The New Creation Completed
We have already described the Holy Spirit’s work in preparing and forming the natural body of Christ. That was the beginning of the new creation, the foundation of the gospel-state and church. But it was not the whole of his work. Just as he had provided and prepared the natural body of Christ, so he was to prepare his mystical body as well. By this, the work of the new creation would be completed and perfected. And what was true of him and his work in the old creation was true also in the new.
All things, in their first production, had darkness and death upon them. The earth was “without form, and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep” (Gen 1:2). Nothing had life in it, or any principle of life, or even a disposition toward it. The Spirit moved upon this prepared matter, preserving and cherishing it, and communicating to all things a principle of life by which they were animated, as we have already shown. It was no different in the new creation. Spiritual darkness and death came upon all mankind through sin. No living person had the least principle of spiritual life, or any disposition toward it. In this state of things, the Holy Spirit undertook to create a new world, new heavens and a new earth, in which righteousness would dwell. This began with his effectual communication of a new principle of spiritual life to the souls of God’s elect, who were the matter God designed for this work. He does this in their regeneration, as we will now show.
First, Scripture everywhere assigns regeneration as the proper and peculiar work of the Holy Spirit. In John 3:3–6, “Jesus answered and said unto Nicodemus, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, except a man be born again he cannot see the kingdom of God. Nicodemus saith unto him, How can a man be born when he is old? can he enter the second time into his mother’s womb and be born? Jesus answered, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.”
Nicodemus was an ancient and knowing teacher of the church of the Jews, a master in Israel, and it was he whom our blessed Savior addressed and instructed here. Considering Christ’s miracles, Nicodemus had concluded that “God was with him,” and he came to ask him about the kingdom of God. Our Savior knew that all our faith and obedience toward God, and all our acceptance with him, depend on our regeneration, our being born again. So he told Nicodemus of its necessity, which at first surprised him.
Then Jesus went on to instruct him in the nature of the work whose necessity he had just declared, describing it both by its cause and its effect. As for its cause, he told Nicodemus that it is wrought by water and the Spirit: by the Spirit as the principal efficient cause, and by water as the pledge, sign, and token of it, in the initial seal of the covenant, whose doctrine John the Baptist was then preaching among them. Or else the same thing is meant by a doubled expression, the Spirit being signified by the water as well, since he is often promised under that image.
Of this work, then, the Holy Spirit is the principal efficient cause. So the person in whom it is wrought is said to be “born of the Spirit” (John 3:8): “so is every one that is born of the Spirit.” This matches what is said in John 1:13: “Who are born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.” The natural and carnal means, blood, flesh, and the will of man, are entirely rejected here, and the whole efficient cause of the new birth is ascribed to God alone. His work fulfills whatever role, in natural generation, belongs to the will and nature of man. These two are compared, and it is from this analogy to natural generation that the Spirit’s work is called regeneration. Our Savior expresses the same likeness and contrast here: “That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit” (John 3:6).
Here we also find a further description of this work of the Holy Spirit, by its effect or product: it is spirit, a new spiritual being, creature, nature, and life, as will be explained further. Because it involves the communication of a new spiritual life, it is called a vivification or quickening, with respect to the condition all people are in before this work is done in them. This is described in Ephesians 2:1, 5, and it is the Spirit’s work alone, for “it is the Spirit that quickeneth, the flesh profiteth nothing” (John 6:63). See also (Rom 8:9–10 and Titus 3:4–6), where the same truth is declared and affirmed: “But after that the kindness and love of God our Saviour toward man appeared, not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us, by the washing of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy Spirit, which he shed on us richly through Jesus Christ our Saviour.”
What we have often mentioned appears here explicitly: the whole blessed Trinity, with each person acting distinctly in the work of our salvation. The spring and fountain of the whole lies in the kindness and love of God the Father. Scripture everywhere ascribes it to him; see John 3:16 and Ephesians 1:4–6. Whatever is done in accomplishing this work is done in pursuit of the Father’s will, purpose, and counsel, and is an effect of his love and grace. The procuring cause by which the love and kindness of God are applied to us is Jesus Christ our Savior, through the whole work of his mediation (Titus 3:6). And the immediate efficient cause, communicating the love and kindness of the Father through the mediation of the Son to us, is the Holy Spirit. He accomplishes this by renewing our natures, through the washing of regeneration, by which we are cleansed from our sins and sanctified to God.
There is no need to pile up further testimonies on this point. That the Holy Spirit is the author of our regeneration, a truth the ancients considered a compelling argument for his deity, given the greatness and dignity of the work, is granted in words at least, so far as I know, by everyone who claims any soundness in Christianity. That some others have mocked and dismissed it is the occasion for this defense of the doctrine. I do not intend here to treat the whole doctrine of regeneration in its practical bearing, as it may be drawn out by inference from Scripture according to the analogy of faith and the experience of believers; that has already been done by others. My present aim is only to confirm the fundamental principles of truth concerning those operations of the Holy Spirit that are, today, opposed with such violence and hostility. What I offer on this subject may be reduced to the following heads:
First, although the work of regeneration by the Holy Spirit was carried out under the Old Testament, even from the foundation of the world, and though the doctrine of it was recorded in Scripture, its revelation was obscure compared to the light the gospel brings to it. This is evident from our Lord’s discourse with Nicodemus on the subject. When Jesus made the doctrine plain to him, Nicodemus was surprised and fell into the amazed question, “How can these things be?” Yet our Savior’s reply shows that Nicodemus could have learned this doctrine better from Scripture than he had. “Are you,” Jesus said, “a master in Israel, and do not know these things?” In effect: Do you undertake to teach others what their state and condition are, and what their duty toward God is, yet remain ignorant yourself of so great and fundamental a doctrine, one you might have learned from Scripture?
