648_22 , 2 Corinthians 4:4 ). Even with this, however, the work of regeneration is not complete. The will of God for man’s salvation has not only to be understood, it has also to be obeyed. There is the will to be laid hold of the will, the centre and citadel of the being. So the work of the Holy Spirit is directed, finally, to the renewing of the will. It is directed to the renewing of the will, first of all, in the form of persuasion , for the Holy Spirit does none of His work by violence. Everything that God accomplishes is accomplished in accordance with the nature He has given us; but God most graciously, most lovingly, brings His persuasions to bear upon our wills, and by the power of appropriate motives draws us to the acceptance of Christ ( John 6:44 ). With this there goes what, in the next place, may be called the potentiation of the will the enabling of it, or imparting to it the power needful in order to lay hold on Christ with full and fast faith ( Ephesians 4:16 ). Last of all, this work of regeneration is completed when the soul is brought to the point of absolute surrender of itself to Christ when, drawn and persuaded, and at length enabled by the Spirit, it yields itself up entirely to Christ as its Saviour, and lays hold on Christ for a complete salvation. There is now union with Christ by faith, and, with that, entrance into the life the experience of the newborn child of God. ‘If any man is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things are passed away; behold, they are become new’ ( 2 Corinthians 5:17 ). James Orr.

1: παλιγγενεσία (Strong's #3824 — Noun Feminine — palingenesia — pal-ing-ghen-es-ee'-ah ) "new birth" (palin, "again," genesis, "birth"), is used of "spiritual regeneration," Titus 3:5 , involving the communication of a new life, the two operating powers to produce which are "the word of truth," James 1:18 ; 1 Peter 1:23 , and the Holy Spirit, John 3:5,6 ; the loutron, "the laver, the washing," is explained in Ephesians 5:26 , "having cleansed it by the washing (loutron) of water with the word." The new birth and "regeneration" do not represent successive stages in spiritual experience, they refer to the same event but view it in different aspects. The new birth stresses the communication of spiritual life in contrast to antecedent spiritual death; "regeneration" stresses the inception of a new state of things in contrast with the old; hence the connection of the use of the word with its application to Israel, in Matthew 19:28 . Some regard the kai in Titus 3:5 as epexegetic, "even;" but, as Scripture marks two distinct yet associated operating powers, there is not sufficient ground for this interpretation. See under EVEN. In Matthew 19:28 the word is used, in the Lord's discourse, in the wider sense, of the "restoration of all things" ( Acts 3:21 , RV), when, as a result of the second advent of Christ, Jehovah "sets His King upon His holy hill of Zion" (Psalm 2:6 ), and Israel, now in apostasy, is restored to its destined status, in the recognition and under the benign sovereignty of its Messiah. Thereby will be accomplished the deliverance of the world from the power and deception of Satan and from the despotic and anti-christian rulers of the nations. This restitution will not in the coming millennial age be universally a return to the pristine condition of Edenic innocence previous to the Fall, but it will fulfill the establishment of God's covenant with Abraham concerning his descendants, a veritable rebirth of the nation, involving the peace and prosperity of the Gentiles. That the worldwide subjection to the authority of Christ will not mean the entire banishment of evil, is clear from Revelation 20:7,8 . Only in the new heavens and earth, "wherein dwelleth righteousness," will sin and evil be entirely absent.

A new birth; that work of the Holy Spirit by which we experience a change of heart. It is to be distinguished from baptism which is an external rite, though some have confounded them together. Nor does it signify a mere reformation of the outward conduct. Nor is it a conversion from one sect or creed to another; or even from atheism. Nor are new faculties given in this change. Nor does it consist in new revelations, succession of terrors or consolations; or any whisper as it were from God to the heart, concerning his secret love, choice, or purpose to save us. It is expressed in Scripture by being born again, John 3:7 . born from above, so it may be rendered, John 3:2 ; John 3:7 ; John 3:27 . being quickened, Ephesians 2:1 . Christ formed in the heart, Galatians 4:12 . a partaking of the Divine nature, 2 Peter 1:4 . The efficient cause of regeneration is the Divine Spirit. That man is not the author of it is evident, if we consider, 1. The case in which men are before it takes place; a state of ignorance and inability, John 3:4 . 2. The nature of the work shows plainly that it is not in the power of men to do it: it is called a creation, a production of a new principle which was not before, and which man could not himself produce, Ephesians 2:4-52 ; Ephesians 2:10 . 3. It is expressly denied to be of men, but declared to be of God, John 1:12-13 ; 1 John 3:9 . The instrumental cause of it may be so called, is the word of God, James 1:18 . 1 Corinthians 4:15 . The evidence of it are, conviction of sin, holy sorrow, deep humility, knowledge, faith, repentance, love, and devotedness to God's glory. The properties of it are these: 1. It is a passive work, and herein it differs from conversion. In regeneration we are passive, and receive from God; in conversion we are active, and turn to him. 2. It is an irresistible, or rather an invincible work of God's grace, Ephesians 3:8 . 3. It is an instantaneous act, for there can be no medium between life and death; and here it differs from sanctification, which is progressive. 4. It is a complete act, and perfect in its kind; a change of the whole man, 2 Corinthians 5:17 . 5. It is a great and important act, both as to its author and effects, 1618533648_46 . 6. It is an internal act, not consisting in bare outward forms, Ezekiel 36:26 ; Ezekiel 27:1-36 : 7. Visible as to its effects, 1 John 3:14 . 8. Delightful, 1 Peter 1:8 . 9. Necessary, John 3:3 . 10. It is an act, the blessings of which we can never finally lose, John 13:1 . See CALLING, CONVERSION; and Charnock's Works, vol. 2: p. 1. to 230; Cole and Wright, but especially Witherspoon on Regeneration; Doddridge's Ten Sermons on the Subject; Dr. Gill's Body of Divinity, article Regeneration; Dr. Owen on the Spirit; Lime Street Lectures, ser. 8.

All people are sinners; therefore all are spiritually dead and unable to give themselves spiritual life. They are cut off from God, with no hope of salvation through anything they might plan or do. God, however, can save them from this hopeless condition by forgiving their sins, giving them new life and restoring them to a right relationship with himself. This experience is called the new birth, or regeneration, and is the work of the Spirit of God within the individual. It takes place when people humbly submit to Jesus Christ and trust him for forgiveness, salvation and life (John 1:12-13; John 3:3-6; Ephesians 2:1; Ephesians 2:5; Titus 3:5). To be regenerated means, in other words, to be born anew, to be spiritually re-created. This is not something people themselves can do. It is entirely the work of the merciful and sovereign God (John 1:13; John 3:5; Titus 3:3-7; James 1:18; 1 Peter 1:23; cf. Psalms 51:10; Ezekiel 11:19). Without it sinners remain in their hopeless state and are incapable of experiencing spiritual life (John 3:5-6). Through it they become children of God and enter his kingdom (John 1:12-13; John 3:3; John 3:5; see also ADOPTION). Regenerated people are new people (2 Corinthians 5:17; Ezekiel 36:26-27; cf. Galatians 6:15). They have new life inwardly, characterized by renewed minds that govern all his thinking and attitudes (Romans 12:2; Ephesians 4:23-24; cf. 1 Peter 2:2; Jeremiah 31:33). They also have new life outwardly, characterized by loving behaviour towards others, hatred of sin and victory over the world’s temptations (Colossians 3:10; Colossians 3:12-13; 1 John 2:29; 1 John 4:7; 1 John 5:4; 1 John 5:18; cf. 1 Corinthians 5:7-8).

Only found in Matthew 19:28 and Titus 3:5 . This word literally means a "new birth." The Greek word so rendered (palingenesia) is used by classical writers with reference to the changes produced by the return of spring. In Matthew 19:28 the word is equivalent to the "restitution of all things" ( Acts 3:21 ). In Titus 3:5 it denotes that change of heart elsewhere spoken of as a passing from death to life ( 1 John 3:14 ); becoming a new creature in Christ Jesus (2 Corinthians 5:17 ); being born again (John 3:5 ); a renewal of the mind (Romans 12:2 ); a resurrection from the dead (Ephesians 2:6 ); a being quickened (2:1,5). This change is ascribed to the Holy Spirit. It originates not with man but with God (John 1:12,13 ; 1 John 2:29 ; 5:1,4 ). As to the nature of the change, it consists in the implanting of a new principle or disposition in the soul; the impartation of spiritual life to those who are by nature "dead in trespasses and sins." The necessity of such a change is emphatically affirmed in Scripture (John 3:3 ; Romans 7:18 ; 8:7-9 ; 1 Corinthians 2:14 ; Ephesians 2:1 ; 4:21-24 ).

