“Behold, I Make All Things New” (Part 2)

The promise of eternal life, our restoration to the glorious life with God for which man was created, but lost because of sin, is not an empty promise given to manipulate or control our lives as some would suggest, but is in fact the most certain of all promises, made by a Holy and Righteous God who cannot lie (Titus 1:1-2).  It is a promise consistent with His purpose in creation and redemption, which was to have for Himself a people who would share in His glorious existence, imaging the beauty and perfection of His majestic being and enjoying in abundance the unimaginable pleasures and delights that God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit have and will continue to enjoy forever (Isaiah 43:7) (Psalm 36:7-8) in His eternal Kingdom.

However, mankind, and all of God’s good creation (Genesis 1:31), have been corrupted by man’s sin, our rejection of God’s purpose for and rule over our lives.  We are spiritually dead (Ephesians 2:1-2), cut off from the glorious life with God for which we were created and subject to His wrath and judgement because of our sin (Ezekiel 18:20) (Romans 1:18-32).

Our bodies no longer image the beauty and perfections of the glory of God’s being and are subject to pain, disease, injury and physical death. We are, at the very core of our being, deceitful and desperately wicked, ignorant of just how wicked we are (Jeremiah 17:9).  We are thus both unable and unwilling to love God with all of our heart, soul, mind and strength as He deserves and commands, nor of loving our neighbors as ourselves (Mark 12:29-34).  Our minds are depraved (Romans 1:28), willfully ignorant of the truth of God (Romans 1:19-21, alienated from and hostile in our minds toward God (Colossians 1:21).  We are blinded to the glory of God by the devil, Satan, who is described in 2 Corinthians 4:3-4 as the god of this age, the one whose lies we have believed and thus have unwittingly joined him in his rebellion against God (John 8:44).

Mankind’s wickedness, our unfitness to live in the presence of a holy and righteous God, is described most clearly in Romans 3:9-20.  Being spiritually dead we are helpless to do anything to save ourselves from God’s just judgement for our sin and to restore ourselves to the holiness, the perfection of being God requires of us to live in His eternal kingdom ((Mark 10:26-27) (Hebrews 12:14).

Thus, our salvation – our rescue from Hell, our reconciliation to God, our being made fit to enjoy the infinite perfections of God and to be enjoyed by God, must come as a gracious gift from God (Ephesians 2:4-7) beginning with a sovereign, supernatural work of God in our heart  (Ezekiel 36:24-27); what Jesus refers to as being “born again”.

In John 3:3-5 Jesus declares to the Jewish religious leader, Nicodemus, and by extension, to all mankind, that we must be born again if we are to see and enter the Kingdom of God.  He then emphatically restates in John 3:7, “YOU MUST BE BORN AGAIN” (literally born from above). Here Jesus is stating unequivocally that it is absolutely essential, nonnegotiable, that for any fallen, sinful human being to be welcomed into God’s presence, into His eternal Kingdom that has its consummation in the new heavens and new earth, there must be a spiritual rebirth resulting in a radical change in our nature, our identity, our lifestyle, our thinking, our values, our desires, our affections, our goals and our motivations.  This is referred to in Titus 3:4-7 as regeneration.

Regeneration is a gracious, sovereign, supernatural work of God the Holy Spirit, which occurs upon our hearing/reading, understanding and embracing the Gospel (1 Peter 1:23) – the good news of what Jesus Christ has accomplished through His life, death and resurrection so that our sins can justly be forgiven, and we can be reconciled to God as citizens of His heavenly Kingdom even while we are on this earth (Romans 5:10-11), (Philippians 3:20)  (Luke 10:20).

At that moment, the Holy Spirit convicts us of our sin (Psalm 51:4), and grants us the ability to repent, to turn from our sin as the controlling influence in our lives (2 Timothy 2:24-25) .  At the same time, He grants us the faith necessary to receive and embrace Jesus as our Lord and Savior (John 1:12-13), as well as to receive the eternal benefits of His saving work (Romans 8:30).

In our regeneration we are given a new heart (Ezekiel 18:31) (Jeremiah 24:7) meaning the very core or center of our being, our very nature and character which has been opposed to God, now becomes open and welcoming of the things of God, able to see by faith the glory of God in the person and work of Jesus Christ (2 Corinthians 4:6), such that knowing and loving and being loved by God becomes our priority in this life and forevermore.

The newness of our life in total is stated most clearly in 2 Corinthians 5:17 where it is revealed that if any man or women be in (union with) Christ (by faith), he or she is a new creation; that all of our sins past, present and future are wiped away and that we have a new nature, a new identity in relationship to God (Galatians 4:6) with new desires, new motivations, new priorities, and new affections that are now all centered on God and on His will and purposes rather than our own.

Once we are born again, we live in this world in a state of becoming – of becoming the perfect image bearers of God mankind was created to be.  At the time of regeneration, God the Holy Spirit comes to live in our souls (1 Corinthians 3:16) and begins the work of conforming us into the image of the perfect man, Jesus Christ (Ephesians 5:1-2), wherein we begin to progressively, though imperfectly display, through the enablement of the Holy Spirit, the nature, character and temperament of the only begotten son of God – Jesus Christ (Galatians 5:22-25).

We have the comforting promise in Romans 8:28-30, wherein we are told that all things that happen to us in this world, all of our circumstances, actions and experiences are working together for that ultimate purpose.

And in Philippians 1:6 our gracious God and Savior gives us, through the Apostle Paul, the assurance that He (God) who began this good work in us will be faithful to complete it.  It will be completed immediately in our soul, our spirit man when we stand before Jesus upon our death (1 John 3:1-3), and in our physical body at the time of our resurrection which will occur at Jesus’ second coming (Philippians 3:20-21) (1 Corinthians 15:51-54).

I don’t know about you, but I can’t wait. “Come Lord Jesus”

Grace and Peace ×