When it pleased God…to reveal
His Son in me… —Galatians 1:15-16
If Jesus Christ is going to regenerate me, what is the problem
He faces? It is simply this— I have a heredity in which I had no say or
decision; I am not holy, nor am I likely to be; and if all Jesus Christ can do
is tell me that I must be holy, His teaching only causes me to despair. But if
Jesus Christ is truly a regenerator, someone who can put His own heredity of
holiness into me, then I can begin to see what He means when He says that I
have to be holy. Redemption means that Jesus Christ can put into anyone the
hereditary nature that was in Himself, and all the standards He gives us are
based on that nature— His teaching is meant to be applied to the life which
He puts within us. The proper action on my part is simply to agree with God’s
verdict on sin as judged on the Cross of Christ.
The New Testament teaching about regeneration is that when a
person is hit by his own sense of need, God will put the Holy Spirit into his
spirit, and his personal spirit will be energized by the Spirit of the Son of
God— “…until Christ is formed in you” (Galatians 4:19). The moral miracle of
redemption is that God can put a new nature into me through which I can live a
totally new life. When I finally reach the edge of my need and know my own
limitations, then Jesus says, “Blessed are you…” (Matthew 5:11). But I must get
to that point. God cannot put into me, the responsible moral person that I am,
the nature that was in Jesus Christ unless I am aware of my need for it.
Just as the nature of sin entered into the human race through
one man, the Holy Spirit entered into the human race through another Man
(see Romans 5:12-19). And redemption means that I can be delivered from
the heredity of sin, and that through Jesus Christ I can receive a pure and
spotless heredity, namely, the Holy Spirit.
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