(ree' gehn uhr ay' shuhn) The radical spiritual change in which God brings an individual from a condition of spiritual defeat and death to a renewed condition of holiness and life. The biblical doctrine of regeneration emphasizes God's role in making this spiritual change possible. Biblical Terms The term regeneration (palingenesia ) appears in Titus 3:5 as a description of the spiritual change which baptism symbolizes. The idea of regeneration is also conveyed by the use of other terms related to the idea of birth. Jesus referred to regeneration when he told Nicodemus ( John 3:3 ) that he must be “born again ” (gennao anothen ). The term born again may also be translated as “born from above.” This translation emphasizes the sovereign role of God in bringing about the experience of regeneration. In John 1:13 the term born ( gennao ) refers to the act of regeneration. In 1 Peter 1:23 another Greek word ( anagennao ) receives the translation “born again.” All of these words describe the complete spiritual change which occurs when Christ enters the life of an individual. The idea of regeneration also appears in other figures of speech which refer to concepts in addition to birth. When Paul described those in Christ as a “new creation” (2 Corinthians 5:17 NIV), he was referring to the act of regeneration. In Ephesians 2:10 Paul referred to Christians as God's “workmanship” made for the purpose of good works. Sometimes the idea of receiving new life is used as a description of regeneration (compare John 5:21 ; John 7:38 ; John 10:10 ; John 10:28 ). In 1 Peter 2:2 , the apostle described followers of Jesus as “newborn babes.” Whether the figure used involves birth, life, creation, or flowing rivers, the Bible is presenting a new experience of life which is enriching, comprehensive, and thoroughly renewed in holiness. Need for Regeneration The great need for an experience of regeneration is apparent from the sinful condition of human beings, “dead in trespasses and sins” (Ephesians 2:1 ). Left to themselves, human beings will corrupt God's revelation of Himself and turn to gross forms of disobedience (Romans 1:18-32 ). God, however, demands holiness as a condition for having fellowship with Himself (Hebrews 12:14 ). Human beings therefore must have a radical change in the very character of their personality. God promises such a change in the experience of regeneration. Source of Regeneration Throughout Scripture the source of regeneration is the work of the Holy Spirit. Both Scripture (Romans 3:10-23 ) and human experience indicate that people lack the power and will to reform. God works upon the human disposition by the use of truth (James 1:18 ). This truth is the message of salvation which we find in the gospel of Jesus Christ. The role of the Holy Spirit is to take this truth and commend it to the understanding of each hearer (John 16:8-11 ). Regeneration occurs when the Holy Spirit takes the truth of the gospel message and allows the individual both to understand it and to commit oneself to it. There is a divine initiative through the Holy Spirit. There is a human responsibility in the response to the Spirit's urging. Role of Baptism Some churches hold that the experience of regeneration is brought about by the act of baptism. The view which advocates this teaching is known as baptismal regeneration. The Scriptures do not present baptism as the means of regeneration but as the sign of regeneration. Peter's discussion of baptism in 1 Peter 3:21 pictures the experience of baptism as the symbol of a conscientious response to God. In other texts ( Acts 2:38 ; Colossians 2:12 ; Titus 3:5 ) we can understand the meaning of the biblical writer by distinguishing between regeneration as an inward change and baptism as the outward sign of that change. The actual change of regeneration is an instantaneous experience brought about by the Holy Spirit. Baptism becomes a means of demonstrating publicly and outwardly the nature of this change. See Baptism . Result of Regeneration Ephesians 4:17-32 makes the result of regeneration apparent. Paul first discussed the nature of the spiritual change in a believer. In regeneration each believer has put off the old way of life, become clothed with a new way of life, and is in the process of having one's mind renewed in its thinking, reasoning, and willing. Because of this experience Paul urged each believer to practice truth, control anger, demonstrate kindness, and submit to the control of the Holy Spirit. The fact of regeneration formed the basis for giving an appeal to live a new life. The experience of regeneration does not leave an individual content and passive in efforts at Christian growth. Old powers of evil have been broken. The possibility of victory in the constant struggle with sin has become certain. Thomas D. Lea

A raw countryman having brought his gun to the gun-smith for repairs, the latter is reported to have examined it, and finding it to be almost too far gone for repairing, said, 'Your gun is in a very worn-out, ruinous, good-for-nothing condition, what sort of repairing do you want for it ?' 'Well,' said the countryman, 'I don't see as I can do with anything short of a new stock, lock, and barrel; that ought to set it up again.' 'Why,' said the smith, 'you had better have a new gun altogether.' 'Ah!' was the reply, 'I never thought of that; and it strikes me that's just what I do want. A new stock, lock, and barrel; why that's about equal to a new gun altogether, and that's what I'll have.' Just the sort of repairing that man's nature requires. The old nature cast aside as a complete wreck and good for nothing, and a new one imparted.

