[BBC List] chicken or the egg?

[Mike Abendroth]

UNDERSTANDING THE TIMES

Which Came First? Faith or Regeneration

July 20, 2005

 

Dr. J. Ligon Duncan III

 

Put on your thinking caps!   Let me ask you a question.   What do you think:
must a person believe in order to be born again, or must one be born again
in order to believe?   To restate the question in theological terms, does
faith precede regeneration, or does regeneration precede faith? To put it
even more precisely, is faith the activity of a regenerated heart, or is it
the activity by which we receive regeneration?

        Now, why, some of you may be wondering, would anyone want to ask
such an abstract, impractical, and frankly, boring question?   Well, I trust
that I can offer a convincing reply.   Indeed, there are at least three
reasons why this is an issue of the utmost importance for faithful
Christians to understand, and about which we ought to have a biblical view.

        To begin with, this issue involves the heart of the good news and
the grace of God.   One’s answer to this question necessarily reflects one’s
understanding of the whole of the gospel message. For instance, if you say
that belief must precede the new birth, then you must also say (1) that all
men are not really spiritually dead before regeneration; (2) that saving
faith is not a gift of God; (3) that the natural man does accept the things
of the Spirit; (4) that an unbeliever can believe at any time by his own
power, apart from God’s regeneration; and, (5) that men can come to Christ
without the Father drawing them.   

        Now, these are serious contentions, to say the least.   Moreover,
there is a real danger of losing sight of vital biblical truth in our
generation if we do not come to grips with this question.   Two of the great
emphases bequeathed to evangelical Christians from the sixteenth century
reformers by our Lutheran and Calvinist forebears, in their Herculean labor
to recover the biblical gospel, are the inability of man and the sovereign
grace of God in salvation.   These biblical doctrines are compromised by the
assertion that faith precedes regeneration.

        Nevertheless, it would not be unfair to say that the majority of
evangelical pulpits preach precisely that today.

        Finally, far from being an abstract or impractical question, this
question has direct impact on matters of daily Christian living, like
assurance of salvation and an understanding of the magnitude of God’s grace.
Consider the two following scenarios.

        A woman approaches her minister after his Sunday morning sermon
entitled “What It Really Means to Have Faith in Christ.”   She is a faithful
church member, she loves the Lord, she reads the word, she prays regularly,
but she is racked with worries over assurance. She fears that her faith may
have been misdirected when she committed herself to Christ several years
before.   “I know so much more now about what it means to follow Jesus,” she
explains to her pastor.   “I wonder if I knew enough then to be born again.
I wonder if I was totally sincere,” she continues. “What if my faith was
imperfect when I first believed?   What if my motives were flawed?   Pastor,
how full does faith have to be before God gives the gift of the new birth?”

        Then another scenario several years ago after a college Bible study
on the effects of sin, a Bible student at one of the local state
universities approaches his group leader, Ed, with a question.   “Tonight,
Ed, you said that the Bible teaches that people are spiritually dead because
of sin, right?”   “Yes,” his teacher responded. Bob goes on, “And we saw
that spiritual death is always accompanied by unbelief, didn’t we?”   “Yes,”
Ed answers a second time.   Then Bob queries again, “Well, then, how can
anyone believe in Christ for salvation if everyone is spiritually dead?
Where does the ability to believe come from?”

        Now these two very different sorts of questions are connected to a
proper understanding of the relationship between regeneration (the new
birth) and faith.   

        A biblical view of this issue will, on the one hand, aid this woman
in her search for assurance, and on the other hand lead the student to a
deeper appreciation of how far God goes to save helpless sinners.

        There are many well-meaning evangelicals today who are quite adamant
in their assertion that faith precedes regeneration, and it would not be
difficult to multiply examples. For instance, one theologian recently
insisted that God cannot (and, to say the same thing, God will not)
regenerate a heart that will not admit him.   More often, though, we hear it
put positively: any person who is willing to trust in Christ as his personal
Savior and Lord can receive the new birth.