Had that not been possible, our Savior’s reproof would have had no basis, since it is neither a crime nor a fault to be ignorant of what God has not revealed. This doctrine, then, that everyone who would enter the kingdom of God must be born again of the Holy Spirit, was contained in the writings of the Old Testament. It appears in the promises that God would circumcise the hearts of his people, take away their heart of stone, and give them a heart of flesh with his law written in it, and in other ways to be proved later.
Yet we see this doctrine was so obscurely declared that the principal masters and teachers of the people knew little or nothing of it. Some, indeed, would reduce this regeneration, if they knew themselves what they wanted it to be, or so far as their great swelling words of vanity allow us to guess their meaning, to nothing but a reformation of life according to the rules of Scripture. But Nicodemus knew the necessity of reforming one’s life well enough, had he ever read Moses or the prophets. To suppose that our Lord Jesus Christ presented him with something he already knew perfectly well, merely under a new name he had never heard, and then took the occasion to charge him with ignorance of what he in fact fully understood, is a blasphemous notion. I do not see how those who regard regeneration as no more than a metaphor for amending one’s life can free themselves from this same charge.
If that is all it is, if there is nothing more to it than, as they like to put it, becoming a new moral man (something Jews and Gentiles alike already understood), then our Lord Jesus, far from bringing greater light and clarity to the subject by what he taught about regeneration, its nature, manner, causes, and effects, would instead have cast it into greater darkness and obscurity than either Jewish teachers or Gentile philosophy ever had. The gospel does teach every moral duty with more exactness and clarity, and presses their observance on motives incomparably weightier than anything the mind of man could otherwise conceive. But if its doctrine of the new birth, of regeneration, is meant to signify nothing more than those moral duties and their practice, then it is dark and unintelligible.
If there is no secret, mysterious work of the Spirit of God in and upon the souls of men meant in the writings of the New Testament, and it means only a reformation of life and the improvement of men’s natural abilities in the exercise of moral virtue through outward means applied to their minds, then these writings must be granted more obscure than those of any other author, as some have already dared to claim of Paul’s epistles. But so long as we can get people to acknowledge that these writings are true and in some sense the word of God, we do not doubt we can show that what they mean is expressed as clearly and properly as it ought to be, and as such things are capable of being expressed.
Whatever difficulty seems to lie in them arises from the mysterious nature of what they describe, and from the weakness of our minds in grasping such things, not from any obscurity in how they are stated. This, in fact, is the heart of the dispute to which most such questions come down. Some hold that everything in Scripture is expressed with a condescension to our capacity, so that an inexpressible grandeur remains in many things beyond our comprehension. Others hold, on the contrary, that beneath grand and hyperbolic language, meaner and lower meanings are intended and are to be understood that way. Some judge the things of the gospel to be deep and mysterious while its words and expressions are plain and proper; others think its words and expressions mystical and figurative, while the things intended are ordinary and obvious to the natural reason of every man. But to return to the matter at hand.
Both regeneration and the doctrine of it existed under the Old Testament. All God’s elect, in their successive generations, were regenerated by the Spirit of God. But in the enlargement of truth and grace that came under the gospel through Jesus Christ, who brought life and immortality to light, more people than before were made partakers of this mercy, and the nature of the work itself is revealed far more clearly, evidently, and fully. Because this is the chief, inward remedy for the disease Christ came to cure and remove, the doctrine of it was among the first things he preached.
All such things before, even from the beginning of the world, lay hidden in God (Eph 3:9). Some hints of them were given in “parables and dark sayings” (Ps 78:2), in types, shadows, and ceremonies, so that the nature of the grace contained in them could not be clearly discerned. But when the great physician of our souls came, who was to heal the wound of our nature by which we “were dead in trespasses and sins,” he laid the disease itself bare and declared its full extent and the ruin we were under from it, so that we might know and be thankful for its cure. No doctrine, then, is more fully and plainly declared in the gospel than this, our regeneration by the effectual and ineffable working of the Holy Spirit. And it is a fruit of the depravity of our nature that, against the full light and evidence of this now clearly revealed truth, this great and holy work is opposed and despised.
Few, indeed, have yet had the boldness to deny it outright in plain words. But many follow the path of the man who first undertook to undermine it in the church of God: Pelagius. His chief device, which he used in introducing his heresy, was to cloud his intentions in vague and ambiguous language, the very words and phrases some among us now take up. For a long time, when justly charged with his sacrilegious errors, Pelagius made no defense of them but instead accused his opponents of misrepresenting his mind and misunderstanding his words. By this means he got himself acquitted in the judgment of some less experienced in the cunning tactics of those who lie in wait to deceive, and was formally cleared by an assembly of bishops.