Introductory.-A study of the NT idea of regeneration does not mean, of course, simply an examination of the passages in which that particular metaphor occurs, but a consideration of the theory which the NT writers held as to the nature of the experiences which they found in themselves and in their converts. These experiences did not take place in a vacuum, but in a world in which supernatural religion was an intensely significant interest. No movement can ever be so original that it is entirely independent of the ideas and conditions of its day. However new it may be in its spirit, it will inevitably clothe itself in the familiar forms of human speech and conduct, even though it give to them a wholly new significance. In the time of Jesus, people believed already in a Divine power which would make them fit for an immortality of bliss. They thought of the necessary transformation as a death and resurrection, as a new birth, as a purification. If the totality of the utterances of later Judaism and of the non-Christian religions be considered, it is probable that we should regard the conditions of the new life which they present as, for the most part, unethical, external, magical. But when the finest of these utterances are read with due appreciation, it must be recognized that they have a large ethical meaning. ^[1] The gospel of regeneration was not a striking novelty either to the Jewish or to the pagan world, and if the condition of regeneration were simply stated as a belief that Jesus was the Messiah the Son of God, it might seem quite consonant with the common faith of the time. And this was probably so much the case that one of the great problems before the creative personalities of Christianity, who were passionately inculcating a spiritual faith, was to put ethical content into those supernatural conceptions of the new religion with which the people were all too easily satisfied. It is probable, therefore, that we shall have to look for the highest meaning of regeneration as conceived by the apostles, not so much in those miraculous aspects which have generally attracted attention, important as these are in NT thought, but rather in what was added of real ethical quality to the conceptions that otherwise might have been largely external and magical. So far as Judaism is concerned, it has always been recognized that early Christianity formed itself against the background of the great faith that had come from the OT, and it has latterly been quite generally recognized that the background of NT theology is also that apocalyptic Messianism that had come to such elaborate development at the time. The continuity of revelation which has been thought of between the OT and the NT has made it easy for us to think of Christianity as accepting the language, the metaphors, and many of the externals of Judaism, giving to them a larger significance. But it is necessary also to realize that Christianity was able to take over the whole schema of apocalypticism by simply putting Jesus as the expected Messiah. The conditions for a doctrine of regeneration were then complete. Current Judaism made sharp distinction between the present age under the dominion of Satan and the coming age when the Messiah would be in power. Among the most glorious expectancies regarding the Messiah were the supernatural endowments that He would bestow upon His people. And there was not wanting the ethical expectation that sin would be pardoned, and a great era of righteousness would ensue. If, then, Jesus were the Messiah already manifested, crucified for sin, raised from the dead, coming again in glory, empowered to bestow an earnest of the gifts of the coming age, a supernatural new life would, of course, be possible. The believer in those redemptive facts would be translated from the Kingdom of Satan to that of Messiah. He would receive salvation, he would become a child of God, he would be miraculously re-born (a phrase already probably used of proselytes), and he would obtain the gift of the Spirit with its miraculous effects. It is evident that there is here a possibility either of the highest ethical motive or of confidence in a mere magical salvation. The whole spiritual quality of the new faith depended upon the degree in which the acceptance of Jesus became a moral power in human lives. If regeneration gave men a sure status, guaranteeing that they would be pardoned in the coming Judgment, so that they might live secure in having made comfortable provision for the future, then the whole supernaturalism would be in vain. If, on the other hand, it inspired them to be worthy to reign with Christ, it would have the highest moral quality. The great NT passages are concerned not with a definition of regeneration, but with entreaties and exhortations to live the new life which had been so Divinely bestowed. But not only in Judaism was there a background for the doctrine of regeneration. The researches of recent years compel us to recognize that there were widespread hopes and expectancies of new life among the people who had felt the influence of the great mystery-religions. ^[2] And these were not national and racial, as were those of the Jews, but personal. The individual could be saved through a purification, this sometimes seeming to be ethical, perhaps more often ceremonial. There was intense interest in personal immortality, and a belief that the way to this salvation and immortality was that of initiation into the mysteries, involving mystic communion with the god. The very metaphor of the new birth was in all probability employed, indicating the attainment of a new status and the possibility of miraculous charismata. Indeed, it is not without significance that the word ‘regeneration’ is not used in the great NT passages. Its only occurrence as applied to the individual is Titus 3:5, a passage of very doubtful Pauline authenticity, where the most obvious interpretation is that salvation is effected by baptism. Is it possible that the word had so sacramental a significance that it was better avoided by those who were insisting upon an actual ethical renewal? With the triumph of sacramentalism in the Church the word attained its technical value. ^[3] Of course the documents that present these ideas so fully belong for the most part to a period not earlier than the end of the 2nd cent. a.d., and it is possible to maintain that they have been coloured by Christianity. But the essential doctrines of the mystery-religions could not have been so soon completely metamorphosed. Clemen (Primitive Christianity and its Non-Jewish Sources, p. 231), in a very careful examination of the material, recognizes the priority in the mystery-religions of many of the redemptive doctrines, and these not without ethical character. So far as regeneration is concerned, he believes that even the γεννηθῆναι ἂνωθεν (John 3:7) might be so derived. He thinks also that the mention in the Naassenic sermon of a πνευματική, ἐπουράνιος, ἄνω γένεσις, in which the reference is to the Eleusinian mysteries, may well indicate a general influence, at least upon the Christian phraseology. This is not to say that Christianity borrowed its ideas from paganism at the same time that it felt the most intense revulsion against the idolatries, but only that certain common religious thought-forms concerning miraculous purifications and transformations were current, and Christianity inevitably expressed its own new-born faith in the language of the day. If, then, in the non-Jewish world Jesus was proclaimed as the Son of God, who had become incarnate, had died the sacrificial death, had risen from the dead and ascended into heaven, was coming again to give immortality to His followers, it would be quite in accord with the religious ideas of the time to believe that an acceptance of these redemptive facts would constitute one a child of God, and would avail to secure the gifts of the Spirit, which would be the attestation of having passed from death unto life. And, again, as among the Jews, it would be possible to accept such a doctrine in a wholly external way, making the salvation process merely miraculous. There was, of course, the other glorious possibility that those who believed themselves saved from sin and translated into eternal life by the loving acceptance of the grace of God in Jesus Christ would be actually impelled by new ethical motive, and would manifest the moral, as well as the miraculous, fruits of the Spirit. This was the experience of the NT writers themselves, and it is to this new life of love and moral endeavour that they exhort their readers. The basis for a doctrine of regeneration is therefore to be found in the sacramentalism of both Judaism and the mystery-cults. And the NT writers believe in a miraculous change of status brought about at the moment of faith. But they always insist that this has no meaning unless a new moral life, governed by new motives, has actually resulted. And this is a practical nullification of the sacramental conception. It is further a nullification of the artificial distinction which later theology elaborated between regeneration and sanctification. In the effort to make a self-consistent theology all the passages which referred to the miraculous change or status were used for a doctrine of regeneration, and those which referred to the ethical agency of the Spirit for one of sanctification. There was thus developed the idea that regeneration produced a complete change of nature, an idea which neither common human experience nor scientific psychology supports. The NT writers, far more concerned with the facts of experience than with the formulation of a self-consistent theology, developed no such theory. To them regeneration was always a moral fact. Hence the idea of the regeneration of infants, very easily held by those who believe in the possibility of a supernatural change of nature, does not appear in the NT. The reason for this will be noted in the discussion of 1 John. The examination of the NT documents may well begin with Jesus’ teaching in the Synoptics, then proceed to the Book of Acts as presenting the external manifestations of the early Christian experience with the interpretations that were current in the Church, and then to the writings that more clearly express the personal contributions of the great spiritual leaders. 1. The Synoptics.-The idea of regeneration, strictly so called, does not appear in the words of Jesus in the Synoptic tradition. This is significant at once of the faithfulness of the tradition and of Jesus’ own extraordinary originality. The παλινγενεσία of Matthew 19:28 is, of course, the Messianic consummation. But neither here, nor in any other passage that refers to the Kingdom of God in apocalyptic fashion, is there any statement of a miraculous change of status, of the individual. The saying of John the Baptist that the Coming One shall baptize with the Holy Spirit (Matthew 3:11, Luke 3:16) implies the supernaturalism of the charismata, but Jesus’ own words have to do with the simplicity of a religious experience within the reach of all who fulfil the ethical conditions of thorough-going repentance (Matthew 18:3) and heroic, sacrificial choice of the higher values (Matthew 10:39, Matthew 11:25 ff., Matthew 16:24 ff., Matthew 18:8 f.). Of course God Himself reveals truth to the obedient soul (Matthew 16:17), but there is no natural incapacity for righteousness. Men can become sons of their Father if they will (Matthew 5:45). The striking figure used of the Prodigal, who was alive after being morally dead, is only a strong expression of the happy result when the foolish sinner ‘came to himself.’ 2. The Book of Acts.