        Now behind these positions lie three presuppositions:

        First, that the natural man is not spiritually dead in sin. Though
he is at enmity with God and a slave to sin, and morally and spiritually
blind, this view says he is not so dead in sin that he cannot believe in God
for salvation.   That is, this view says that all men are capable of
ordinary initial saving faith, and they do not need to be regenerated to
exercise it.

        Second, this view believes that regeneration is God’s gift in
response to man’s faith, but that the faith itself is not a gift.   Jesus,
salvation, the gospel, grace, the Holy Spirit, and regeneration—yes, these
are gifts of God. But the initial personal faith of the believer is not a
gift. God gives us the new birth when and only when we first choose to be
reborn.   Until we believe, God does nothing and can do nothing to bring us
to faith in Him.   He loves us because we first loved Him, says this view.

        Third, this view says it would be unfair of God to require faith of
those who are unable to believe; or, it would be unfair of God to regenerate
those who were unwilling; to teach that men are spiritually dead and unable
to believe, and also that they must believe, this view says, makes no sense.
It would be unjust for God to regenerate some but not others.   The person
who holds this view thinks that divine regeneration prior to faith is
unfair.

        But however pious or well-intentioned are such views, they are
actually dangerous to the believer’s spiritual life, first and foremost
because they distort and contradict clear biblical teaching, and they place
human reason over the expressed teaching of Scripture.   Furthermore, a
faith before regeneration view entails certain unavoidable consequences.   

        First, it robs glory from God by teaching that the ultimate ground
of our salvation, that which distinguishes us from the lost, is our unaided
free choice rather than the grace of God. It tends to build up the pride of
a converted sinner: “I chose God,” someone will boast, “and was reborn as
the result.”   In other words, God loved me savingly, but only in response
to what I did. I chose God; the unconverted person did not; and, hence, my
choice is the difference between us. God could not save me without my
unaided choice of Him.”

        And thirdly, it robs assurance from the believer.   He or she begins
to question the first motions of the heart towards God: were they really
sincere, or flawed?   Did I have enough faith? Was it misdirected?   How can
I know that my initial faith was good enough to warrant regeneration?

        Now, whatever the current popular view is, God’s word clearly
teaches that regeneration is prior to faith, not that the new birth takes
place apart in time from the exercise of faith in Christ; no, that’s not
what we’re saying. Those things come together in time.   Theologians would
say they are concomitant: faith always accompanies regeneration, but
regeneration is prior to faith in production; that is, a sinner believes in
Christ because God has regenerated him, not vice versa. 

        The reasons for this are simple and biblical.   

        First, the Bible teaches that all men are spiritually dead and thus
unable to believe. All are under sin and none has the fear of God.   In
fact, there is no one who seeks God. Romans 8:7, 8 makes very clear the
spiritual condition of man before regeneration: those who are in the flesh
are hostile towards God, cannot please God, and are not even able to obey
the law of God.   Jesus Himself insists that men are slaves to sin.

        Furthermore, Paul and Jesus both tell us that the natural man cannot
see or understand spiritual things. This is why Paul describes the
unregenerate as “dead in trespasses and sin”; not simply under condemnation
for sin, but unwilling and unable to change. Such persons are in no shape to
exercise saving faith.

        Second, the Bible teaches that regeneration is the work of God. The
work of God can change our hearts and release us from spiritual bondage. Two
Old Testament prophets in particular emphasize that God must give us new
spiritual life if we are to follow after Him: “I will give you a new heart
and a new spirit, and I will put my Spirit within you,” promised the Lord
through Ezekiel.   Likewise, he said through Jeremiah, “I will put my law
within them, on their heart.”   But perhaps it’s the Gospel of John which
most clearly shows that regeneration is God’s work.   “The Son gives life to
whom He wishes”; “The Spirit gives birth to spirit”; “You must be born
again,” says Jesus to Nicodemus.   But John had already told us that
believers were born “not of natural descent nor of human decision, nor or a
husband’s will, but of God.”

        A person can no more choose to be reborn than a baby can choose to
be born.   God must do this great spiritual work.   As our friend, John
Blanchard, puts it: “Becoming a Christian is not making a new start in life.
It is receiving a new life to start with.”

