140: Regeneration and Faith

To the Ruled Church Podcast.

This is my beloved son, with whom I am well pleased. He is honored, and I get the glory. And by the way, it's even better, because you see that building in Perryville, Arkansas? You see that one in Pechote, Mexico?

Do you see that one in Tuxla, Guterres, down there in Chiapas? That building has my son's name on it.

The church is not a democracy, it's a monarchy. Christ is king.

You can't be Christian without a local church.

You can't do anything better than to bend your knee and bow your heart, turn from your sin and repentance, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and join up with a good Bible-believing church, and spend your life serving Jesus in a local, visible congregation.

Well, it's been a while, Michael.

Oh, you're still there?

Yeah.

So just to clarify to our listeners, we don't actually stay on the Zoom call for an entire week. What we do is, we actually just record them together, and then we space them out. It's pretty mind-blowing.

You're the editor. You know all the techie stuff.

You know, if you're a pastor in a rural church, you have to wear many hats.

Mm-hmm.

Actually

Including a cowboy hat.

No, listen to this. Last night, there's a kid from our church. He's a fun kid. And he wasn't paying attention, so I did, you know, like the old jab to the belly, you know? And I said, hey, man, you got to keep your head on a swivel.

And he thought for a second. He said, you've got to keep your head from balding. And right, I was like, this dude, he's like 12, or I think he's like 12, maybe 13, 13. He roasted me hard, man. So yeah, that hurt.

Cut me deep. I did not bring up Elisha and the she bears, but yeah, so anyway, welcome to the Rural Church Podcast. I am your host, Alan Nelson. One of the pastors, Providence Baptist Church, Perryville, Arkansas.

We actually love churches of all sizes. We love the church, but not a lot of podcasts out there just dealing with the rural church. So that's where we're at. And we have a theological discussion today.

The rural church loves theology too, Michael. And there's a little bit of a dust up. This is going to be so outdated by the time the episode comes out, but hopefully it'll be a helpful resource. But there's a little bit of a dust up on, I'm still calling it Twitter, probably will the rest of my life, but where Dr. David Allen put out some things, which I've met Dr. Allen.

And from all that I know about him, he is a good brother, conservative man. I think he loves the Lord from all my observations, but he is the one knock could get him. He's definitely a bit anti-Calvinist and maybe that's putting it politely.

And so I've been frustrated by some of those posts and the dust up was over 1 John 5, 1, which I'll read that in the ESV just says, everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God.

So everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God. And the argument is from the reform perspective, well, this is another proof text, not the only one, but another place of scripture is teaching that regeneration is what produces faith rather than faith resulting in regeneration.

And of course, Dr. Allen talked about why that's not the case and went through various syntactical arguments with the Koine Greek, but you sir have been teaching through 1 John in Sunday school. And so I thought I'd give you the opportunity to maybe talk about for, of course I have some opinions as well, but I thought maybe I'd give you opportunity to talk a little bit about 1 John.

Maybe if you wanna just give us what John's doing in 1 John and then let's get to 1 John 5, 1.

Thanks. I haven't read Dr. Allen's arguments and so I'm somewhat coming in blind on those, but in 1 John, John is effectively telling believers that when you are converted to Christ, there are some things that happen.

And by understanding these things, believing these things, and then observing these things in your life, you can actually have a certainty about your security with God. So you can know that you have eternal life.

You can be sure that you are of the truth. You can know that the spirit indwells you. And John gives us chapters about basically leading up to the same conclusion, which is that you know you believe in the Son of God and thus you have eternal life.

It's a present, you have it. And so at the beginning of 1 John 5, he's continuing the whole discussion about what's going on, which is that Jesus came in the flesh. He became incarnate. God became man.

The person Jesus Christ has two natures. He's God and man. And John is refuting effectively every other heresy that would ever come along as well as some that had already come along that somehow made it that Christ was not the God-man.

He either wasn't a real man or he was a real man, but he wasn't God. He got adopted by God later. There's a lot of heresies going on. And John is trying to explain that Jesus really is this person who has two natures, and thus believing that is a gift from God that you would understand those things so that what you do in your physical life matters.

And so what you have with a Gnostic or a proto-Gnostic heresy, whereby physical matter isn't important anymore, or even if physical matter is evil, so they would have taught Jesus didn't become physical, is what you do physically doesn't matter.

So now you can sin all you want. If Jesus didn't become a man, manhood isn't that important. Being a human isn't that important. And so people could get away with all sense of licentiousness. So the ultimate form of overcoming the world in your flesh becomes loving.

And that's what John's gospel really is about largely and this book, loving the brothers, loving others, extending God's love that he's given to you already to others. And so when you get to 1 John 5, 1, John is continuing the point about loving your brothers and that those who are born of God, those who have been changed by God, adopted into God's family, begotten of God in a sense, will then love everyone else who is also in God's family.