-That the specific metaphor of regeneration had not been theologized in the primitive Church is evident from the entire absence of the figure from this book. The only reference to men as the children of God is the quotation from the Greek pcet (Acts 17:28). However, there is here the essentially similar idea, as throughout the NT, that the saved man is one who has received the gift of the Holy Spirit. He is Divinely possessed. He may be so carried out of himself by the supernatural enthusiasm that he appears to onlookers as drunk (Acts 2:13); more generally he has the miraculous power of uttering ecstatic sounds (speaking with tongues, Acts 2:4, Acts 10:46, Acts 19:6), and declaring his faith in exuberant public speech (prophesying, Acts 11:28, Acts 19:6, Acts 21:9-10); while those especially endowed may work miracles (Acts 2:43, Acts 4:30, Acts 5:12, Acts 8:13, Acts 14:3). This gift of the Holy Spirit, with its wonderful manifestations, is the distinguishing mark of the Christian (Acts 2:33; Acts 2:38, Acts 5:32, Acts 8:17, Acts 10:44, Acts 15:8, Acts 19:6). The schema of the new religion is clearly set forth; Jesus is the Messiah (Acts 2:36, Acts 5:42), predicted in the Scriptures (Acts 7:52, Acts 8:35, Acts 13:47), attested by the Resurrection (Romans 8:12-17 Acts 10:41, Acts 13:33, Acts 26:23); acceptance of Him as such is the basis of salvation (Acts 4:12, Acts 10:43, Acts 13:39); but there must be also a very definite repentance, not merely for having crucified the Messiah (Acts 2:38), but a turning from iniquities (Acts 3:26), and from darkness to light (Acts 26:18), and this is to be followed by works worthy of repentance (Acts 26:20); baptism follows on repentance and seems to have a sacramental efficacy (βαπτισθήτω … εἰς ἄφεσιν τῶν ἁμαρτιῶν ὑμῶν, Acts 2:38; βάπτισαι καὶ ἀπόλουσαι τὰς ἁμαρτίας σου, Acts 22:16). As regards baptism, it is noteworthy that Cornelius and his company are accepted of God and receive the gift of the Holy Spirit before they are baptized (Acts 10:44; Acts 10:47), though in every other case the gift of the Spirit is subsequent to baptism. Finally, those who are thus saved and endowed are ordained unto eternal life (Acts 13:46; Acts 13:48), the blessed inheritance of the future (Acts 26:18). While it is evident that much of this programme would be entirely familiar to the world of the mystery-religions, the peculiar power of primitive Christianity was manifest in its fine moral glow and its gracious charities, as well as in its religious enthusiasm. And this story of the early Church reveals, on the one hand, an utter absence of those coarser elements, from which the mystery-cults, whatever may have been their philosophical refinements, never freed themselves, and, on the other hand, a positive moral power resulting from glad allegiance to the Historical Founder of Christianity, such as was never accorded to the mythical founders of the other religions of the time. 3. The Pauline writings.-The central passage for St. Paul’s thought on the experience of regeneration is Romans 6-8. It is evidently autobiographical in fact as well as in rhetorical form, and is a wonderful piece of self-revelation. It is a classic of religious experience, and yields in a most interesting way to clear psychological interpretation. The passage exhibits what the experience of regeneration really is in the case of such persons as are conscious of what has been called ‘the divided self.’ It is the case, familiar enough in some form to most of us, where all one’s ethical ideals reinforced by education lead in one direction, while the strength of many habits and even of primitive instinct (if ἐπιθυμία in Romans 7:7 is to be understood as ‘lust’) impel one in another direction. When attention is concentrated upon duty, a man acts according to his sense of higher values; when impulse determines his conduct, he is false to his better knowledge. And so, in spite of longings and endeavours after moral victory, defeat is the constant result. To the earnest Pharisee the terrible impasse is reached, that he wants to be righteous but he cannot (Romans 7:21-24): he must actually do what he hates (Romans 7:15). Some new idea with very high emotional quality is essential to secure the concentration of attention on the nobler course of conduct. This comes to St. Paul in his conversion experience. He feels himself thereupon released from the thrall of the lower self and empowered to live in the higher self. The new idea has the emotive power necessary to make his ethical ideals actually attainable, and so he comes into the experience of the peace of the unified self (Romans 7:24-25; cf. Romans 5:1). An element of this new idea that has strong emotional value is the belief that there awaits the victor in the conflict an eternity of splendid peace in the full enjoyment of all those experiences for which now he must contend so hardly (Romans 8:15-17). This creates a condition distinctly favourable for pursuing lines of conduct conducive to the desired end. The transformation has thus taken place, that ethical ideals are no longer merely intellectually conceived, but have gained an emotional quality that renders the inhibition of contrary tendencies easy and natural (Romans 8:2). Of course under strong provocation the old impulses to wrong conduct would revive, and sometimes so strongly as to overcome the new inhibitions and pass over into action. But the experience of victory and unity would be so vivid that this re-emergence of the divided self would be painful, the new desirable lines of conduct would renew their hold upon the attention, the inhibitions would regain their sway, and peace would again ensue. (This involves an interpretation of Romans 7:7-25 as a continuous experience, and not merely a post-conversion memory.) St. Paul’s own interpretation of this regeneration experience is based on the antagonism between the σάρξ and the πνεῦμα. Whether his psychology involves an actual anthropological dualism it is perhaps not necessary to decide. He was probably not conscious of attempting a philosophical explanation, but was using the currently conceived antagonism between flesh and spirit to express the fact of his own experience and observation. The resolution of the antagonism is to St. Paul a Divine miracle of grace (Romans 7:25). The flesh is gaining the victory, but the Divine Spirit comes to the reinforcement of the human spirit and overcomes the flesh. St. Paul conceives the πνεῦμα θεοῦ as an actual external power coming to the aid of the believer, as a donation to be received (Romans 8:15; cf. 2 Corinthians 1:22, Ephesians 1:13; Ephesians 4:30). It is difficult here to follow him exactly because we are not sure of his psychology, but it is not at all difficult to arrive at his practical purpose. He is not so much concerned to explain the religious experience of the Christian, except to ascribe it to the power of God, as he is to insist that it must be a moral experience, involving necessarily the active moral endeavour of the believer. The passage is primarily hortatory, only incidentally doctrinal. St. Paul knows that eternal vigilance has been the condition of his own moral victory, God-given though he believes it to be, and he is anxious for his readers not to fail of victory by any easy acceptance of an external salvation. The four rich metaphors of this passage, of which regeneration is not one, are all employed with this hortatory aim. (1) Death and resurrection.-Under the symbol of baptism, the believer is pictured as dead and risen again, in order to enforce the obligation of living in newness of life (Romans 6:3-11). (2) Change of masters.-The figure of the bondservant is used to press the alternative that we belong either to sin or to righteousness. Our conduct determines which is master (Romans 6:16-23). (3) Remarriage of a widow.-Just as a widow assumes a new loyalty when she marries a new husband, so are we free from the old sense of moral obligations and under the highest necessity of being true to the new (Romans 7:1-6). (4) Legal adoption of children.-The most significant figure of adoption is employed to indicate a new relationship to God attested by the presence of the Divine Spirit, enabling the believer to call God his Father. But this is all dependent upon actual life in the Spirit (or in the spirit, conceived as the higher human nature) (Acts 2:32,). The Apostle is peculiarly careful that these metaphors shall not be pushed to an unethical conclusion. He sees the danger in his own day, which was fully realized in the history of the doctrine of regeneration. If any reader assumes that, having been baptized, he is therefore dead to the old life, St. Paul is not afraid to present to him the paradox, that the man who has died to the flesh and is thus released from its bondage (Romans 6:6-7, Romans 8:10) is still to go on putting to death the doings of the body (Romans 8:13). In close juxtaposition he speaks of a definite bestowal of the Spirit (aorist ἐλάβετε, Romans 8:15), with a constitution of the status of adoption, and of a relationship to God contingent on an ever-present obedience (ὄσοι ἄγονται, Romans 8:14). So the new life of the Christian is at the same time an ethical achievement and a supernatural gift. St. Paul does not carefully distinguish between these. They are merged in any vital religious experience, so that the regenerate man is the one who is in the actual experience of living the new life of moral victory (Romans 8:9). Entirely in keeping with Romans 6-8 are all St. Paul’s references to the new spiritual life. He assumes that it has had a miraculous beginning (note his use of the past tense: δικαιωθέντες, ἐλευθερωθέντες, κληθέντες, ἡγιασμένοι), but he lays the emphasis upon the ethical endeavour, which alone can make the potential actual. Thus in Romans 12:2, using the word ἀνακαίνωσις, very near akin to the idea of regeneration, he calls upon his readers to make a complete change for the better. Sanday-Headlam (International Critical Commentary , ‘Romans’5, 1902) paraphrase, ‘do not adopt the external and fleeting fashion of this world, but be ye transformed in your inmost nature.’ Denney (Expositor’s Greek Testament , ‘Romans,’ 1900) says that the process would in modern language be rather sanctification than regeneration but that the latter is assumed. Would it not be nearer to the Apostle’s thought, as to his experience, to say that he regards the process of spiritual renewal as one bestowed by God through faith, but rendered significant and vital only by continued faithfulness? To the Colossians he affirms in repeated metaphors a definite change that has been effected by Divine agency: a translation from the kingdom of evil to the Kingdom of Christ (Colossians 1:13), a reconciliation from alien enmity (Colossians 1:21-22), a death and resurrection with Christ (Colossians 2:20, Colossians 3:1; Colossians 3:3), an unclothing and reclothing (Colossians 3:9-10). But the reconciliation is dependent on continuance in the faith (Colossians 1:23); the members of the dead man are to be put to death (Colossians 3:5); and the new man is to be renewed (Colossians 3:10). In the last passage the equivalent word for regeneration (ἀνακαινούμενον) is clearly used in the sense of process as in 2 Corinthians 4:18, where the contrast is between the loosening hold upon physical life and the growing sense of spiritual reality. To the Ephesians St. Paul writes in the most absolute terms of a fore-ordained adoption as sons (Ephesians 1:5) and of salvation as a free gift (Ephesians 2:8), and the metaphor of the new life is a resurrection (Ephesians 2:1; Ephesians 2:5-6), not as in Romans a dying and rising with Christ, which is merely a bold use of the symbol of baptism, but a resurrection to new life of a nature so corrupt as to be regarded as morally dead. And yet the splendid description of Divinely given salvation is only an argument for a realization of an actual moral renewal, progressively to take place: putting away the old man, putting on the new, being renewed (ἀνανεοῦσθαι) in the spirit of their minds (E

