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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