In all likelihood he would soon have infected the whole church with the poison of these opinions, which proud and corrupted human nature is so ready to receive and embrace, had God not raised up a few holy and learned men, Augustine chief among them, to expose his frauds, rebut his slanders, and demolish his sophistries. This they did with tireless effort and good success. Yet these tares, once sown by the enemy, found such fertile ground in the darkened minds and proud hearts of men that they have never been fully rooted out from that day to this. The same bitter root has continued to spring up to the corruption of many, though various new colors have since been given to its leaves and fruit.
And though those who today take up Pelagius’s cause do not match him in learning, diligence, or any appearance of piety and devotion, they exactly imitate him in expressing their views in cloudy, ambiguous language, capable of various readings until closely examined, and in reproaching, as he did, those who oppose them for misrepresenting their views, whenever it suits their purpose to do so, as the scurrilous, clamorous writings of S. P. sufficiently show.
Second, regeneration by the Holy Spirit is the same work, in kind, wrought by the same power of the Spirit in everyone who is regenerate, or ever was, or ever will be, from the beginning of the world to its end. There is great variety in how the outward means are applied, means the Holy Spirit is pleased to use and make effectual toward this great work. The ways and manner of it cannot be reduced to any fixed order, for the Spirit works how and when he pleases, following only the rule of his own will and wisdom. Mostly, God uses the preaching of the word, which is therefore called an “engrafted word, which is able to save your souls” (Jas 1:21), and the incorruptible seed by which we are born again (1 Pet 1:23).
Sometimes it is worked without the word, as in all who are regenerate before they come to the use of reason, or in infancy. Sometimes people are called, and so regenerated, in an extraordinary manner, as Paul was; but mostly it happens through ordinary means, instituted, blessed, and sanctified by God for that purpose. There is also great variety in how people perceive and understand the work in themselves. In itself it is secret and hidden, and cannot be discovered except through its causes and effects. As it is written: “the wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, nor whither it goeth; so is every one that is born of the Spirit” (John 3:8).
In the minds and consciences of some, this is made known by unmistakable signs. Paul knew that Christ was formed and revealed in himself (Gal 1:16). So he declared that whoever is in Christ Jesus “is a new creature” (2 Cor 5:17), that is, is born again, whether or not they know it of themselves. Many remain in the dark about their own condition their whole lives, for they “fear the Lord, and obey the voice of his servant” (Christ Jesus), “and yet walk in darkness and have no light” (Isa 50:10). They are “children of light” (Luke 16:8; John 12:36; Eph 5:8; 1 Thess 5:5) and yet “walk in darkness and have no light.” These expressions have been rightly used by some, and mocked and blasphemed by others more recently.
There is also great variety in how this work is carried on toward perfection, in the growth of the new creature, or the increase of grace implanted in our nature by it. Some, through the Spirit’s supplies, make great and speedy progress toward perfection; others thrive slowly and bear little fruit. The causes of this are not to be listed here. But despite all these differences, in prior disposition, in the manner of applying outward means (ordinary or extraordinary), and in the resulting fruit, the work itself, in its own nature, is one and the same kind.
The elect of God were not regenerated one way, by one kind of operation of the Holy Spirit, under the Old Testament, and those under the New Testament another way. Those who were miraculously converted, as Paul was, or who received miraculous gifts at their conversion, as many did in the early church, were regenerated by no other internal working of the Holy Spirit than anyone today who truly receives this grace and privilege. Nor were those visible miraculous operations of the Holy Spirit any part of the work of regeneration itself, nor did they necessarily belong to it. Many were subjects of them and received miraculous gifts through them who were never regenerate, and many were regenerate who never received them.
It is a mark of the deepest ignorance of these things to claim that in the work of regeneration the Holy Spirit once worked miraculously, through outward visible operations, but now works only in a human and rational way, leading our understanding by the rules of reason, unless one means only the external mode and sign of his operation. All who ever were or ever will be regenerate are regenerate by the same kind of operation and the same effect of the Holy Spirit on the faculties of their souls. This will be further shown if we consider the following.
1. The condition of all people as unregenerate is absolutely the same. No one is by nature more unregenerate than another. All people, since the fall and the corruption of our nature by sin, are in the same state before God. They are all equally alienated from him and all equally under his curse (Ps 51:5; John 3:5, 36; Rom 3:19; Rom 5:15–18; Eph 2:3; Titus 3:3–4). There are degrees of wickedness among the unregenerate, but there is no difference in state or condition between them; all are equally unregenerate. Likewise, among the regenerate there are different degrees of holiness and righteousness, one perhaps far surpassing another, yet there is no difference of state or condition between them; all are equally regenerate. Some may be further along in preparation for the work itself, and thus nearer to that state than others, but the state itself admits no such degrees.
Now, whatever work rescues and transfers people out of the same state and condition must be the same in kind and nature for all. Whatever gives the formal reason for the change of their state, their translation from death to life, must be the same in all. If you can point to any person, from the foundation of the world, who was not equally born in sin and by nature dead in trespasses and sins as all others (the man Christ Jesus alone excepted), then I would grant that he might have a different kind of regeneration than the rest. But I know that such a man would need no regeneration at all.