palingenesia . Only twice in the New Testament: Titus 3:5 of the regeneration of the soul by the Holy Spirit, and Matthew 19:28 the regeneration of the body and of the material world. (See BAPTISM.) Besides his natural birthday the believer has a spiritual birthday in this life, and a birthday to glory in the life to come. The marks of regeneration are given 1 John 3:9; 1 John 3:14; 1 John 5:1; 1 John 5:4. Only if God's Spirit regenerate the soul now will the same Spirit quicken to immortality and glory the body hereafter (Romans 8:11; Philippians 3:21). The third and crowning step will be the regeneration of our home, this earth, and of "the whole creation," "the restitution of all things" (Acts 3:21; Matthew 19:28; Romans 8:19-23). Nations and society shall be first regenerated in the millennial world, with Israel as their priest-kingly head (Isaiah 2:2-4; Isaiah 2:11); wars shall cease, and even the wild beasts cease to rage. (See THOUSAND YEARS.) (Revelation 20; Isaiah 65:16-25). The final regeneration of the earth and nature shall be after the millennium (Revelation 21; 2 Peter 3:7-13).

REGENERATION.—Of all theological ideas, regeneration is probably that which has had the most unfortunate history. The figure is an apt and obvious one to express the completeness of the change which takes place when the non-Christian becomes a Christian; but it is tempting to press it, and it has been pressed in the most inconsiderate fashion. As the beginning of Christian life (it is argued), it must be antecedent to every Christian experience; faith, justification, conversion are, strictly speaking, its fruits. As a new birth, man can no more contribute to it than to his first birth, and hence must be regarded in it as purely passive, not acting or co-operating with God. As there is no middle state between being dead and being alive, it must be conceived as instantaneous; and so on. We can see the motives in such a mode of thought, but it is full of delusions. Perhaps they have influenced Reformed theology more than Lutheran; yet, while the Lutherans were more conscious of the figure in regeneration, the Reformed were guided by the justifiable desire to give faith a real basis in the believer,—to lay an act of God, as the only sure foundation, at the basis of the whole experience of salvation. The word ‘regeneration’ occurs in Authorized Version only in Matthew 19:28, Titus 3:5 (παλινγενεσία), and the figure of a new or second birth is most distinctly expressed in our Lord’s conversation with Nicodemus, John 3 (γεννηθῆναι ἄνωθεν). But as the first of these passages is eschatological, and refers to the new world which is introduced with the παρουσία of the Son of Man, while the two others belong to the latest in the NT, it is not convenient to start with them. To see the real basis for the figure of the new birth, it is necessary to go back to the teaching of Jesus in the Synoptics, and to look at it in its substance and not merely in its formal expression. What the figure conveys, vividly and truly, is the idea that somehow a man has become another man: he has entered into a new order of being; things once real to him have lost reality; things once unknown are now alone real. If we find this idea in the teaching of Jesus, we find what is meant by regeneration, even though that figure should not expressly appear. 1. Our Lord’s teaching.—It cannot be questioned that the idea of the newness or originality of His work, and of all that depended upon it, was familiar to Jesus. Without accepting the doctrine that the Kingdom of God, as He conceived it, was purely transcendent,—a new world not spiritually evolved from the present, but supernaturally descending upon it,—we must believe that however it came, and however it was related to the present, the Kingdom introduced an order of things which was entirely new. It was itself, in a comprehensive sense, a παλινγενεσία (Matthew 19:28). (On this word see the excellent article on ‘Regeneration’ in Hasting's Dictionary of the Bible , by Dr. Vernon Bartlet). But everything connected with it, involved in it, or leading up to it, awoke in the mind the same sense of newness. In spite, for example, of our Lord’s feeling of the continuity of His work with the OT (‘I came not to destroy, but to fulfil,’ Matthew 5:17), He has the equally strong feeling that with the time of fulfilment a new era has dawned (‘The law and the prophets were until John: from that time the kingdom of God is preached, and every one presses into it,’ Romans 5:12-21,39). The newness is so complete, the distinction is so great, that the least in the Kingdom of God is greater than the greatest in the old dispensation (Matthew 11:11). The same truth underlies all the passages in which Jesus claims for Himself absolute significance in determining the relations of God and man. Of these the most explicit is Matthew 11:27. Jesus alone reveals the Father, and the man who knows the Father is no longer the same man. No words could be too strong to tell how completely he is another. This absolute significance of Jesus is the sum and substance of His self-revelation (cf. Matthew 16:13 ff.); and the truth of ‘regeneration’ is an immediate inference from it. Further, though it is not put expressly in this form in the Synoptics, the ‘newness,’ which is the point to be emphasized, does break through in various ways. We see it in the parables of the New Patch on the Old Garment and the New Wine in the Old Bottles (Mark 2:21 f. ||). We see it in the new spiritual liberty which Jesus in Matthew 17:24-27 claims for Himself and those who through Him become children of the Kingdom. We see it especially in the words at the Supper; for there is no doubt that Mt. and Lk. give at least the thought that was in His mind when they speak of the new covenant based on His blood (Matthew 26:28 D, Luke 22:20). It deserves special mention, too, that in all the Synoptics (Mark 14:25, Matthew 26:29, Luke 22:16-18) the thought of the new covenant carries the mind forward to the new world in which it is to be consummated; the new religious relation to God, determined by Christ and His death, cannot be fully realized apart from immortality. The inward regeneration of the soul (so to speak) is part of the ἀποκατάστασις πάντων, or of the παλινγενεσἰα in the sense of Matthew 19:28. But to use the term ‘regeneration’ here is to anticipate. We have not found any suggestion of it in the words of Jesus, and, in point of fact, the only such suggestion to be found in the Synoptics is Matthew 18:3 ‘Verily I say unto you, Except ye turn (ἐὰν μὴ στραφῆτε), and become as little children, ye shall in no wise enter into the kingdom of heaven’ (cf. Mark 10:15). To become as a little child is really to be born again; it is what this figure of a new birth properly means, and it is the only key to it which the words of Jesus yield. In the words of Jesus, evidently, it describes a moral requirement; it is something He demands from those who would be His disciples and enter the Kingdom, and it is achieved through ‘turning.’ The context defines what ‘turning’ means. It means giving up ambition, pride, self-seeking, by ends in religion, and other unchildlike tempers; it is, in short, identical with what is elsewhere in the Synoptics called μετάνοια, or repentance. It is through this moral change, the responsibility for which is laid upon man, that he becomes as a little child, that is, is born again. It should be remarked, in passing, that John never uses μετάνοια or στρέθεσθκι in the moral sense (except in the quotation from LXX Septuagint at John 12:40), and that the Synoptists never use ‘regeneration’ of the individual, or speak of a new birth (except by the allusion in Matthew 18:3); but it is one and the same experience which they respectively describe by these terms. When thar experience is regarded from the side of God, as something due to His grace or Spirit, it is called regeneration, a being born again, from above, of God; when it is regarded from the side of man, as an experience the responsibility for which lies with him, it is called repentance. But we have no meaning or substance to put into either of these terms which does not equally belong to the other. Perhaps another approach to the figure of regeneration (though that of resurrection is equally obvious) may be recognized in the passages in which Jesus speaks of the sinful life as death, and of recovery from it as a return to or entrance into life. There are two of these in the Synoptics (Matthew 8:22 || Luke 15:24; Luke 15:32): obviously the emphasis in both is moral, not metaphysical. A change of character is in view, which, however deep and far-reaching, raises none but moral problems. More important, however, than these are the passages in which our Lord teaches that the new or higher life—the regenerate life, to call it so—can be won only through the sacrifice of a lower life. In other words, to have the life which is life indeed, we must surrender the other; we must die to nature in order to live to God. We must renounce self (ἀπαρνήσασθαι ἑαυτόν: a new and radical idea, without formal analogy in the OT) if we are to share in the life of the Kingdom. The man who refuses to do so, who cannot find it in him to do violence to nature, is incapable of discipleship and of the life which is life indeed. This is the burden of our Lord’s teaching in such passages as Matthew 16:24 ff. || Matthew 10:39, Matthew 18:8 f. ||, Luke 14:25 ff. It contains all that is meant by regeneration, but it does not use that figure to express it. And again it is all within ethical limits. 2. Pauline Epistles.—The Book of Acts is a picture of the regenerate life in its workings in the Church, but it is not specially so conceived. At Pentecost what we see is rather a new birth than the new birth of the Apostles. The Spirit is not so much the author of regeneration as the source of the peculiar gifts and powers of believers. But the newness of Christianity is nowhere more strongly felt and expressed than in this book. It brings us directly to St. Paul. The Apostle of the Gentiles became a Christian in a way which must have impressed him profoundly with the difference between the Christian life and that of the pre-Christian state. No one could say with greater truth than he, ‘I am now another man.’ But in him the change took place in a way which was in the highest degree startling and abnormal; it could not possibly suggest to him anything so natural as being born; and it agrees with this that, though no one has a more adequate sense than St. Paul of the absolute newness of the Christian life, he never uses the figure of regeneration to convey this. He speaks of the new covenant of which he is a minister (2 Corinthians 3:6), of the new creature (καινὴ κτίσις, 2 Corinthians 5:17, Galatians 6:15) which he has become, of the new world in which he lives (2 Corinthians 5:17), of the new man who has been created according to God in righteousness and holiness of truth (Ephesians 4:24), and who is being renewed unto knowledge after the image of Him that created him (Colossians 3:10); he speaks also of being transformed by renewal of the mind (Romans 12:2), and (if Titus 3:5 be his) of a renewal wrought by the Holy Spirit at baptism; of walking in newness of life (Romans 6:4), and serving God in newness of spirit (Romans 7:6); but he never speaks formally of being born again. Even when he contrasts the past and the present as death and life, the life is not conceived as coming by birth, but either by a creative act of God analogous to that by which at first He commanded light into being out of darkness (2 Corinthians 4:6), or by an exercise of the same almighty power with which God wrought in Christ when He raised Him from the dead, and set Him at His own right hand in the heavenly places (Ephesians 1:20 ff; Ephesians 2:1; Ephesians 2:5): when we were dead in trespasses He quickened us together with Him. It is essentially the same change which Paul represents elsewhere as translation from the tyranny of darkness to the Kingdom of God’s dear Son (Colossians 1:13), or from the state of condemnation to that of justification, or from life after the flesh to life after the Spirit (Ro. Gal. passim), or, in more mystical or metaphysical fashion, from being in Adam to being in Christ: see esp. 1618533648_9 1 Corinthians 15:45 ff. It is not necessary here to discuss what is called Paul’s psychology, as though he had such a thing in the sense of modern mental philosophy; he has really no psychology; he knows what he was, and he knows what he is, in the way of moral experiences, and he generalizes his past and his present into the conceptions of the natural and the spiritual man, the ψυχικός and the πνευματικός. Every man in himself is ψυχικός, a descendant and representative of Adam; every man has through the gospel the opportunity of becoming πνευματικός, a child of God and representative of Christ. But, as has