Born Again with R. C. Sproul, “Regeneration Is the Beginning”, 3

The Visible Church and the Invisible Church

How many of you have ever heard the expression, the visible church? And conversely we use the term, the invisible church. Have you heard that? Well there is a longstanding reason for that distinction that goes all the way back to the fourth century in church history, and the reason why the church makes a distinction between the visible church and the invisible church is that the visible church refers not to bricks and mortar and to sign boards in front of a building, but the visible church refers to the members who are on the rolls of the local church.

And everybody whose name appears on the membership roll of the church belongs to the visible church. They're a church member, and we can see them, we can count them as they walk to and fro across the church grounds.

But the reason why we distinguish between the visible church and the invisible church is that the invisible church refers to those people who inwardly have been regenerated. When Saint Augustine taught centuries ago about the nature of the church, he talked the church, he talked about the church as being a mixed body, a group of people, all of whom are visible, but that this church, this visible organization of people has within it, using Jesus' language, tares and wheat, tares and wheat, and that no church is absolutely.

Pure.

There are always going to be people who will join a church for the wrong reason, who will be hypocritical, who will claim to love Christ while their hearts are far from them. Again, that was the problem of the Pharisees.

The Pharisees' religion was all show. It was all external. And they prayed on the streets where everybody could see them, and Jesus said, what? When you pray, don't be like the Pharisees who stand around and give these long prayers on the street corner in order to be seen of men.

So the people would say, how pious they are. Jesus said, you pray in secret. You go in your closet, and you pray to your Father who hears you in secret, and don't make this ostentatious display of outward piety, which became a substitute for the real thing.

And so what the Bible says, as I mentioned the last time, is that the heart of a human being is invisible to us. But not to God. And so I don't know who's born again and who isn't born again. Only God can scrutinize the secret chambers of the human heart.

Regeneration as the Beginning of the Christian Life

Now what I wanted to focus on, however, in this segment is that this regeneration that is invisible and mysterious and necessary is merely the beginning of the Christian life. It is the first point, the first step in the total experience of redemption that God brings.

Us through.

Now, I say that for this reason. When people say that they're born again, they think that their rebirth is the same thing as their new life. The New Testament says that what? That the person who is in Christ is a new creature.

He's a brand new creation. Behold, the old has passed away, and what? All things have become new. So that you're a new person, a new creation, and that means that you have a new life. But the new life is not the same thing as the new birth.

Let me say it again. The new life that you enjoy is not the same thing as the new birth. The new life is the result of the new birth, just as, you know, every year, one day a year, you celebrate your birthday.

You can celebrate your birthday every year. You can have an anniversary of your biological birthday every year, but you don't get born every year. Birth happens once, and it indicates the beginning or the entrance point of you as a person into this world as an independent organism.

And so we make that distinction between the beginning and then the life that flows out of that beginning, both in terms of natural birth as well as in supernatural birth, which is what we're describing in terms of regeneration.

Now, I remember when I became a Christian, oh, how I can relate to that passage, Behold, he who is in Christ is a new creation. I was one of those people that had a very sudden and dramatic conversion.

And a word of caution here, I'm going to elaborate on this more fully later, but there's a grave danger whereby we take our experience and want to make it the test for everybody else's experience. If my conversion experience is sudden and dramatic and I react in a certain way, I tend to be suspicious of people whose conversion experience is different from mine, don't I?

And people who have an instantaneous experience of conversion want to demand that from everybody, and they begin to question people who say, well, I've been a Christian as long as I can remember, or I became a Christian when I was four years old, or I sort of gradually came into the Christian faith.

Sudden conversion type people begin to look askance at those people, wonder whether they're really converted. On the other hand, the people who have had this gradual, elongated, nurtured, where they can't pinpoint the day and the hour that they became a Christian, they wonder about the mental stability of these people that walk around and say, hey, you know, I was walking down the street, bang, I got hit by the Holy Spirit.

You know, but as I say, we'll talk more about that later. But let's not confuse the Christian life, the new Christian life, with the beginning of that life. As I said, I can relate to the passage, he was in Christ as a new Christian.

All things have become new, and what I remember is the first two months of my Christian experience, my life, my spiritual life went like this. I was on an emotional roller coaster ride. I mean, I went from spiritual ecstasy to profound spiritual depression.

I was like, forgive the, I should have said it in front of Freudian slip, forbid the illustration from Goff, but I don't know how many thousands of times I've said to my wife, I found it.

I got the secret.

I got it now. I'm never going to hit another bad golf shot. I'm never going to have another golf round that's awful because I know it's simple. And that lasts for about two minutes or about two days, and then I'm searching all over again because it goes as fast as it came.

Well, that's the way my Christian experience was the first two months. I mean, from spiritual high to a profound sense of the absence of God and repeating old patterns and that sort of thing, until I went to a minister who said to me, he said, remember that your rebirth is just the beginning, and that the New Testament says though you may be an adult in every other respect, mature, sophisticated, learned, if your Christian experience is a new thing to you, that spiritually speaking, you're a babe.

