The Bible warns us that “in the last days perilous times shall come.” In the last days Christians will not endure sound doctrine but “heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears.” We know this by the fact that if you took the average Christian and asked him to tell you what those words meant, there would not be one person in fifty who could write back an answer that would tell you anything—including the preachers.
Now, in CONVERSION and REGENERATION we find some things going on that are nearly inseparable. REGENERATION is the conversion of the sinner to something other than what he was. CONVERSION can be the act of turning from sin to Christ, but regeneration is the work of God in making the person a new creature when he has turned. Regeneration, via the new birth, is the instrument that brings us into the family of God and causes us to be adopted. The only way a sinner can be “born again” is by the power of the Holy Spirit. The new birth is the door to salvation and, consequently, to Heaven.
What is regeneration? Regeneration means a rebirth or recreation, a new birth—a second birth. Regeneration is the creation by the Holy Spirit of a new man inside the old man, and he is called the “new man.” Like the first birth, it is an event and not a process. Although from the first conviction of sin, the conversion may cover many days or even years; the actual birth takes place in a second, as one passes from darkness to light, from nighttime to daytime, and from death to life. The person has literally a second birthday and enters a new life. God doesn’t require a whitewash job or a new leaf: he requires a new life.
Who needs to be born again? Well, Nicodemus had to be born again (John 3); he was a good man. Paul had to be born again (Acts 9); he was a murderer. It is not a matter of opinion or choice. The Scriptures teach that it is mandatory. The language of the Saviour is explicit and imperative. “Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God” (John 3:3). “Ye must be born again” (John 3:7).
As soon as this commandment is obeyed, the Devil will try to make you see that the water and spirit in John 3:5 are the same thing, which they are not. We’ve talked about this in other lessons. There is no water baptism mentioned anywhere in John 3:1–16. There is no mention of water baptism anywhere connected with the new birth within ten verses before or after it. People who have a water fixation often read “baptism” where they see “water” and read “water” where they see “baptism.” The Bible believer never says “water” unless it says “water” and never says “baptism” unless it says “baptism.”
We have two great heretical groups raised up by Satan to mess up the new Christian. These two great Satanic groups both profess to be the “real church that Christ founded.” They teach two heresies.
1. That the believer couldn’t have the Holy Spirit or be “born again” of the Spirit unless he was born again in a water baptismal pool from the city water system, baptized by an “elder” of one denomination.
2. That the believer couldn’t have the Holy Spirit unless he blabbered like a Pentecostal Jew under the Law, where nobody knew about the new birth or the blood atonement.
There is no substitute for the new birth. To fail to be born again is to be lost. “For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision availeth any thing, nor uncircumcision, but a new creature” (Gal. 6:15). To become “a new creature” is not to be “baptized.” The expression “if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature” (2 Cor. 5:17) is not found within ten verses of water baptism either way.
The peculiar teaching that water can put you into Christ is just about as wild foolishness as you ever picked up in your life. This ancient, pagan heresy is called “baptismal regeneration.” This ancient, pagan heresy was taught throughout the church age. These people who lived in their sins and died in their sins thought they became “new creatures” by getting dunked or sprinkled.
Jeremiah 13:23 says, “Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots? then may ye also do good, that are accustomed to do evil.” It is impossible without a rebirth. “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked” (Jer. 17:9). Only God can give a man a new, clean heart.
The new birth is not water baptism. Water baptism is a church ordinance signifying that one is a Christian and has already died with Christ, already been buried, already risen, and is now living with Christ daily. If you count on water baptism to save you, you are perverting the word of God because water baptism is never mentioned within ten verses of justification, redemption, imputation, regeneration, or anything like it. You will never find the term “water baptism” connected with the new birth ANYWHERE in either Testament.
The new birth is not reformation. Reformation is the act of the old nature of turning from certain evils, while regeneration is a supernatural act of God. It is a spiritual crisis, a revolution, a complete about-face. It is a spiritual quickening, a new birth, a new creation. From Genesis chapters 1 and 2, everything brought forth “after his kind,” so sinners begat sinners. You cannot alter the old nature or reform it, reinvigorate it, crucify it, culture it, or exorcise it. You need a NEW BIRTH, the impartation of a different kind of nature: God’s nature. “Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new” (2 Cor. 5:17). “And you hath he quickened, who were dead in trespasses and sins” (Eph. 2:1).