All good, all good. So where would you stand on 1 John 5, 1 specifically then? Is it, I don't love the term proof text, but is it a proof text? I'll just use that because that's the word I have. Is it a proof text for regeneration producing faith or is it neither here?

Is it not? What's your thought?

I think it's a fine example of the fact that without regeneration, you cannot have faith. We use words like precedes and we mean that logically, not necessarily chronologically. And so I think that for many people, the moment that they believe is in fact just the same moment that God has regenerated them and the faith is granted in a sense instantly to them.

I don't think there's a lot of regenerate people walking around waiting to believe. So logically though, what we're saying is that you cannot believe the truth of the gospel savingly and actually receive and rest upon Christ apart from God working in your heart.

And it's because morally speaking, you are opposed to God. You are unwilling to actually believe that truth because of your depravity and the original sin. And so this is why regeneration is necessary is that we are so morally corrupted that we will not choose Christ even when presented to us plainly.

Does this text prove that? I don't think this text would be definitive in a sense if it was the only verse in the Bible teaching that, but it certainly confirms that just in the English wording in mind, everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God.

At the very least, they come together. You cannot believe in Jesus if you haven't been regenerated.

Yeah, that's good. I mean, so with my position is obviously the same that the effectual calling of God is necessary in order to believe the first, or sorry, not first John, but John 6, 63, it is the spirit who gives life.

How much help is the flesh, Michael?

Zero.

Yeah, let's put it in percentage for the math people. Zero percent. The spirit who gives life, the flesh is no help at all. That's John 6, 63. Now, I understand that you want to make the argument from first, not you, I'm talking about the non-Calvinist where everyone wants to make the argument from first John 5, 1.

Hey, look, that's not the argument. John's not trying to make an ordo salutis here, but he was like, well, hold on just a second. I'm gonna read the three other times he uses the same repeated phrase, uses the same syntactical arrangement as in first John 5, 1.

So you have first John 2, 29. If you know that he is righteous, you may be sure that everyone who practices righteousness has been born of him. So in that case, I'm just gonna throw you some softballs.

What comes first? Does practicing righteousness come first or regeneration?

Regeneration.

Okay, next test, first John 3, 9. No one born of God makes a practice of sinning, for God's seed abides in him, and he cannot keep on sinning because he has been born of God. So next question, what happens first?

The cessation of the continual practice of sinning? You stop sinning first or regeneration?

Regeneration.

Okay, that's good. Checks out. First John 4, 7. Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God. And whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Now just contextually, let me say it's not just love in general, love is love or whatever, but he's talking about loving the brothers.

Particularly, he's talking about loving the church. So let me ask you this then, another softball. Does loving the church come first or regeneration?

Regeneration.

Now would anybody that's not Reformed in their soteriology, well, I'm just talking about, let's say they're true believers, they disagree with us about the ordo salutis, but they're actually believers.

Do you think any of them are gonna look at those and say, well, actually no, righteousness comes first, mortifying sin comes first, loving the church comes first. Are they gonna say those things? I mean, what, I mean.

No.

Okay, so then we get, so this is the letter, this is the progression, this is the argument of John. So we've been chapter two, chapter three, chapter four. Now we get to first John 5, and the reality is, you don't have to be a Greek expert, you can see it in the English, but I will just tell you, I'm not a Greek expert, but I can tell you syntactically, this is the same arrangement.

It's the same. I mean, it's just, we know he's a Baptist preacher because he keeps saying the same thing over and over. But this is what he says in chapter five, verse one, everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God.

So you have to do a strange thing.

And by the way,.

Wouldn't you say, brother, that one of the things that we strive for in Reformed soteriology is what we call consistency. We don't have, so every verse in the Bible, we want to be able to say fits. It's not like, oh, you have your verses, we have our verses.

No, from my perspective, I would say, I believe every verse of the Bible. Wouldn't you say that? So The point is, it would be an odd thing, wouldn't it? For John to be making these arguments. And then all of a sudden he gets to chapter five and he's like, well, I don't mean that about, well, obviously I don't mean that about belief.

You know, he's saying, you want to know, I mean, this whole argument, like you want to know that you're a believer? Well, how do I know? Have I experienced regeneration? This fits so important to today's questions.

If someone said, well, how do I know I'm elect then? How do I know I've been born again? Well, what's one answer? Well, we could do those other three, but one answer is what? Do you believe in Christ?

Do you trust Christ?

Then John comes to you and says,.

Oh, you trust Christ?

You've been born of God. That's our, I mean, do you think I'm hitting that or?