You're in your infancy.

And notice how the emotions of infants are. I mean, have you noticed how changeable they are? I mean, one minute that baby will be screaming his head off and you say, goo, goo, goo, goo, you know, or you just change their attention, call their attention to something else and they're giggling, and ten seconds later they're screaming again.

And their emotions are like that until we grow to a certain point where the growth pattern looks something like this, where you're still on an upward plane of spiritual growth and maturity, but the highs and the lows, however, are not quite as far apart as you go into a more consistent pattern of spiritual behavior.

And that's as we grow up into maturity. But rebirth is what we're talking about, not the new life. And I'm emphasizing here that the regeneration is merely the beginning point of this whole pattern and this whole process that goes on until we are glorified in heaven.

The struggle continues from the day of rebirth until that rebirth reaches the fullness of maturity in Christ in heaven. And I've said this many times. I am annoyed no end when I hear well-intentioned preachers trying to persuade and convince people of the riches of Christian religion and everything, and will say stuff like, you come to Jesus and all your problems will be over.

Baloney! It's just not true.

I know my testimony is that my life didn't become, begin to be complicated until I became a Christian, because now I have to go to war every day between that which is born of the flesh and that which is born in the Spirit.

And the Apostle Paul experienced in his fullness of maturity a warfare that wouldn't quit between his old man and the new man. The conflict is there. The capacity for evil that resides in the heart of a regenerate person is almost without limit.

We ought not to be shocked when we see Christian leaders falling into serious sin.

What else is there?

I mean, what about David? What about Peter, a regenerate man who with filthy cursing denied Christ publicly? The old man is being put to death, and we have now the new power of new life, but it doesn't erase everything that went before it automatically or instantaneously.

It's just the beginning. But it's not only just the beginning, ladies and gentlemen, it is the beginning, and it's the most significant beginning that you'll ever have. I'd like to turn your attention to some very important elements, I think, about the beginning of the Christian life as Paul teaches it in his letter to the Ephesians.

Dead in Trespasses and Sins

I'm sure that I've dealt with this text in the context of studying other doctrines because it is such an important text that affects more than one doctrine, but in terms of our study of regeneration, we cannot afford to ignore it, and it's the beginning of the second chapter of Paul's letter to the Ephesians where Paul writes these words, and you, he's talking to Christians now, and you were dead in your trespasses and sins in which you formally walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience.

Now, let me just stop here and ask you to think about this personally in terms of your own life formerly and presently. How do you live your life? According to what do you live? Well, everybody lives according to something.

We all have values. We all have a perspective, a view of the world, and a view of ourself. We have an idea of what we prefer. We have preferences. We have these things, and that we try to live according to some kind of standard.

Now, the question I have for you is what is your standard, and where did you get it? I might add perhaps even a more provocative question, why is it your standard? Now, what the Apostle is saying here is this.

He said, before you were reborn, you were dead. Now, he's not talking about biological death, obviously. This message, this letter is not sent to the mourned. It's sent to people who are biologically alive and who, if they were presently biological guys, they were formerly biologically alive, but he's saying you were dead spiritually, and while you were dead, you were still walking around.

You were zombies.

You're spiritual zombies.

They're walking dead.

You're walking around as dead people, biologically alive but spiritually dead. Now, how did you walk? He said you walked according to the course of this world. When you run in a marathon, if 500 people are running the course and you decide to run your own, you're not going to get the prize if you win because you have to stay within the boundaries of the race if you're going to expect to win and to compete.

There is a definite course that you follow, and now what the Apostle is saying is that you lived your life according to a course, a course that was set for you by this world. How slavish are we in imitating the value systems of our peers?

It's so evident among teenagers, isn't it, that they're so peer conscious. Everybody's doing it. You know, they lose sleep at night over whether or not they're up to the minute with the latest fad and the latest fashion, but of course at the end of the teenage years, we get out of that, don't we?

You know better than that, that people still are conscious of the boundary flags for the course of this world. And Paul says that before a person is regenerate, that's how they live. They live according to the world's course, and not only that, but according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience.

Among them, Paul says, we too all formerly lived in the lusts of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath even as the rest. This is one of the most graphic and detailed descriptions of the moribund, torpid, deadly state of an unregenerate person that we find in Scripture.

They're alive, but they're walking according to a course set by the world under the influence of the enemy, living a life that is characterized by fulfilling the lusts of the flesh, and the desires of the flesh and of the mind.

And Paul says that that is not the way or the course of behavior that you found among criminals in a prison, or among the most radically wicked people in a given society. He's talking about Christians.

He says, that's the way you used to live. In fact, that's the way what? Everybody lives, without exception, that the whole world normally and naturally lives by that fallen course. You were all formerly lived in the lusts of our flesh, and we were by nature the children of wrath even as the rest.