The NEW BIRTH is a change from death to life, not from land to water. It is not a reformation. It is a spiritual resurrection, not a dunking in a bathtub. You were born the first time physically of water. The second birth must be a spiritual birth, of the Spirit. The first birth is of water because life came from water (Gen. 1:20). Therefore, a water birth of physical water always has to do with a natural, physical birth, and water baptism can no more save you than it could save a tadpole. That is why it is never mentioned in connection with salvation except as a figure (1 Pet. 3:21) and never mentioned in connection with regeneration anywhere in either Testament.
In Mark 16:16, you are specifically told that the thing that determines your damnation is not your baptism: it is your belief. Even where he said “he that believeth and is baptized shall be saved,” he is very careful to tell you in the rest of the clause that your damnation has nothing to do with whether or not you are baptized. “He that believeth not shall be damned.” Water baptism is not a figure of your condemnation.
Now, the agents used in the new birth are, first of all, the word of God. We read in James 1:18, “Of his own will begat he us with the word of truth,” Simon Peter says, “Being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the word of God, which liveth and abideth for ever” (1 Pet. 1:23).
One reason why so few people are born again today (that even talk about it) is because, in modern preaching, the New Testament doctrines of salvation are not being preached. The preaching has been confined to the Book of Acts, where the New Testament doctrines are not even discussed. The Book of Acts is the history of the early church, and the early church in Acts chapter 2 is completely Jewish with no Christians in it. As any serious student of the Bible knows, the term “Christians” occurs nowhere in the Bible until Acts 11:26.
Without the preaching of the word of God in regard to salvation, there are going to be no new births. The new birth is God’s work—God begets the sinner. Let me tell you something, friend. That Book says, “But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name: Which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God” (John 1:12–13). God doesn’t grant the new birth (the spiritual resurrection) to any sinner upon the face of this earth until that sinner, by an act of faith, receives the Lord Jesus Christ as his righteousness, his atonement, his justification, and his salvation. All this talk today about so-and-so being “born again” amounts to nothing if that “born again” wasn’t a birth that God gave that man on the grounds of the blood atonement of Jesus Christ.
The new birth is faith generated by the hearing of the word of God that saves the soul. In John 3:5 we see, “Except a man be born of water [“that which is born of flesh is flesh”] and of the Spirit [“that which is born of the Spirit is spirit”], he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.” Spiritual life, then, is begotten by the Holy Spirit and is NEVER CONNECTED WITH THE PHYSICAL, WATER BIRTH. Water brings forth life, and any man’s body is 85 percent water. That is why the term “baptism” never occurs in the Bible in connection with the new birth. There is not a single passage in either Testament where water baptism is ever mentioned in connection with regeneration or the new birth. The new birth in John 3:1–8 is never connected with water baptism before the verses, during the verses, or after the verses. The ancient, pagan superstition taught in Carthage, North Africa, by Augustine, Irenaeus, and Eusebius (to the effect that John chapter 3 was a reference to water baptism) was as vile and blatant a heresy as ever damned the soul of any poor Hell-bound sinner.
The ministry of the Holy Spirit is to convict the sinner and then to convert him through the work of bringing him into the Body of Christ via the new birth. That cannot be done apart from the sinner receiving Jesus Christ as his personal Saviour. If the sinner is counting on any work to save him, the new birth is absolutely impossible because it is made on the grounds of belief and faith in God’s righteousness instead of your own righteousness. Or as the Pauline epistles so carefully put it, “But to him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness” (Rom. 4:5)
From the divine side, the method of regeneration is God Himself doing the work (“begotten of God”), deciding to give you the regeneration. Regeneration is a creative act on the part of God, not reformation by any man. John 1:13 says of the new birth, the man who has been born again is not “born...of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor the will of man, but of God.”