I think that you convinced me and I think that your argument makes a lot of sense. What I would say is that I'm not convinced that John's purpose in writing the letter or the argument is to teach the Ordo Salutis.

Very good. And I'm with you.

I think he has a different purpose, but I think the undertone of it all assumes the reformed Ordo Salutis. That John just assumes that this is how things work already. And what's interesting is we want to say that everyone, like, so the Arminian stance, I'm going to try to steel man this concept that the Arminian stance becomes everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God.

And so they're saying this, believing that Jesus is the Christ is your moment of salvation and faith, right? And they're trying to argue that that's the beginning of your faith. But what John is saying here is that if you, he's saying, if you believe Jesus is the Christ, then that's the same as you loving the father.

Which interesting, I found this to be the most interesting thing is that I think the ESV and the modern texts get this wrong. It actually says, everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God and everyone who loves the begetter or he who begat.

And so it's not the word father. There's a word father in the Greek and that's not what's used here. Father is an interpretation of the word, the begetter or he who begat. And then it says, and also loves those begotten of him or those who he had begotten.

And so the argument is, if you believe Jesus is the Christ, that's the same as you loving God, basically. Because Jesus is the one who was begotten of God. And so you love the begetter. And then if you love the begetter, you love his other children.

So here's your exhortation, you're ought to love all the other Christians. And then it says, by this, we know we love the children. So working backwards, we know we love the children if we're gonna do something.

But if we love the children, that's because we love God. And if we love God, it's because we believe Jesus is the Christ. These are all synonymous in a sense. And he says, we know we love the children of God when we love God and keep his commandments.

And then he says, for this is the love of God that we keep his commandments. Well, now you've come full circle in the commandment keeping, if regeneration doesn't precede all this. What I mean to say is that God is saying that the equivalent of loving him and loving his other children is keeping his commandments.

So if you're able to love him by keeping his commandments apart from believing in him, you've now separated out the way we get saved. Because I can't believe in Jesus and not love God at the same time.

I can't believe in Jesus and not love my brothers. So if I'm actually fulfilling the love of God by keeping his commandments, I'm now doing something that I'm unable to do apart from Christ. Does that make sense?

I felt like it got unclear.

No, no, no. I think one thing I wanna, I'm not pushing back, just to make clear, I'm not pushing back. So something to make clear is John, and really, I think I'm safe saying this. You don't find, well, maybe in Romans 8, 29 and 30, but in most places, you don't find a biblical author that you think like, okay, now I'm gonna write out the Ordo Salutis.

Paul's argument in Romans 8, 29, 30, that's pretty clear that that's what he's doing. But the whole idea is the Bible is not written as a, we kind of want the Bible to be sometimes a systematic theology book.

So I can go back, I can look in the index and I can find, okay, Ordo Salutis. All right, boom, found it. But that's just not how the Bible is written. We can have different reasons why. I mean, one reason I think is because it forces us, it forces us to engage with the text and to love it and to wrestle and to study, and not just because we are,.

That's what we want.

I mean, look, that's why I chat GBT and Grok and AI and all this stuff is, so popular, one reason so popular, we just want the answer without doing the research. Just give me the answer. And so we would be tempted to, and we still are tempted to treat the Bible that way.

However, now to absolutely back what you're saying and affirm, which you affirm that too, but affirm this. So when you read 1 John, like you just have to think about like, yeah, what's his argument? Like, what's he saying?

This is what it looks like to be born again. And his whole point, his whole thing that he's writing is sometimes, I've been guilty of this, but sometimes we use 1 John as a club, like a bludgeoning club to just beat people over the head.

When it's not actually, that's not actually, John's not using it as a club. John is using it as an encouragement to believers. He's saying, look, I'm writing to you so that you can know. So anybody that would tell you, well, you can't have assurance of salvation.

Well, you come into clear disagreement with the Holy Spirit in his use of the apostle John. Yes, you can have assurance of salvation. And John is arguing, this is what it looks like to be born again. Because by the way, that's what it means to be a Christian.

We use that redundantly. I'm a born again Christian. Well, what it means to be a Christian is you have been born again. And what does it look like to have been born again? These are all these fruits. And you said something earlier, and I do want to be clear.

You know, regeneration is not, it's not like I got regenerated on Tuesday, I believed on Thursday, and then two weeks later, God justified me. That is silly. Number one, if that's what you think where the reformed soteriology is teaching, you blatantly, you clearly misunderstand it.

It's not talking about moments in time. It's talking about there is a logical order to these things. So anyway, I've rambled there. Anything you want to say to that?

I think that we just want people to know that you can be secure. And when we argue Calvinism and Arminian things, one of the things we're really arguing about is the ability for believers to know that they're saved.