been already pointed out, Paul never uses the figure of a birth to elucidate or make intelligible the process of this change. He approaches the figure indeed in two different ways. On the one hand, he speaks of himself as the father of those who receive the new life of the gospel through his ministry: ‘in Christ Jesus have I begotten you through the gospel’ (1 Corinthians 4:15; cf. Galatians 4:19, 1 Timothy 1:2 ‘my true child in the faith’). On the other, he speaks of the spirit in virtue of which men are πνευματικοί, and walk in newness of life, as specifically the spirit of sonship (υἱοθεσία), by which men are made to be, and are identified as, children of God. It is usually the dignity and privileges of this relation to God on which Paul lays stress, and these are suggested by υἱός; but he has also the sense of the kinship to God which it involves, and this is expressed by τέκνον. The latter, though relatively infrequent, occurs in passages so characteristic that we can say that Paul was no stranger to that intimate sense of kinship to God which is so notable in the Johannine type of Christianity (Romans 8:16-21, Ephesians 5:1). There are two points of contact between the Pauline presentation of truth on this subject, and that which we have found in our Lord’s teaching, which require to be emphasized. (1) There is in both the same outlook to immortality; the Spirit in Paul which makes men children of God is also the earnest of a life which vanquishes death (Romans 8:11, 2 Corinthians 5:4 f., Ephesians 1:13 f.). Indeed, the new life is often identified with the resurrection life of Jesus in such a way that the present spiritual experience of it seems rather a deduction from that transcendent possession than something having an independent existence of its own. This applies, e.g., to Romans 6:1-11, Ephesians 2:1-5. In the gospel, and in the experience of the Christian, there is the revelation at once of ζωή and ἀφθαρσία (2 Timothy 1:10). (2) There is in both our Lord and St. Paul the same idea that the new life is entered on through a death. ‘Our old man was crucified with Christ’ (Romans 6:6), and it is through that crucifixion that the new man comes into being (compare what is said above, § 1 ad fin.). It is one process, one experience, in man, in which the Adam dies and the Christ comes to be. In Paul the process is normally connected with baptism, and in view of Romans 6:2 ff., Colossians 2:11-13 it is not easy to maintain that Paul could not have written ‘the laver of regeneration, and of renewing wrought by the Holy Spirit’ (Titus 3:5). No doubt it is against the Pauline origin of the last phrase that it introduces the figure of regeneration which is so conspicuously wanting in the undoubted Epistles. When St. Paul spoke of baptism, however, as involving men in the death and resurrection of Jesus,—making them mysteriously participant in all that was meant by both, a death to sin and a life to God, with the assurance of immortality at the heart of it,—he was not thinking of baptism as a sacrament which produced these effects as an opus operatum. He could think of it only as he knew it, that is, as an ordinance administered to people confessing their sins and accepting the love of God in Christ,—an ordinance that gathered into it the whole meaning of Christianity, and in a high and solemn hour raised to its height the Christian’s sense of what it is to be a Christian. He says expressly in Colossians 2:12 that in this ordinance we are raised with Christ ‘through faith in the working of God who raised him from the dead.’ The same holds of Romans 6:2 ff. Baptism there is a picture of what is meant by the faith which looks to a dead, buried, and risen Saviour as its one object; in faith we identify ourselves with Christ in all these aspects, and so are taken out of the region to which sin belongs: this is what baptism shows even to the malignant or unintelligent persons who carped at Paul’s gospel of salvation by faith alone. The sacrament, as St. Paul was accustomed to it, shut the mouth of anybody who denied that the Christian life rested on a death to sin; and in guarding this fundamental truth it guarded (as we have seen) one of the primary teachings of Jesus. It is an immediate inference from all this that when we ask whether any particular passage in Paul—say Romans 7:14-25—applies to the regenerate or the unregenerate man, we are asking a question which the Apostle himself does not formally enable us to answer. He does not think of his experience in terms of regenerate and unregenerate. He can speak of the old man and the new, of the natural and the spiritual, of being under law and under grace, in Adam and in Christ, dead to sin and alive to God, and so on; but the distinction between the states is moral rather than metaphysical, and it is in doctrine rather than experience that it is absolute. One personality subsists through all experiences, all changes of state; nature, or the old man, is not extinct even in those who are in Christ and have the earnest of the Spirit; and though St. Paul, like all religious teachers, often speaks absolutely, not telling his converts to be what they should be, but to be what as Christians they are, he does not allow the religious interest to engulf the moral. It is to men dead in Christ, whose old man has been crucified with Him, that he says, ‘Put to death your members that are on the earth’ (Colossians 3:5), ‘Reckon yourselves to be dead unto sin’ (Romans 6:11). Experience is not a quantum but a process, and in the life of a spiritual being it cannot be dated; the things that in a sense happened twenty years ago are also present experiences, and it may be only now that we are discovering their real meaning. This holds especially of such generalized experiences as are embodied in the passage referred to. Only the new man, who by becoming such has learned what the life of the old man meant, could have written it, but it is unreal to say that it is the experience of either, to the exclusion of the other. The new man understands it better than anybody, but the fact that everybody understands it in some degree is the evidence that all men are capable of the experience it describes. 3. Catholic Epistles.—We find the idea of regeneration both in James and 1 Peter. In Ja. (James 1:18) God is the author of it, Christians its subjects, and ‘the word of truth’ the instrument. We are reminded here of the parables in which the word of God—that is, the gospel—is spoken of as a seed, and of 1 Corinthians 4:19, though in James it is the will of God and not the ministry of an Apostle to which the new birth is referred. When James contemplates Christians thus begotten as a kind of first-fruits of God’s creatures, he has apparently in view the universal παλινγενεσία of Matthew 19:28. The regeneration of individual men has the promise in it of new heavens and a new earth. There is a similar connexion of ideas in Romans 8:21 ff. Peter, who uses twice (1 Peter 1:3; 1 Peter 1:23) the word which is exactly rendered by regenerate (ἀναγεννᾶν), connects the experience which he so describes first with the resurrection of Christ, and then with the incorruptible seed which he identifies with the word of God—the gospel message which has been delivered to his hearers. The first brings him closely into line with Paul: the new life is distinctively life in the power of Christ’s resurrection, a living hope which has an incorruptible inheritance in view (cf. 1 Peter 1:3 and Romans 6:4 f.). This resurrection life is, of course, ethical, because it is Divine, but its ethical character is more explicitly secured by reference to the incorruptible seed from which it springs. ‘Love one another from the heart fervently, having been born again,’ etc. (1 Peter 1:22 f.). The figure is continued in 1 Peter 2:1 f., where the readers are exhorted (precisely as in Ephesians 4:22) to ‘put off’ all that was characteristic of their former life, and as ‘newborn babes’ to desire the spiritual milk which is without guile. Another parallel to Paul (and to our Lord) in making the new life rest on death to the old is found in 1 Peter 4:1 f.; but though the reality is the same, the figure differs. 4. Johannine writings.—It is in the Fourth Gospel and 1 Jn. that the figure of a new birth is most frequent and explicit. John does not indeed use ἀναγεννάω, but he says γεννηθῆναι ἄνωθεν (John 3:3; John 3:7); he speaks nine times in the 1st Ep. of being born of God (ἐκ τοῦ θεοῦ), and twice in the Gospel and four times in the 1st Ep. of children of God (τέκνα θεοῦ). The fundamental passage here is that in John 3, in which Jesus explains the new birth to Nicodemus. No experience is described or demanded in it which has not already come before us independently; the new birth is only a new figure which gives vivid and suggestive expression to a truth which Jesus Himself in the Synoptic record, and the Apostles in their writings, have already expressed in other forms. It may fairly be argued, when we look to the general relation of the discourses in the Fourth Gospel to the indisputable words of Jesus, that the real text of this discourse is Matthew 18:3. The Evangelist is guided by the Spirit of truth into all the truth of this apparently simple saying (John 16:13); he universalizes it, and sets it in the various relations which bring out its meaning; he shows the necessity of the new birth, the method of it (so far as experience enabled him to do so), and the seat of the power which produced it. But he gives no description of its contents—no analysis of it as an experience—which enables us to put more into it than we put into ‘turning and becoming as little children,’ or into ‘dying to sin and living to God,’ or into ‘putting off the old man and putting on the new.’ He does indeed put in the most general form the necessity for the new birth when he says, ‘that which is born of the flesh is flesh.’ This does not mean that human nature is essentially or totally depraved; it means that that which is natural is not ipso facto spiritual; it is not what we get from our fathers and mothers which enables us to appreciate Christ, or to enter God’s Kingdom; it is something which we can get only from God. This is the same truth as St. Paul teaches in 1 Corinthians 15:45 ff. ‘That is not first which is spiritual, but that which is natural, and afterward that which is spiritual.’ The birth by which man enters into relations with the natural world has an analogue in the experience by which he enters into relations with the spiritual world. It, too, is a birth—which is variously described as a second birth, or a birth from above, a being born of God, or of the Spirit, or of water and spirit. It cannot be denied that in generalizing the necessity for the second birth, the Evangelist passes from the safe and intelligible moral ground of Matthew 18:3 into a more metaphysical region (as St. Paul also does in 1 Corinthians 15:45 ff.); but in the circumstances this is not of much consequence. What St. Paul means by τὸ ψυχικόν and St. John by τὸ γεγεννημένον ἐκ τῆς σαρκός is not any metaphysical abstraction, but human beings as they are encountered in the world; and it needs no argument that they must become other than they are, through and through, if they are to dwell with God. It needs no argument, either, that they cannot make themselves other than they are. To be born again they must be born of a power which comes from above, and that power—as the whole experience of his life taught St. John, and had taught St. Paul before him—was the power of the Spirit. To be born again is to be born of God. When the truth is put in this way—in what we may call without offence the onesidedly religious way—its mysteriousness is apparent. The action of God through which the new life emerges in men cannot be prescribed or calculated; it is as unquestionable in its effects as His action in nature, but there is something in it which eludes control. The sense of this underlies all the predestinarian passages in both St. John and St. Paul, but, of course, these are not to be read alone. We should completely misrepresent both Apostles if we supposed that their sense of dependence upon God for being the new men they were impaired their sense of responsibility in this relation. The mind is apt, and perhaps the feeble or insincere mind is glad, to escape from the moral to the metaphysical, from Matthew 18:3 to John Joh_3:6; there is more to talk about and less to do; but there is no ground for bringing this charge against the Apostles. St. John’s interest in this passage is not in the earthly truth (John 3:12) of the necessity of regeneration—it needs no revelation from above to make that plain; bitter experience teaches it to all men; his interest is in the possibility and the method of regeneration, the heavenly truths which only Jesus can reveal. The new birth is a birth of water and spirit (John 3:6): in other words, it is a birth wh