        Third, the Bible teaches that God must enable us to believe. Paul
tells the Philippians, “To you it has been granted to believe....”   In
other words, God empowered them to have faith in Christ.   In Ephesians 2:8,
our whole salvation, including our faith, is called “the gift of God.”
Faith is called the fruit of the Spirit’s work in the Book of Galatians, and
the Scripture also insists that saving faith results from a regenerate
heart.   For instance, John says, “Everyone who believes that Jesus is the
Christ has been born of God”, not ‘will be born of God.’   In other words,
faith is the result and evidence of regeneration.

        Paul puts it even more strongly: “No one can say ‘Jesus is Lord’
except by the Holy Spirit.” That is, nobody can believe without the Spirit’s
power.   Luke describes Lydia’s initial experience of faith in this way:
“The Lord opened her heart to respond” to Paul’s message.

        You see, faith itself is the fruit of regeneration, not the cause of
it. You must be alive before you can believe.

        Now, many Christians stumble on this subject because their minds
cannot unravel this gospel paradox.   On the one hand, men must believe on
Christ to be saved; and on the other, that he cannot believe unless God
regenerates him.   It is not, as we have seen, that the Bible is unclear on
the matter; it is that this teaching is hard for prideful humans to swallow.


        But consider the words of our Savior. Our Lord Jesus Himself says,
on the one hand, “Come to Me, all....” and on the other, “No one can come to
Me unless the Father draws him.”   Is Jesus contradicting Himself?   No.
Is He insincere in His invitation to all?   No. His teaching stresses
beautifully both man’s responsibility to believe and the necessity of God
graciously to give us new spiritual life before we are able to put our trust
in Him.   

        In other words, God turns us to Himself because we are unable and
unwilling to turn ourselves to Him. If He did not turn us, we could not and
would not even want to turn to Him in faith.

        Now, there are a number of important spiritual applications of this
teaching.   

        First, the believer’s assurance is bolstered.   One realizes that
God loved him first, not in some vague, general, universal way, but in a
very particular way; and that his faith is only the fruit of God’s gracious
initiative.   Hence, one no longer needs to go through endless worries about
how sincere he was when he believed at first: “Was I 100% pure in my
motivation?”   No, you weren’t.   Of course your faith was imperfect, but
that it was there at all is a sign that God was at work, because saving
faith is always the result of a prior work of God in regeneration.   This
teaching gets us away from endless and hopeless introspection about the
quality of our faith in the past when we first believed, and it gets our
minds on the object of our faith: Christ, as He is offered in the
gospel—where the Bible tells us that it should be, and which results in the
sort of healthy assurance which ought to characterize robust Christian
experience.

        Secondly, this issue matters because through it all pride is
banished, because we recognize that even our belief by which we receive all
the benefits of Christ’s redeeming work is a gift of God.   Any other view
gives man cause to say in the deepest recesses of his heart, ‘I chose to
believe by my own will’s unaided power, and in that way, save myself.’

        Third, the Bible’s teaching is acknowledged, even if we don’t
understand everything about how it works. The gospel paradox of regeneration
before faith provides the opportunity for us to trust in the express
teaching of Scripture, even when our minds are stretched in striving to
comprehend the fullness of the Bible’s doctrine.

        And finally, all glory is given to God who saves us, and not we
ourselves.   Even our faith by which we were received into salvation is
God’s spiritual gift to us.   Praise be to God for such a glorious
salvation. As we sang last Sunday morning, 

“I sought the Lord, and afterward I knew 

He moved my soul to seek Him, seeking me.   

It was not I that found, O Savior true;

No, I was found of Thee.” 


Charis,
 
Mike Abendroth
 
"Make us choose the harder right instead of the easier wrong, and never to
be contented with half truth when whole truth can be won.   Endow us with
courage that is born of loyalty to all that is noble and worthy, that scorns
to compromise with vice and injustice and knows no fear when right and truth
are in jeopardy."
  - West Point Military Academy Cadet Prayer
 
HYPERLINK "http://www.bbcchurch.org"www.bbcchurch.org
 


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