Except a man be born again, he cannot
see the kingdom of God. John 3:3
The
change in my disposition does not mean that I have a greater intellect now than
I had before. No, I have exactly the same intellect, the same mind. But because
the disposition governing it is changed, my mind is operating in a different
realm and in a different way, and it seems to be a new mind. And it is exactly
the same with the feelings.
A man who
used to hate the Gospel now loves it. A woman who hated the Lord Jesus Christ
now loves Him. And likewise with the will: The will earlier resisted, it was
obstinate and rebellious; but now it desires, it is anxious, it is concerned
about the Gospel.
The next
thing that we say is that it is a change that is instantaneous. Now do you see
the importance of differentiating between generation and coming to birth?
Generation, by definition, is always an instantaneous act. There is a moment, a
flash, in which the germ of life enters, impregnates; that is one instantaneous
action. In other words, there are no intermediate stages in regeneration. Life
is either implanted or it is not; it cannot be partly implanted. It is not
gradual. When I say that it is instantaneous, I am not referring to our
consciousness of it, but to the thing itself, as it is done by God. The consciousness,
of course, comes into the realm of time, whereas this act of germination is
timeless, and that is why it is immediate.
So the
next thing is that generation, the implanting of this seed of life and the
change of the disposition, happens in the subconscious, or, if you prefer, in
the unconscious. Our Lord explained that fully to Nicodemus (John 3). It is a
secret, inscrutable operation that cannot be directly perceived by us; indeed,
we cannot even fully understand it. The first thing we know about it is that it
has happened, because we are conscious of something different, but that means
that we do not understand it and that we really cannot arrive at its secret.
