Four Basic Views on Regeneration

The New Birth as a Supernatural Work From Above

That brings us to the second point, and that is that this principle is a supernatural principle. That is, it's from above. So when we talk about the new birth, we're talking about a birth from above. Paul uses this language when he talks about the same work that raised Christ from the dead.

That divine energy is at work within the believer, raising us from the dead, making us new men. James talks about God making us alive, planting this seed, this word within us, the gospel. And John chapter 1 is perhaps the clearest when John says in verse 12, As many as received Him, Christ, to them He gave the right to become children of God, even to those who believe in His name.

Now that's the external description. A Christian is a believer. But then you ask, well, how did they come to that place? And you have this internal description. Now, we want to mention that historically there have been four basic views of regeneration.

Baptismal, Reformational, Decisional, and Spiritual Regeneration

And there are, you know, kind of adjustments on each of these, but these are the four basic categories. Baptismal, reformational, decisional, and spiritual. When we think of baptismal regeneration, generally we think of Roman Catholicism, or the Church of Christ denomination, or even some forms of Anglicanism.

Strangely, Anglican theological documents, the 39 articles, do not teach a baptismal regeneration. But the liturgy has the priest praying after the baptism of the infant, the christening, thanking the Spirit for joining the waters and making this child alive, a child of God.

So George Whitfield and those men during this time were very upset with that and disregarded it. But those would be groups that believed in baptismal regeneration. What about reformational or educational?

This seems to, in my mind, this contains the idea of if we have the right information, or if we can instruct our children in the right way with the right information, that regeneration takes place. And so it's just a matter, not so much of being born from above, as much as it is having the right information and clinging to that.

Yeah, almost like maturation. Like, okay, so God has given us a child and we're a Christian family. And in the context, in the atmosphere of this Christian family, my child will grow and kind of just morph into a Christian, you know, would just be kind of slowly matured into a Christian.

And the idea of being dead in your sin one day and being alive in Christ the next tends to be neglected in that. Yes. Another one is decisional regeneration. And we want to talk about that separately because that certainly is the most popular today.

And then there is spiritual regeneration. And that's what the sermon is about. That it is God himself that wakes us up, that makes us alive. And from that flows everything. Chuck, of those four, certainly decisional regeneration is the most popular view today.

The Problems With Decisional Regeneration

I'm sure it's the view that we both grew up with. Yes. And just assumed that it was biblical. Because there are some things about it that are biblical. But there's much about it that is not biblical and so fundamentally detrimental to the American church.

So, you know, what would you say is wrong and maybe some right and wrong responses to that?

Yeah. Well, decisional regeneration has a number of things wrong with it. One is that it does ignore what we're talking about, about having an old sinful nature or principle within us. And it assumes that a person is willing to choose Christ.

And we're going to talk, I think, in a few minutes about how that is not the case. There's something that has to happen to make us willing. But it assumes that that's there. It assumes that if you can be persuaded to make a decision, then that's enough.

And making that decision, you're now a new believer, a new creature. Nah. You are now a new believer, a new creation in Christ. And so, in that sense, it kind of neglects the work of the Holy Spirit. And it takes things out of order.

It assumes that repentance and faith come first. And they then are kind of a cause of the new birth. I can do these things, repentance and faith, and that will produce a new birth. Instead of seeing the new birth is necessary to making me willing to repent and believe.

So, in those ways, it is a misunderstanding of regeneration. And there are a lot of people starting to rethink this. And I think a lot of people I probably did this myself to some degree way back when.

But you start rethinking this, and it's easy to swing on the pendulum, you know, and go too far. To the point where you would even say there are people who would say, you don't even have a decision in this process.

God saves, which is true. You have no part in it. It just happens. Almost a hyper-Calvinistic kind of viewpoint. It's fatalistic, you know. It's just going to happen. But that's wrong. It's wrong thinking because the Scripture does command us to respond.

And there is a choice. The problem is not that we don't have a choice. The problem is we do have a choice. And we are so polluted and so foul that we will not choose what we should choose. And something has to happen in us that would make us willing to turn to God.

Charles Finney and the Prayer of Faith

Probably the most popular proponent of this was Charles Finney. Finney in the early 19th century was fabulously popular. He was able to make boasts of hundreds and thousands being converted under his ministry.

And though that might seem kind of normal to us today, in his day he was really one of the first to do that, to claim that he knew that people had actually been born again under his preaching. One reason he was one of the first to claim that is because he felt that the new birth was by making a decision or what he called the prayer of faith, what we call the sinner's prayer.

And he guaranteed parents that within 15 minutes they could know that their children were Christians, were born again. If he could get them to lead their children through the prayer of faith. Obviously Finney didn't feel that hypocrisy was okay.

You know, you needed to be sincere. But that's not the problem. It's not sincerity versus a lack of sincerity. It's the idea that I can make up my mind to change my nature. And we simply don't have what it takes to do that.

Finney took the phrase from the Old Testament, make yourself a new heart, took it out of context and said, God commanded you to do this because you have the power to do it. I think that a healthier verse is taken from Acts 2, verse 40, where Peter's preaching.

And he says this, it says,. And with many other words, he solemnly testified and kept on exhorting them, saying, now listen to this command, be saved from this perverse generation. Literally in the original language, in the Greek, it is a verb that, sorry, literally in the original Greek, it is an aorist passive imperative.

Now, you know, if you haven't been tortured with grammar in a long time, what that means is this. It is a thing that is a definite decision. It's something that must be done. Be saved. It is a thing that is an imperative.

It's a command. You must obey this command. But the strange thing is that it's an imperative in the passive. You must obey a command. But the only way that you can obey this command is by getting someone else to act upon you, a passive verb.

You know, so I received something, not I gave something. And what a wonderful nutshell of the Christian life. You are commanded to be rescued, but you can't rescue yourself. So the only way to obey that command is to go to the one person that can rescue you.

And that would be a terrifying command if it weren't for the fact that the one person that can rescue us is not only able, but willing. It's Jesus Christ.