Physical Birth and Spiritual Birth.
R.C Sproul has written a commentary on 1st and 2nd Peter. In it he addresses the topic of Regeneration. In this blog, I want to share just a small portion with you.
About 1 Peter 1:3-5 Sproul writes:
We find in the opening statements of this epistle not only a reference to election but also a specific reference to regeneration or rebirth. This is commonly distorted in our culture by the idea that we have to have faith in order to be reborn or elect, but the sovereign God, from all eternity, decrees those to whom He will give the gift of faith, which is the fruit of regeneration, not the cause of it.
The Reformation church declared that regeneration precedes faith, which is a distinguishing article of Reformed theology. We tend to get that backwards and think that our faith is what causes us to be reborn. Unless we are born of the Spirit, as Jesus said to Nicodemus, we cannot see the kingdom of God, let alone enter it. Regeneration is what provokes and plants faith in our souls. The very condition that God requires for justification is by His grace sovereignly supplied. If we try to place faith before regeneration, we expect the impossible: the natural to rise up to the supernatural.
We expect those who are dead in sin and trespasses to exercise spiritual life. The Apostle Paul wrote to the Ephesians that God “even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved)” (Eph. 2:5). Every pregnant woman knows the human experience called “quickening,” which happens when she first feels life in her womb. That is the metaphor Paul gives to the Ephesians of what the Holy Spirit does to people while they are dead. We are as passive in our rebirth as we were in our natural birth. We had nothing to do with causing the conception in our mother’s womb.
Sproul, R. C. (2011-03-02). 1&2 Peter: St Andrew's Expositional Commentary (p. 29). Good News Publishers/Crossway Books. Kindle Edition.
I encourage you to find your JOY in the one who brought to life which was dead.
Heading North
Pastor Tim