And the problem with our progressive sanctification is that every one of us, according to the scripture, will fall into sin. Whether it's gross and heinous, or whether it's what we'll call minor. But we all will fall short of God in such a way that a conscientious person who does believe they're to obey God as the result of their salvation will ultimately start to question, have I been born again?

Why am I still doing this thing I hate? Why do I do that which I don't want to do? And the Bible is written in such a way as to strike terror into the hearts of people who will sin, but also drive God's people back to him for the forgiveness that's promised in 1 John 1, 9, so that they might receive the conscience cleansing necessary to continue to walk in newness of life with the hope that, yes, I'm securing Christ, even though I will continue to let him down, for lack of a better phrase, with my performance.

So the Bible wants Christians to effectively walk around with their head held high and a cleansed conscience, knowing that they have an advocate with the Father, that's 1 John 2, and to confidently know that while they're trying to be obedient, while they're trying to obey God's commands, when they do stumble and fall, that doesn't threaten their sonship, and that God has given them evidence in their own life to assure them that they are his, even after various falls that occur.

And the Arminian position does not allow for that. It only allows for continuous free choice, basically. No confident, you cannot say confidently, I know I have eternal life, because frankly, you don't know if you'll change your mind tomorrow.

You can't say, I know that God's love is in me, because you could just push it out. Or I guess God could take it away in some systems. So I'm not an expert on all the nuances that some of these other belief systems hold to, but I am an expert, I think, in Calvinism in saying that it's the only doctrine that teaches people that they are utterly dependent upon Christ and Christ alone and that the Christ who can never fail is the one holding them fast for all eternity.

Yeah, and man, I think what you just said, too, is something else, like, I think, now, there is point to argue over this, yes, but I think if John, if the Apostle John was on Twitter and like, wait, y 'all, whoa, whoa, whoa, why are y 'all arguing about that?

Like, number one, obviously, I would say he would side with us, like, yes, this is the obvious theology undergirding my writing. But what you just said captures this whole point. He has a very pastoral concern.

And there is a case, even from our side, brother, there is a case sometimes when we can be so, with the right desire to guard sound theology, that we can guard it in such a way that we're actually missing the whole point.

And so I would encourage us to be careful of that. So argue, defend the truth, but understand the whole point, the very pastoral, I'm finding that more and more in pastoral ministry, that it's like, the Bible's a very pastoral letter, and yes, it's very firm, very hard, very weighty matters.

Of course, I don't know if I wanna call it hard or difficult truths, they shouldn't be, but they do come across to our culture, it's hard or difficult, but they're given in such a way that we would bow the knee to them, and that we would find there's no more joy than walking in the will of the Lord.

That's what we were created to do. So anyway, I'm rambling there, brother, and I've got my Mexico Zoom meeting today, and so I'm gonna have to jump off here in about two minutes, but I'll cede that time to you if there's some sort of concluding remarks you wanna make to all that.

Yeah, just, you made a great point that when we're walking in God's commands, that's when we have the most joy and satisfaction in life. It's also when we have our own personal cleansed conscience felt most enjoyably.

You know, that's in 1 John 3. 1 John handles a lot of these things. And so the reason we teach good doctrine and we actually fight for some of it is we care about the souls of the victims of the bad doctrine.

It's not just guys wanting to argue. I know there's a lot of people like that, but that's not, I hope, our attitude. And then secondly, if anybody actually was interested in the things we talked about, I am teaching through 1 John 5 in Sunday school, and you can catch all those on a podcast if you search for Michael Coughlin Sunday School, or if you go to Things Above Us, you can find links to it there.

Or you can just reach out to Alan or me online. We'd help you find it if you're interested in listening.

Well, yeah, well, amen. How could, so they could contact you there. They also, I want to mention this, we mentioned last week, but I want to mention this because this is a good project you've got going on, but abolition .ing, is that right?

Yes.

Abolition. Ing, you can go there, you can ask questions about abolitionism and seeking to stand for the lives of our pre-born neighbors in this nation and the connection between that and the gospel. And anything else you want to say about that?

No, I appreciate you letting people know about it. Hopefully it helps the church.

I appreciate you, Michael Coughlin. I'm grateful for your brother. I'm grateful for your life, your friendship. I'm grateful that you're plugged into a rural church, even if it is in Ohio, but we appreciate you nonetheless.

Thanks for joining us. Thank you guys for listening to this episode of the Rural Church Podcast. We sure hope it's helpful. If you've got questions, one way to reach out to me is Gmail, C-U-A-T-R-O-N-E-L-S-O-N at Gmail, Quattronelson at gmail .com.

We'll catch you guys next week.

Merry Christmas, everybody.

Amen.

If you really believe the church is the building, the church is the house, the church is what God's doing. This is his work. If we really believe what Ephesians says, we are the poemos, the masterpiece of God.

How are you going to respond?