Now from the human side, although you cannot will the new birth and you cannot produce the new birth, there is something you must do before God will produce the new birth in you. And, of course, it has nothing to do with water baptism. John 1:12, “But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name.”
The Author of regeneration is God. The Channel of regeneration is Christ. The Executive of regeneration is the Holy Spirit. The medium of regeneration is through receiving Christ by believing what God said about your inability to save yourself. “To him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness.” To be born again you must believe the word of God. “Faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God” (Rom. 10:17). “And this is the word by which the gospel is preached unto you” (1 Pet. 1:25).
As we said before, these are doctrinal matters that deal with the doctrines of New Testament Salvation (properly called “Soteriology” in the study of Systematic Theology), which simply means that in the last days it will be the saved people who will not endure sound doctrine and will reject these truths: the saved people as well as the lost people. When Paul says, “they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears” (2 Tim. 4:3), he is talking about people who know the difference between sound doctrine and false doctrine. Otherwise, they couldn’t tell which was which to reject the sound doctrine.
Since the unsaved man “receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned” (1 Cor. 2:14), the greatest rejectors of sound doctrine in the Laodicean church period before the Second Coming of Christ will be babies in Christ who have received Christ but are trying to work on their own salvation and earn their salvation the rest of the way.
Now, what are the evidences of regeneration? Well, to begin with, the first evidence is that you love God. Secondly, you love God’s words. Then you love God’s people. “We know that we have passed from death unto life, because we love the brethren” (1 John 3:14). It doesn’t say that we love the people who reject the word of God—“we love the brethren.”
Next, the born-again individual lives an overcoming life. “For whatsoever is born of God overcometh the world” (1 John 5:4). The born again one believes that Jesus is the Christ. “Whosoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ is born of God” (1 John 5:1). Our love springs up for God. A love springs up especially for God’s word. “Charity rejoices in the truth” (1 Cor. 13:6).
Evidence of regeneration is found in the fact that people begin to love the word of God. They don’t revise it and pick up everything that comes up and try to change it to suit their own fancy. THEY LOVE IT. They can say with David, “How sweet are thy words unto my taste! yea, sweeter than honey to my mouth” (Ps. 119:103). They can say with Job, “I have esteemed the words of his mouth more than my necessary food” (Job 23:12).
The heart is changed. Sin is hated. Christ is loved. The life is changed. “Old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new” (2 Cor. 5:17). New and holy desires spring up like wells of living water. The new life overflows in love and good works toward God and toward others. The new birth is the sovereign work of the Holy Spirit. It is a secret work inside (John 3:8), but it is evident by the fact that the man not only turns over a “new leaf” but has a new life.
Above all, it is manifest by a desire to learn the word of God and love the word of God. The man who has been regenerated by the Holy Spirit (and not been merely baptized by some “unholy ghost” of some kind), the man who has been regenerated by God’s Holy Spirit, loves the word of God. Christ said “He that is of God heareth God’s words: ye therefore hear them not, because ye are not of God” (John 8:47). Christ said, “If a man love me, he will keep my words” (John 14:23).
Regeneration is evidenced primarily by a love for God, a love for God’s word, and thirdly (in that order) a love for God’s people. Where a love for God’s people is put ahead of the love of God and the love of God’s word. May the Holy Spirit protect your love for God and for His words so that you honor Him and honor what He said, wrote, and preserved.
Source: Theological Studies Vol. II - Regeneration by Dr. Peter S. Ruckman
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GOD's Simple Plan of Salvation
If you were to die today for any reason, are you 100% sure you will go to heaven?
This video explains the SIMPLE TRUTH according to the Scriptures. The only way to go to heaven is by:
(1) Admitting that you are a sinner
(2) Believing on the Lord Jesus Christ as your own personal Savior and Lord
(3) Repenting (meaning you are willing to turn away from your sins) of your sins then confessing your sins to God
Jesus Christ willingly sacrificed Himself and shed His precious blood on the cross as a substitute for you, so that you don't have to burn in hell for all eternity because of your sins, and have eternal life in heaven instead.
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