p. 325 | REGENERATION by J. M. Stifler

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Mar 27, 1893

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 19, No. 21.

REGENERATION.

By J. M. Stifler

BY J. M. STIFLER.

REGENERATION is intimately connected with justification. The latter is a declarative act in which God pronounces a believing sinner acceptable to him for Christ's sake. It affects a man's standing before God, but not his state. The man "is not condemned." John 3: 18. Justification is outward. But now, if regeneration did not accompany it, the justifying act would be useless. A human court may excuse a man for drunkenness, and the man may go from its bar uncondemned. But the man is likely to be back again. For, while the judge can acquit him, he cannot renovate him so that he will not repeat his offense. But he who is justified at God's bar is at the same time regenerated so that his justification may enable him to become, by the "renewing of the Holy Ghost" (Titus 3: 5), what he is declared to be,—righteous. Regeneration is no part of justification, though they always occur together, like the light and the heat of the sun. Light is not heat, and heat is not light. Regeneration, while connected with justification, falls, after all, under the idea of sanctification.

Regeneration is most difficult to define. The New Testament employs a wealth of terms in describing it. "Of his own will begat he us." James 1: 18. "Being born again." 1 Peter 1: 23. "Made free from the law of sin and death." Rom. 8: 2. "Created in Christ Jesus." Eph. 2: 10. "The engrafted word, which is able to save your souls." James 1: 21. "Passed from death unto life." John 5: 24. These are by no means all, but enough to show how hard it would be to find a defining term or even a sentence which would embrace them all. This Bible language is highly figurative, and some of the terms exclude others in thought, which shows that none of them is to be pressed to its utmost. We must not do with the words descriptive of this doctrine that for which the Roman Catholic is justly censured in another. His assertion of the real presence in the communion emblems grows directly out of a too literal reading of the blessed words, "This is my body." When Jesus says, "I am the vine, ye are the branches" (John 15), no one misunderstands him, and the words used to set forth regeneration are equally as figurative. Figurative language is as expressive and as potent as simple language, indeed, more so. But there is this difference, a metaphor holds only in one point, not in all.

Regeneration is such a change wrought by God in the believer's will and desires that voluntarily he loves what once he hated, and hates what once he loved. But no analysis will show the difference between the iron in a horseshoe magnet and the iron in an ordinary horseshoe. The fiber, the weight, the substance are the same. But the magnet has a quality which the other has not. Regeneration does not make a man something more, but it makes him something widely different. The tide that goes out is the same tide that comes in, but going in either direction, it is under an influence that no human power can stay. Regeneration is not mere change of action, it is the holy quality imparted to the soul, which quality is the cause of the change in action. Sheep are very much alike, and yet there is something about the shepherd's own that moves them to go after him, "and a stranger will they not follow, but will flee from him." John 10: 5. It may be difficult to tell what regeneration is, for it is God's inscrutable act in the soul, but it is not difficult to tell who are the regenerate. Christ describes them when he says, "My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me." John 10: 27. The mark of regeneration is obedience.—The Defense.