See New Birth

(1): (n.) The reproduction or renewal of tissues, cells, etc., which have been used up and destroyed by the ordinary processes of life; as, the continual regeneration of the epithelial cells of the body, or the regeneration of the contractile substance of muscle. (2): (n.) The union of parts which have been severed, so that they become anatomically perfect; as, the regeneration of a nerve. (3): (n.) The entering into a new spiritual life; the act of becoming, or of being made, Christian; that change by which holy affectations and purposes are substituted for the opposite motives in the heart. (4): (n.) The reproduction of a part which has been removed or destroyed; re-formation; - a process especially characteristic of a many of the lower animals; as, the regeneration of lost feelers, limbs, and claws by spiders and crabs. (5): (n.) The act of regenerating, or the state of being regenerated.

This is the word, and the doc trine connected with it, which hath been, and ever will be, a stumbling-block to the whole world of mere natural men, who receive not the things of the "Spirit of God, for they are foolishness unto them, neither can they know them, because they are spiritually discerned." (1 Corinthians 2:14) The carnal mind, in every age of the church, hath been disposed to receive the doctrine of re generation as a mere figure of speech. They are unable to explain it upon any principles of their own, and therefore wish of all things to class it under the character of metaphor or parable. But it will be found to all the unawakened and unregenerated in eternity an awful reality to them. I well remember to have heard it said concerning a prelate of the highest rank in the establishment, who in the close of life expressed himself on this subject in these very solemn words: "I have read (said he) much on the doctrine of regeneration, and I have heard much upon it; should hope, it is after all, but a mere figure of speech; but if it be a real truth, I can only say, that I known nothing of it in my own experience." What a dreadful confession this for a man in his dying hours! Our blessed Lord, who brought life and immortality to light by his Gospel, brought this doctrine of regeneration also, as a fundamental part of that Gospel, to the full and complete testimony of it in his conversation with Nicodemus the Jew. (John 3:1-21) I beg the reader to pay a close attention to this blessed Scripture, looking up to God the Holy Ghost to render it plain and intelligible; and, under his divine teaching, the doctrine itself cannot fail to appear in its true light. The holy Scriptures, with one voice, declare, that man by the fall of Adam lost all apprehension of the divine nature; he became virtually dead in trespasses and sins: so that the recovery from hence could only be effected by the quickening influences of the Holy Ghost. Hence every son and daughter of Adam is born, as to spiritual faculties, in a state of spiritual death, and is as incapable, until an act of regeneration hath passed in quickening to a new and spiritual life, of any act of spiritual apprehension, as a dead body is to any act of animal life. Scripture describes the different degrees of death in a clear and distinct manner. The death of the body is the separation of soul and body, so that the soul, which is the life of the body, if fled, leaves the body lifeless, and without any longer principle of consciousness. "The body (saith an apostle) without the spirit is dead." (James 2:26) Spiritual death is the death of sin, by reason of the want of the quickening Spirit of God in the soul; so that as Christ is the life of the soul, every Christ-less soul is a dead soul. Eternal death is the separation both of soul and body from God for ever: and this is the state of the unreclaimed and unregenerate wicked. Now then, as in the first instance, while the soul actuates the body that body is alive, but without; the soul so actuating, the body would be dead; so in the second, unless Christ, who is the life of the soul, actuates the soul by regeneration, that soul continues dead as by original transgression was induced. And in the third, if living and dying without the blessed influence of regeneration, that soul and body must remain in a state of eternal death, and separation from God for ever. Now, from this Scriptural statement of spiritual death, it will be easy to gather what is meant and implied by the doctrine of regeneration. It is, to all intents and purposes, in the spiritual faculties creating a new life, a new birth, a new nature: hence the Scriptures describe the recovery from sin under the strongest expressions. "You, (saith the apostle, speaking to the regenerated Ephesians), (Ephesians 2:1) hath he quickened, who were dead in trespasses and sins." So again, Ephesians 2:5 "Even when we were dead in sins, hath he quickened us together with Christ." So again—"If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature." (2 Corinthians 5:17) And hence the apostle elsewhere saith, that our recovery to a state of grace, and the new life, is "not by works of righteousness which we have done, but by the washing of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy Ghost, shed on us abundantly through Jesus Christ our Lord." (Titus 3:5-6) I only add an humble prayer to God to grant to all his renewed members the sweetest testimony in their own experience to this most blessed truth, that they may know that they are born again, "not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the word of our God, which liveth and abideth for ever." (1 Peter 1:23)

The act of God whereby He renews the spiritual condition of a sinner. It is a spiritual change brought about by the work of the Holy Spirit so that the person then possesses new life, eternal life. Regeneration is a change in our moral and spiritual nature where justification is a change in our relationship with God. Also, sanctification is the work of God in us to make us more like Jesus. Regeneration is the beginning of that change. It means to be born again.