Now, Paul's not saying anything different here that Jesus doesn't say repeatedly in His own teaching. But it's the next word that gets us to regeneration. It's the word that I scream about. It's the word that gets me pumped up.

It's the word that I have in my office, and I have at home, and I keep it in my mind. The one word that captures and encapsulates the whole message of redemption, but God, who is rich in mercy with the mercy with which He loved us, hath quickened us together with Christ.

Here, the Apostles' word for what Jesus called spiritual rebirth is the word quicken. Now to quicken, biblically, does not mean to make one run faster. To quicken means to make alive. You women who at one time in your life experienced childbirth and pregnancy, remember the experience that we call quickening when you felt for the first time that life that was emerging and growing within yourself.

We say in the Apostles' Creed that when Jesus returns, He's going to judge the quick and.

The dead.

It doesn't say the quick and the slow, but He's going to judge the quick and the dead. The contrast there is between those who are alive and those who are dead, and that's the contrast that the Apostle is painting here.

Once you are dead, but God quickens you. God makes you alive. He brings you out of that state of death, and that's what we call regeneration. It's the beginning of the new life, and it is something that is accomplished, dear friends, by God and only by God.

A dead man cannot raise himself from the dead. The only power over death that I know of in the universe is the power of God. God alone can bring something out of nothing and life out of death. A dead person cannot do anything but stay dead, but God, who is rich in mercy, so that your quickening, that first step that brought you into a whole new life and made you a new creature was accomplished by a creative act of Almighty God.

Regeneration, Faith, and the Whole Christian Life

About a month ago, I was asked to speak to a Gathering of Men group in Jackson, Mississippi, and as the day drew near for that particular occasion, the sponsors of it sort of clued me in that what they wanted from me was not my normal type of educational speech that I'm committed to giving, but what they wanted was evangelism.

They wanted me to give an evangelistic message, listen to this, followed by a call to commitment. If you wanted to see a speaker experiencing stark, raving terror, it was R .C. Sproul when they announced to him they wanted him to be an evangelist, because an evangelist I.

Am not.

I'm a teacher, not an evangelist. I have a great admiration for men and women that God uses in that capacity for evangelism. I talked to Billy Graham, you know, I said, Billy, I said, he was sitting next to me at this dinner table, and he was going to go up and give a few words of welcome to the Evangelical Press Association.

He was just going to get up there and filibuster for a couple minutes, say, hey, how are you,.

And sit down.

He didn't have to give a speech, and I said, well, you know, I said, how do you feel after.

You speak?

Are you drained? He said, oh, he said, I'm absolutely exhausted. He said, and the thing that exhausts him the most is not the sermon, but the altar call, and he said, I feel something go out of me when I'm standing there praying for those people to come.

He said, but, and I said, well, do you suffer from anxiety, speaker's anxiety before you.

Speak?

I'm a wreck before I speak. I never get over that nervous anxiety about having to speak, and I was sure Billy Graham was going to say, oh, yeah, I have the same problem. Everybody thinks that I can get up there without butterflies, but I thought he was going to say I don't sleep the night before a crusade.

He didn't say that.

He said he's never nervous before he gives evangelism. He says it drives him crazy to have to come to where he was that night, to have to get up and give a few casual off-the-cuff remarks. He said, I don't want to teach.

I don't want to have to speak at banquets. He says, put me in a tent or put me in a coliseum and let me preach the gospel for evangelism. He says, I'm not nervous, and I said, well, I can relate that.

He said, put me in a classroom in a seminary with my students, and I'm not nervous, but maybe stand in front of a group of people and do evangelism. Oh, no, that just terrifies me, but that's what these guys did to me.

They laid it on me after I said I'd speak, not knowing that it was evangelism. And I said, I have to call these people to evangelism. I said, well, you guys don't. You called the wrong guy. I said, God blesses my teaching, but any time I try to preach evangelistically, you know, if I say, if you came in a bus, it'll wait, I wait the bus leaves, nobody responds to what I preach, and it's like, it's almost like God whispers to me and says, hey, that's.

Not your gift. Stay away from it.

But I preached at this thing and gave this call to commitment, and there weren't multitudes and thousands and thousands of people, but astonishingly enough, some men committed their lives to Christ for the first time.

And afterwards, one of them was so excited, besides, he called his wife and all this stuff, you know, it's just wonderful, but I sat down with the men who put this thing together later, and I said, do you realize what happened here?

I said that while we were engaged in a human gathering, and while I was speaking and reading from the Scriptures, that the Creator of the universe came into that room and secretly, invisibly, mysteriously, and supernaturally changed the soul of human beings.

But God, who is rich in the mercy and the love within us, has quickened us together so that the very first step in the Christian life is regeneration, that you're born again, and then you have faith, and then you are justified, and then you are sanctified.

And all that business about faith and repentance and justification and sanctification, all of that incorporates the whole complex of the Christian life. But the starting point does. Only the Spirit of God can produce spirit, because that which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.