2. The state into which people are brought by regeneration is the same. Nor is it, in its essence or nature, capable of degrees, such that one person could be more regenerate than another. Everyone born of God is equally so, though one may appear more beautiful than another, having the image of his heavenly Father more evidently impressed on him, though not more truly. People may be more or less holy, more or less sanctified, but they cannot be more or less regenerate. All children born into the world are equally born, though some quickly outpace others in the perfections and accomplishments of nature. And all born of God are equally so, though some rapidly outstrip others in the accomplishments and perfections of grace. There has therefore never been more than one kind of regeneration in this world; its essential form is specifically the same in all.
3. The efficient cause of this work, the grace and power by which it is wrought, along with the internal manner of the communication of that grace, are the same, as will be shown later. To this standard, then, all must come. People may carry themselves proudly and despise this whole work of the Spirit of God, or set up some invention of their own in its place, but whether they wish it or not, they must be tested by it. No less depends on their share in it than their admission into the kingdom of God. Whatever people claim, the real reason anyone despises the new birth is that they hate a new life. Whoever cannot bear to live to God will just as little bear to hear of being born of God. But we will inquire from Scripture what we are taught concerning it, declaring first what it is not, exposing the things that falsely claim to be it, and then what it truly is.
First, regeneration does not consist in participating in the ordinance of baptism and professing the doctrine of repentance. This is all that some will grant it, to the utter rejection and overthrow of the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. The dispute here is not whether the ordinances of the gospel, such as baptism, actually communicate internal grace to those who are duly made partakers of them in outward form, whether by the mere working of the rite itself, as the Papists say, or as a federal means of conveying the grace they signify and pledge. The question is whether the outward reception of the ordinance, joined with a profession of repentance in adults, is the whole of what is called regeneration.
The vanity of this presumptuous folly, which destroys all the grace of the gospel and was invented to give men cover for their sins while hiding from them the necessity of being born again and turning to God, will be laid open when we describe the nature of the work itself. For now, the following reasons will serve to clear it out of our way.
1. Regeneration does not consist in things that are merely outward signs and tokens of it, or at most instituted means of effecting it. The nature of a thing is distinct from its means, evidences, or pledges. But baptism, along with the profession that accompanies it, is only such a sign or means, as all who have written on the nature of that sacrament acknowledge.
2. The apostle Peter states this case plainly: “In answer whereunto, even baptism doth also now save us; not the putting away of the filth of the flesh, but the answer of a good conscience towards God, by the resurrection of Jesus Christ” (1 Pet 3:21). The outward administration of this ordinance, considered materially, reaches no further than the washing away of the filth of the flesh, but it signifies more than that. It denotes the answering pledge of a good conscience toward God through the resurrection of Christ from the dead, or a conscience “purged from dead works to serve the living God” (Heb 9:14), and quickened by the power of his resurrection to holy obedience (see Romans 6:3–7).
3. The apostle Paul plainly distinguishes between the outward ordinances, with what belongs to a due participation of them, and the work of regeneration itself: “In Jesus Christ neither circumcision availeth any thing, nor uncircumcision availeth any thing, but a new creature” (Gal 6:15). By circumcision the whole system of Mosaic ordinances is meant, and the state of uncircumcision, as it then stood among professing Gentiles, presupposed participation in all the ordinances of the gospel. Yet Paul distinguishes the new creation from all of them, as something they might lack even while keeping those ordinances, and if they lacked it, the ordinances would not avail in Christ Jesus.
4. If baptism and profession were regeneration, then everyone duly baptized who professes the doctrine of repentance for the forgiveness of sins would necessarily be regenerate. But we know this is not so. Simon the magician, for instance, was rightly and duly baptized, having been baptized by Philip the evangelist, which he could not have been without professing faith and repentance; accordingly it is said that “he believed” (Acts 8:13), that is, he professed his faith in the gospel. Yet he was not regenerate, for at that very time he had no part or lot in that matter. His heart was not right in the sight of God, but was in the “gall of bitterness, and bond of iniquity” (verses 21, 23), which is no description of a person newly regenerate and born again.
The cabbalistic Jews, groping in darkness after old notions of truth handed down from their forefathers, say that at the very instant a man becomes “a proselyte of righteousness,” a new soul comes into him from heaven, and his old pagan soul vanishes or is taken away. What they mean, or how they choose to express it, is the introduction of a new spiritual principle, meant to be to the soul what the soul is to the body naturally. This is their way of expressing the repeated promise of taking away the “heart of stone” and giving a heart of flesh in its place.
Second, regeneration does not consist in a moral reformation of life and conduct. Suppose such a reformation reaches every known area of life. Suppose a man changes from sensuality to temperance, from theft to righteousness, from pride and unruly passion to humility and moderation, along with every similar change we might imagine or that the strictest moralists prescribe. Suppose this change is thorough, exact, and of great use in the world. Suppose further that the man was brought to it through the preaching of the gospel, so that he escaped “the pollutions that are in the world through lust” by “the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ,” or through the guidance of gospel doctrine.