The belief that baptism is essential to salvation, that it is the means where forgiveness of sins is made real to the believer. This is incorrect. Paul said that he came to preach the gospel, not to baptize (1 Corinthians 1:14-17). If baptism were essential to salvation, then Paul would have included it in his standard practice and preaching of the salvation message of Jesus, but he did not. (See also Colossians 2:10-11.) For more information on this see Is Baptism Necessary for Salvation?

This term occurs only in Titus 3:5 . 'Regeneration' is not used in scripture in the modern ecclesiastical signification of the word, as may be seen from the only other occurrence of it in Matthew 19:28 , where it evidently refers to an order of things still future. In Titus the believer is said to be saved by the cleansing in connection with the new order of things introduced by Christianity, as indicated in baptism, and the renewal of the Holy Spirit. The words "saved us by the washing of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy Ghost," show that there is a present escape and deliverance from the world and its course, and an entrance into those things which characterise the world to come, of which the Holy Ghost is now the revealer and power, even as Israel escaped from Egypt and its shame through the Red Sea, and anticipated Canaan in their song of praise.

a new birth; that work of the Holy Spirit by which we experience a change of heart. It is expressed in Scripture by being born again, John 3:7 ; born from above; being quickened, Ephesians 2:1 ; by Christ being formed in the heart, Galatians 4:19 ; by our partaking of the divine nature, 2 Peter 1:4 . The efficient cause of regeneration is the divine Spirit. That man is not the author of it, is evident from John 1:12-13 ; John 3:4 ; Ephesians 2:8 ; Ephesians 2:10 . The instrumental cause is the word of God, James 1:18 ; 1 Peter 1:23 ; 1 Corinthians 4:15 . The change in regeneration consists in the recovery of the moral image of God upon the heart; that is to say, so as to love him supremely and serve him ultimately as our highest end, and to delight in him superlatively as our chief good. The sum of the moral law is to love the Lord our God with all our heart, and soul, and strength, and mind. This is the duty of every rational creature; and in order to obey it perfectly, no part of our inward affection or actual service ought to be, at any time, or in the least degree misapplied. Regeneration consists in the principle being implanted, obtaining the ascendancy, and habitually prevailing over its opposite. It may be remarked, that though the inspired writers use various terms and modes of speech in order to describe this change of mind, sometimes terming it conversion, regeneration, a new creation, or the new creature, putting off the old man with his deeds, and putting on the new man, walking not after the flesh, but after the Spirit, &c; yet it is all effected by the word of truth, or the Gospel of salvation, gaining an entrance into the mind, through divine teaching, so as to possess the understanding, subdue the will, and reign in the affections. In a word, it is faith working by love that constitutes the new creature, the regenerate man, Galatians 5:6 ; 1 John 5:1-5 . Regeneration is to be distinguished from our justification, although it is connected with it. Every one who is justified, is also regenerated; but the one places us in a new relation, and the other in a new moral state. Our Lord, in one instance, uses the term regeneration for the resurrection state: "Ye which have followed me, in the regeneration, when the Son of man shall sit on the throne of his glory, ye also shall sit upon twelve thrones, judging," Matthew 19:28 . And, accordingly, Dr. Campbell translates the passage thus: "At the renovation, when the Son of man shall be seated on the glorious throne, ye, my followers, sitting also upon twelve thrones, shall judge." We are accustomed, says he to apply the term solely to the conversion of individuals; whereas its relation here is to the general state of things. The principal completion will be at the general resurrection, when there will be, in the most important sense, a renovation or regeneration of heaven and earth, when all things shall become new.

Dogmatically, the rebirth by which we become sons of God (John 3), identified with initial justification and sanctifying grace. It is effected by the reception or desire of baptism, the sacrament of regeneration (Titus 3), and is sealed by the baptismal character which remains even after a death-bringing, or mortal sin. Contrast this with the biological notion, i.e.,repair of living tissue; with the metaphorical notion of efforescence; with the non-Christian idea of aspiration to new life, or release through metempsychosis; with the Pietistic idea of experience of conversion and of moral righteousness; with the old Protestant notion of Divine dissulation upon our sinfulness; with the Ritschlian notion of reconciliation following forgiveness. Regeneration may also signify, in a cosmic sense, renewal of the Stoic world-cycle; and, in Christian eschatology, the resurrection of the dead (Matthew 19).

REGENERA'TION, n. 1. Reproduction the act of producing anew. 2. In theology, new birth by the grace of God that change by which the will and natural enmity of man to God and his law are subdued, and a principle of supreme love to God and his law, or holy affections, are implanted in the heart. He saved us by the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Spirit. Titus 3 .

The new birth; that work of the Holy Spirit by which the soul, previously dead in sins, is created anew in Christ unto righteousness. It is expressed in Scripture by being born again and born from above, John 3:3-7 ; becoming a new creature, 2 Corinthians 5:17 ; being quickened to a new life of holiness, Ephesians 2:1 ; having Christ formed in the heart, Galatians 4:19 ; and being made partaker of the divine nature, 2 Peter 1:4 . The sole author of this change is the Holy Spirit, John 1:12,13 3:4 Ephesians 2:8-10 ; and he effects it ordinarily by the instrumentality of gospel truth, 1 Corinthians 4:15 James 1:18 1 Peter 1:23 . In this change the moral image of God is brought back into the soul, and the principle of supreme love to our neighbor is implanted. Regeneration, producing faith, is accompanied by justification, and by actual holiness of life, or sanctification begun, and completed when the "babe in Christ" reaches in heaven "the fulness of the stature of the perfect man" in Him. In Matthew 19:28 , regeneration means Christ's making all things new. In Titus 3:5 , "the washing of regeneration" denotes the purifying work of the Spirit in the new birth.

(See REGENERATION, also NEW BIRTH).

The inward and spiritual gift in Holy Baptism isregeneration, that is being born anew. It is well to note thatRegeneration, or the "New Birth" is often confounded with"Conversion," or they are regarded as synonymous terms. This is amistake and contrary to the teaching of Holy Scripture. Regenerationis a New Birth unto God whereby we become partakers of the nature ofChrist. As the natural birth, so the new and spiritual Birth cantake place only once, and that in Holy Baptism. A baptizedChristian may repeatedly fall from Grace, and by repentance, byamendment of life and by forgiveness he may be again restored,(this is Conversion), but he cannot be said to be again regeneratewithout a grievous misapprehension of the language of the Bible anda total departure from the Doctrine of the Primitive Church. ByRegeneration, therefore, is meant that gracious act of God wherebyfor Christ's sake. He brings us into a new relationship withHimself, adopts us as His own children, translates us into thekingdom of His Son, incorporates us into His Church, and so bringsus under the influence of the Holy Spirit. Regeneration is the nameoriginated for Baptism by our Lord Himself in His discourse withNicodemus, as recorded in the third chapter of St. John's Gospel,and it is for this reason that this passage is appointed to be readin the service for the Baptism of Adults. (See BAPTISM, HOLY; alsoINFANT BAPTISM.)

The word is παλιγγενεσία, lit . 'new birth,' a renovation as in the return of spring. The word occurs but twice in the New Testament. In Matthew 19:28 it speaks of the time when Christ will sit on the throne of His glory; and in Titus 3:5 it refers to the new order of things, in connection with the presence of the Spirit, into which believers were brought. The word does not occur in the LXX. Josephus (Ant. xi. 3,9) uses it for the 'restoration' of the Jewish nation after the exile. It will be seen that the word regeneration has not in scripture the sense of 'new birth,' to which the term has been commonly applied. Intimately connected with regeneration is the idea of 'washing,' referring probably to a cleansing, or separation from old associations, which is essential to the idea of regeneration.