Even all this, added to baptism and a profession of faith and repentance, is not regeneration, nor do these things add up to it. I have stated this claim more strongly than some among us seem willing to venture, given their confused and sophistical talk about morality, in which they make it the same as grace. Whatever actual righteousness these things may involve, they do not amount to an inherent, habitual righteousness. Whoever denies that inherent righteousness overthrows the gospel and the entire work of the Spirit of God and the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ.
But we must pause here. Our claim is not only denied by some but mocked. And that is not all: whoever maintains it is treated as an enemy of morality, righteousness, and reformation of life. All virtue, they say, is thereby excluded, to make room for some imaginary godliness. Whether we oppose or exclude moral virtue through the doctrine of regeneration, or through any other doctrine, God and Christ will judge and declare in due time. If confessing the truth suited their interests, we might even leave the decision of this question to their own consciences. But since we cannot safely commit anything to that court without better assurance that it is free from corrupt principles and prejudice, we will for now leave the whole world to judge our doctrine concerning virtue and morality by its fruits, compared with the fruits of those who deny it.
Meanwhile we affirm that we intend nothing against virtue and morality, only to improve them by setting them on their proper foundation, grafting them into the one stock on which alone they can grow and thrive to the glory of God and the good of human souls. We will not be moved from this purpose by the noisy or slanderous outcries of ignorant or reckless people. As for the claim we have set down, I ask that those who despise and reproach it try to answer the arguments that follow in its support, along with the further arguments we will bring when we describe the nature of the work of regeneration itself, and that they do so on grounds that do not destroy Christian religion or introduce atheism, before they grow too confident of success.
If regeneration requires the infusion of a new, real, spiritual principle into the soul and its faculties, a principle of spiritual life, light, holiness, and righteousness, fitted and suited to destroy or expel a contrary, inborn, habitual principle of sin and enmity against God, enabling every act of holy obedience and therefore prior in nature to them, then regeneration does not consist merely in a reformation of life and moral virtue, however exact or thorough. Three things should be observed to clarify this claim before we come to prove and confirm it.
1. This reformation of life, which we say is not regeneration, and in which regeneration does not consist, is nonetheless a necessary duty, required of all men without exception. We take it here to mean the whole course of actual obedience to God according to the gospel. Those who press it as a substitute for regeneration, or as what regeneration itself consists in, describe it in a way that leaves it foreign to true gospel obedience, so that it contains not one duty acceptable to God, as will be shown later. But in our present inquiry I take it for the whole course of duties prescribed to us in obedience toward God.
2. The principle described above (the passive work of regeneration, wrought in us) always certainly and infallibly produces the reformation of life at issue. In some it works more completely, in others more imperfectly, but in all sincerely. The same grace, one in nature and kind, is given to different people in different degrees, and is used and turned to account by them with more or less care and diligence. In adults, then, the principle and its fruit are inseparable.
3. So the real difference comes to this: we hold that regeneration consists “in a spiritual renovation of our nature.” Our modern Socinians hold instead that it consists “in a moral reformation of life.” We grant that this spiritual renovation of nature will infallibly produce a moral reformation of life. If they will likewise grant that the moral reformation of life proceeds from a spiritual renovation of our nature, the dispute is over. This is what the ancients meant by first receiving the Holy Spirit, and then all his graces with him.
But if they mean only to speak ambiguously, loosely, and unscripturally, confusing effects with causes, habits with actions, faculties or powers with occasional acts, infused principles with acquired habits, the spiritual with the moral, grace with nature, merely to find occasion for railing at others, I will not contend with them further. Grant only that a new spiritual principle, an infused habit of grace, gracious ability, is required for regeneration, and is the product or work of the Spirit in it, so that what is “born of the Spirit” is spirit, and this part of the nature of the work is sufficiently established. Scripture testifies to this abundantly.
“If any man be in Christ he is a new creature” (2 Cor 5:17). This new creature is what is meant, what was described above: what, being born of the Spirit, is spirit. It is produced in the souls of men by a creating act of God’s power, or else it is no creature at all. It is superadded to the essential faculties of our souls, or else it is no new creature, for whatever power, disposition, ability, or inclination toward God or moral action exists in the soul by nature belongs to the old creation, not the new. It must be something with its own being and subsistence in the soul, or it can be neither new nor a creature. Paul opposes it to all outward privileges (Gal 5:6; Gal 6:15). That its production is likewise a creating act of almighty power, Scripture testifies (Ps 51:10; Eph 2:10). This can denote nothing but a new spiritual principle or nature worked in us by the Spirit of God.
Some say, no, a new creature is no more than a changed man. True, but that change is internal too, in the purposes, designs, and inclinations of the mind. But is it a real infusion of a new principle of spiritual life and holiness? No, they say, it denotes no more than a new course of conduct; the expression is merely metaphorical. A new creature, on this view, is simply a moral man who has changed his way of life. But if a man was always moral, if he was never given to any vicious course, as with the young man in Matthew 19:18–20, then by this reasoning he was always a new creature.
This is fine gospel indeed, overthrowing at a stroke both original sin and the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. This doctrine was certainly not learned from the fathers some men like to boast of. It is far more objectionable than anything taught even by Pelagius himself, who actually ascribed more to grace than these men do, though he too denied that a new principle of grace is created in us prior to acts of obedience. Turning all Scripture’s expressions of spiritual things into mere metaphors is a way of turning the whole gospel into fable, or at least making it the most obscure and improper way of teaching truth that has ever been devised.
This new creature, then, does not consist in a new course of actions, but in renewed faculties, with new disposition, power, and ability toward them. So it is called the divine nature: “He hath given unto us exceeding great and precious promises, that by these you might be partakers of the divine nature” (2 Pet 1:4). This divine nature is not the nature of God himself, of which we are not subjectively partakers in our own persons. Yet it is a nature, a principle of operation, and a divine or spiritual one: namely, a habitual holy principle worked in us by God, bearing his image. By these promises, then, we are made partakers of a divine, supernatural principle of spiritual action and operation, which is exactly what we are arguing for.
The whole of what we mean is set out in Ephesians 4:22–24: “Put off, concerning the former conversation, the old man, which is corrupt, according to deceitful lusts; and be renewed in the spirit of your mind; and put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness.” This describes the work of regeneration, both its foundation and its progress.
1.) The foundation of the whole is laid in our being “renewed in the spirit of our mind,” which the same apostle elsewhere calls being “transformed in the renewing of our minds” (Rom 12:2). That this consists in receiving a new, saving, supernatural light, enabling and guiding the mind in spiritual action, will be shown later. In this consists our “renewal in knowledge, after the image of him who created us” (Col 3:10).
2.) The principle itself, infused and created in us, is called the “new man” (verse 24), the same new creature mentioned before. It is called the “new man” because it consists in the universal change of the whole soul, as the principle of all spiritual and moral action. (a) It is opposed to the “old man” (verse 23): “put off the old man and put on the new man” (verses 22, 24). This old man is the corruption of our nature, considered as the principle of all religious, spiritual, and moral action, as is plain from Romans 6:6. It is not a corrupt way of life but the principle and root of it, distinguished both from men’s conduct and from the corrupt lusts exercised in it. (b) It is called the new man because it is the effect and product of God’s creating power, brought about by “a new creation” (see Ephesians 1:18; Colossians 2:12–13; 2 Thessalonians 1:11), and is here said to be “created after God” (verse 24).
Now the object of a creating act comes into being in an instant. Whatever preparations or dispositions precede it, the bringing forth of a new form and being by creation happens at once. This, therefore, cannot consist merely in a reformation of life. So we are said to be “the workmanship of God, created in Christ Jesus unto good works” (Eph 2:10). There is a work of God in us preceding all our good works toward him, for before we can perform any of them, in the order of nature, we must first be his workmanship, created and spiritually enabled for their performance.
Again, this new man, by which we are born again, is said to be created in righteousness and true holiness. That this refers to man as created in innocence, made in the image of God, I suppose no one will deny. It is expressed also in Colossians 3:10: “You have put on the new man, which is renewed in knowledge, after the image of him that created him.” Whatever the image of God consisted in for the first man, the same corresponds to this new man now created by God. This did not consist in a reformation of life, nor even in a course of virtuous actions, for Adam was created in the image of God before he had done any good thing at all, or was even capable of doing so.
Rather, this image of God consisted chiefly, as I have shown elsewhere, in the uprightness, rectitude, and ability of his whole soul, mind, will, and affections, toward the obedience God required of him. He was endowed with this before any voluntary actions by which he was to live to God. Such, then, must be our regeneration, the creation of this new man in us. It is the begetting, infusing, and creating of a new saving principle of spiritual life, light, and power in the soul, prior in order of nature to true evangelical reformation of life, enabling us toward it according to the mind of God.
This agrees with our Savior’s words: “A good tree bringeth not forth corrupt fruit, neither doth a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit” (Luke 6:43), compared with (Matt 7:18). The fruit follows the nature of the tree, and there is no way to change the nature of the fruit except by changing the nature of the tree that produces it. All amendment of life in reformation is only fruit (Matt 3:10). The changing of our nature comes before this. Scripture consistently distinguishes between the grace of regeneration, which it declares to be an immediate supernatural work of God in us and upon us, and all the obedience, holiness, righteousness, virtue, or whatever is good in us, that follows as its consequence and effect.
God has declared this expressly in his covenant (Ezek 36:25–27; Jer 31:33; Jer 32:39–40). God’s method of proceeding with us in his covenant is that he first washes and cleanses our natures, takes away the heart of stone, gives a heart of flesh, writes his law in our hearts, and puts his Spirit in us. This, as will be shown, is what the grace of regeneration consists in. The effect and consequence of it is that we walk in his statutes, keep his judgments and do them, that is, reform our lives and yield holy obedience to God. So these things are distinguished as causes and effects. See, to the same purpose, (Rom 6:3–6; Col 3:1, 5; Eph 2:10; Eph 4:23–25).
I insist on this still, on the assumption that by “reformation of life” is meant all actual obedience. As for that kind of life properly called a moral course of life, opposed to open debauchery and unrighteousness but not proceeding from an internal principle of saving grace, it is so far from being regeneration or grace that it has no acceptance with God at all, whatever use or reputation it may have in the world.
And further, this work is described as consisting in the sanctification of the whole spirit, soul, and body (1 Thess 5:23). If this is what some mean by reformation of life and moral virtue, they must win great esteem for their clarity in teaching spiritual things. Who would not admire them for such a definition of morality, namely that it is the sanctification of the whole spirit, soul, and body of a believer by the Holy Spirit? But not to dwell longer on this, there is no description in Scripture of the work of regeneration, in its nature, causes, or effects, no name given to it, no promise made of it, nothing said of the ways, means, or power by which it is worked, that is consistent with this bold Pelagian invention, which destroys the grace of Jesus Christ.
The source of this notion, that regeneration consists in moral reformation of life, arises from a denial of original sin, or of an inherent, habitual corruption of nature. The teachers of this persuasion tell us that whatever vice or defilement is in us comes only from a habit of sinning, and their view of this shapes their opinions about regeneration. If man is not originally corrupted and polluted, if his nature is not depraved, if it is not possessed by and under the power of evil dispositions and inclinations, then he plainly needs no inward spiritual renewal. It is enough for such a person, by a change of life, to renounce a habit of sinning and reform his conduct according to the gospel, which he has power in himself to do.
But as has been shown in part already, and will be fully proved later with God’s help, in our regeneration the native ignorance, darkness, and blindness of our minds are dispelled, and saving, spiritual light is brought in by the power of God’s grace. The corruption and stubbornness of our wills are removed, and a new principle of spiritual life and righteousness is given to them. The disorder and rebellion of our affections are cured by the infusion of the love of God into our souls. So this corrupt notion, directly opposed to the teaching of Scripture, the faith of the ancient church, and the experience of all sincere believers, has recently been supported among us by nothing but ignorance and ready overconfidence.
Third, the work of the Holy Spirit in regeneration does not consist in enthusiastic raptures, ecstasies, voices, or anything of that kind. Perhaps some deluded persons have claimed or imagined such things. But it is false and unjust to charge this on those who maintain the powerful, effective work of the Holy Spirit in our regeneration. Some are prone to make this charge, and I do not know whether it shows more of their ignorance or their malice, but nothing is more common with them. Everyone they dissent from in this matter, they say, so far as these accusers know what they are talking about, teaches people to look after enthusiastic inspirations or unaccountable raptures, and to regard these as conversion to God, even while living in neglect of holiness and righteous conduct.
My answer is: if there are such people, we do not doubt that, without their repentance, God’s wrath will come upon them as upon other children of disobedience. Yet meanwhile we cannot but call aloud for those others to show their own diligence in attending to these things, those who, as far as I can tell, praise the names of virtue and righteousness in opposition to the grace of Jesus Christ and the holiness that is its fruit. As for the accusation now under consideration, it is, as applied, nothing but slander and false accusation. The writings and preaching of those who have labored most diligently to explain the work of the Holy Spirit in our regeneration will testify to this on the great day of the Lord. So, regarding this negative point, we may observe three things.
1. The Holy Spirit in this work ordinarily exercises his power through the use of means. He also works on people in a way suited to their natures, affecting and working on the faculties of their souls, their minds, wills, and affections, as is fitting to each. He does not seize them with involuntary raptures, using their faculties and powers the way an evil spirit wrenches the bodies of those it possesses. His whole work can therefore be rationally accounted for by those who believe Scripture and have received the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive.
The formal working of the Spirit, in putting forth the exceeding greatness of his power in quickening us, which the ancient church constantly called his inspiration of grace, both in private writings and in the canons of councils, can no more be fully understood by us than any other creating act of divine power. As we hear the wind but do not know where it comes from or where it goes, so it is with everyone born of God. Yet two things are certain here.
1.) He works in no other way, and by no other means, than what is determined and declared in the word. By that word, therefore, everything that really belongs, or claims to belong, to this work of regeneration must be tried and examined.
2.) He acts on none of the faculties of our souls contrary to their nature, and forces none of them, but works in them and through them in a way suited to their nature. Being more intimate to them, as Augustine says, than they are to themselves, he produces the effect he intends with almighty ease.
This great work, then, does not consist, in whole or in part, in raptures, ecstasies, visions, or enthusiastic inspirations, but in the effect of the power of the Spirit of God on the souls of men, according to his word, both law and gospel. Those who charge these things on those who have declared and preached it according to Scripture likely do so to justify their own hatred of them and of the work itself.
2. Where, because of mental distempers, disordered imagination, or long-continued distressing fears and sorrows under such preparatory works of the Spirit, which sometimes cut people to the heart with a sense of their sin and lost condition, some fall into imagining something extraordinary of the kind mentioned above, this is dangerous to their souls unless it is quickly and strictly brought to the test of Scripture and discarded. It is never of any solid use or benefit. Such impressions are for the most part either the products of distempered minds and disturbed imaginations, or delusions of Satan disguising himself as an angel of light, and the doctrine of regeneration should not be blamed for them.
3. Yet I must say that it has often happened that many who were truly made partakers of this gracious work of the Holy Spirit have been regarded by a world that does not know them as mad, enthusiastic, and fanatical. So the captains of the army regarded the prophet who came to anoint Jehu (2 Kgs 9:11). And the family of our Savior, when he began to preach the gospel, said he was “beside himself,” or ecstatic (Mark 3:21), and went out to restrain him. So Festus judged Paul (Acts 26:24–25). And the author of the Book of Wisdom tells us what some will confess when it is too late to help them (Wisdom 5:3–5): “They shall say, crying out, because of the trouble of their minds, This is he whom we accounted a scorn, and a common reproach; we fools esteemed his life madness, and his latter end to have been shameful; but how is he reckoned among the sons of God, and his lot is among the holy ones.”
From what has been said, the following also appears.
Fourth, those who preach the gospel, and all to whom the word is dispensed, should diligently inquire into the work of the Spirit of God in regenerating the souls of men. Ministers have a special reason to attend to this duty, since the Spirit of God uses and employs them in the work itself, making them instrumental in bringing about this new birth and life. So the apostle Paul calls himself the father of those converted to God, or regenerated, through the word of his ministry: “Though you have ten thousand instructors in Christ, yet have you not many fathers, for in Christ Jesus I have begotten you through the gospel” (1 Cor 4:15). He was used in the ministry of the word for their regeneration, and so was their spiritual father, and he alone, though the work was afterward carried on by others.
And if a man is a father in the gospel to no more than those actually converted to God by his own personal ministry, then it will do no one any good, one day, to have claimed that title where it had no foundation in the effectual success of that work. So, speaking of Onesimus, whom he converted in prison, Paul calls him “his son whom he had begotten in his bonds” (Phlm 1:10). And he declared this to have been prescribed to him as the chief end of his ministry, in the commission he received for preaching the gospel (Acts 26:17–18): Christ said to him, “I send thee unto the Gentiles to open their eyes, to turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God,” which describes exactly the work now under consideration. This is the chief end of our ministry as well.
Certainly it is the duty of ministers to understand, as far as they are able, the work in which they are employed, so that they do not work in the dark or fight uncertainly, like men beating the air. They ought diligently to inquire into what Scripture has revealed about this work: its nature, the manner of its operation, its causes, effects, fruits, and evidences. To be spiritually skilled in this is one of the chief qualifications for the work of the ministry; without it, ministers will never rightly divide the word or show themselves workmen who need not be ashamed.
Yet it is scarcely believable with what rage and perversity of spirit, with what scornful language, this whole work is slandered and held up to contempt. Those who have labored in it are said “to prescribe long and tedious trains of conversion, to set down nice and subtle processes of regeneration, to fill people’s heads with innumerable swarms of superstitious fears and scruples about the due degrees of godly sorrow, and the certain symptoms of a thorough humiliation” (pp. 306, 307). If particular persons could be charged with error in these matters, or with prescribing rules about conversion and regeneration not warranted by the word of truth, it would not be amiss to point that out and refute it. But the plain intention of such expressions is to cast reproach on the work of God itself.
I must say plainly that I believe this decline from the truth and power of the Christian religion, this ignorance of the chief doctrines of the gospel, and this scorn cast on the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ in such language, by men who profess themselves not only ministers but ministers of higher than ordinary rank, will prove sadly ominous for the whole state of the reformed church among us, unless it is soon checked and corrected. But what I affirm at present on this matter is:
1. It is a duty indispensably laid on all ministers of the gospel to acquaint themselves thoroughly with the nature of this work, so that they may cooperate with the will of God and the grace of the Spirit in bringing it about and accomplishing it in the souls of those to whom they preach the word. Without some real knowledge of this, they cannot rightly discharge any part of their duty and office. If all who hear them are born dead in trespasses and sins, and if ministers are appointed by God to be instruments of their regeneration, it is a madness they will one day have to answer for, to neglect a careful inquiry into the nature of this work and the means by which it is brought about. Ignorance or negligence here, together with a lack of personal experience of the power of this work in their own souls, is one great cause of the lifeless and unprofitable ministry found among us.
2. It is likewise the duty of all who hear the word preached to inquire into this work as well. It is to such people that the apostle speaks: “Examine yourselves, whether you be in the faith; prove your own selves. Know ye not your own selves, how that Jesus Christ is in you, except ye be reprobates?” (2 Cor 13:5). It concerns every individual Christian, every professor of the Christian religion, to test and examine themselves as to what work of the Spirit of God has occurred in their hearts. No one will discourage them from this except those who intend to blind them to their own destruction.
1.) The doctrine of this work is revealed and taught to us: “The secret things belong unto the LORD our God, but those things which are revealed belong unto us and to our children for ever, that we may do all the words of this law” (Deut 29:29). We are not speaking here of idle curiosity about hidden things or the secret, veiled actions of the Holy Spirit, but only of an honest effort to search into and grasp the doctrine concerning this work, for the very purpose of understanding it.
2.) Having a right grasp of the nature of this work, and of our own stake in it, matters so much for all our duties and all our comfort that neglecting to inquire into either can only be called the greatest folly and madness.
3.) We may add to this the danger of being deceived in this matter, which is the hinge on which our eternal state and condition entirely turns. It is certain that very many in the world deceive themselves here, for they plainly live under one of two ruinous mistakes: either that people may go to heaven, or enter the kingdom of God, without being “born again,” contrary to what our Savior said in John 3:3; or that people may be “born again” and yet live in sin, contrary to (1 John 3:9).
