Sola Gratia #2 - Regenerated by Grace
Message Description
Senior Pastor Dr. Kurt Bjorklund continues the Sola Gratia message series teaching from the second chapter of the New Testament book of Ephesians. God's unique plan of salvation offers a regenerated hope and new life to those who might believe.
Message Transcript
In any sport or industry or discipline, there is a set of vocabulary words that become fairly important to that discipline. Meaning if you're not part of it, the words don't really mean a lot to you, but if you're part of it, all of a sudden, those words take on significance. So, for example, if I were to say the word eagle around a sporting event, it would mean that somebody had a great hole of golf and was very excited because they scored two below par. All right? If I were to say somebody needs a mulligan, it means somebody hit an awful shot, they're frustrated and they're saying, let me hit it again, right? If you're a golfer, you know these terms. If not, you're thinking, mulligan, what's that? Or how about a gimme? A gimme is that short putt that you say, this is a gimme, or that's a gimme, unless the match is close, in which case you say, go ahead and putt that. Let me see you hit it, to make sure you hit it.
Now, if we're to switch to something maybe that's familiar to some, but not to everyone here, if we were to simply say this word, maltese, what would we be referring to? It is this in gymnastics. Looks pretty easy. And then if we were to say an aerial, it would look like this. Hey, it's been a while since I've tried that. And then a sukihana or suk is this. Again, it's been a while since I have tried that.
Now, my point is, if you golf, if you're in gymnastics, these words take on significance to you. But if you don't do golf or gymnastics, you think, I don't care what a mulligan is. I don't care really what an aerial is. And there are some words in Christianity, some words in our faith, some words that have Biblical significance that it's important to learn, even if they seem distant. And today we're going to look at and consider one of those words.
We started a series a couple weeks ago or last week that we're calling “Sola Gratia”. It's a Latin phrase that means “by grace”. Our plan is, in these weeks leading up to Resurrection Sunday, Good Friday, that we would consider what is the classic doctrine of election, and of salvation, of how God chooses and works in people's lives. And today we're going to consider the word regeneration.
And here's what regeneration is in the Bible, it shows up in a couple of places. Matthew, chapter 1. Here's what we see in verse 28, or actually Matthew 19. Sorry, verse 28 says it this way:
"Jesus said to them, ‘Truly I tell you, at the renewal of all things, when the Son of Man sits on his glorious throne, you who have followed me will also sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel.’”
So it says the renewal, the regeneration, talking about a future time when God renews, regenerates the whole of creation. But it's also used in a very personal sense of what God does for an individual. This is Titus, chapter 3, verse 5. It says:
“...he saved us, not because of the righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy. He saved us through the washing of rebirth and renewal, regeneration by the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out generously through Jesus Christ our Savior...”
So there is a regeneration that is global and future, and then there's a regeneration that's personal. Wayne Grudem, in his systematic theology, puts it this way about regeneration. He says:
“Secret act of God in which he imparts new spiritual life to us.”
So it's secret in the sense of, you don't get a tattoo that says reborn, you don't get a T shirt, but it's something God does in us that imparts spiritual life within us. Anthony Hoekema, in a classic work written several decades ago, now says it this way:
“Regeneration is a radical change from spiritual death to spiritual life. Brought about in us by the Holy Spirit, a change in which we are completely passive. This change involves an inner renewal of our nature. It is a fruit of God's sovereign grace, and it takes place in union with Jesus Christ.”
Now, what the Bible uses as global and individual is described in some detail in Ephesians 2. We heard this passage read. This is a passage that we're going to consider today, and this passage really breaks down nicely into two categories. Verses 1 through 3 talks about the reality of being dead spiritually, that you were dead in your trespasses and sins. Even if you're in Christ now, you are dead if you're not in Christ now. And then in verses 4 through 7, it talks about, but you've been made alive, the idea of spiritual rebirth, of regeneration, of what God does, His secret act of imparting spiritual life to us. And so we're just going to consider it under those headings, you were dead, you were alive, you've been made alive.
So first you were dead. And the condition that this speaks of is powerlessness, because to be dead is to be without power. It's to be in a place where we don't have an ability. And it says, we were dead in our transgressions and in our sins, and the difference in those words is transgression basically means to step out of bounds, or to step kind of past a boundary. And to sin means to miss the mark.
I don't know how you relate to signs that tell you not to do something. I have this natural little proclivity to say, don't tell me not to do something that doesn't make sense. I'm going to do it. So when I was younger, if I would see a sign that said, don't walk on the grass, I would walk on the grass. Now I've gotten a little more socially willing to walk around, although my inner child still says, that sign makes no sense. I want to walk across the grass. That is to transgress, to step out of bounds, to come short, or to miss the mark. Sin is the idea of trying to do something but failing, not just necessarily stepping out.
So if we were to take gymnastics, Simone Biles is probably the greatest gymnast certainly in recent history, if not ever. And Simone Biles does not get perfect scores very often in gymnastics because there's always a deduction, always a saying, you did not get the perfect score. She's won gold medals more than anybody, and yet she doesn't get the perfect score. The idea is God's standard is perfection. We all miss the mark, we all transgress. And what this text is saying is, you are in that you are powerless to do anything about it.
J.B. Phillips, in his kind of paraphrased translation of the New Testament, writes it this way about Ephesians 2. And this is kind of the Message before the Message came out, he said this: He says:
“To you, who were spiritually dead all the time that you drifted along on the stream of the world's ideas of living, and obeyed its unseen ruler.”
And then he goes on in his translation, and here's what he's doing. He's trying to, in a pictorial way, take this idea of powerlessness and saying, you're caught in a current, a current that is sweeping you down this river, because you are dead in your trespasses and sins. That's the description that he gives. And if we take his picture, here's a video that gives just a little bit of a feel of this, because here's a boat that is trying to get away from the falls, trying to go up river, and it is caught in the current and it is pulling it down. And right before even this came on, you could see them trying to get a line to shore. You could see them trying to get their motor started. And there they go over, one person jumps out, another, and they are down.
Here is what Scripture teaches. In Ephesians 2, you were dead in your trespasses and sins, careening toward this fall. And then it tells us the reason why, the cause, and this is in verses 2 and 3. And the cause is that we followed the ways of this world system. It says it right there in verse 2, that because you were following the ways of the world. And this is just saying that the river is a current, the culture is a current.
Have you ever been around a middle schooler, a high schooler, when they decide that they are going to be different from the culture? And what they do is they join another group that's different from the culture, but is another group that is culture. And you like to think that as you get older, you get maybe apart from that. But do you know what happens? Our cultures just change, and we're always trying to fit into some culture that is swimming against the ways of God. And not only that, but it says that the ruler of the kingdom of the air. So it's not just that there's a culture, but there's an actual spiritual being who is bent on keeping you from God and taking you away from everything that is good and right in this world. And then it says to those who are disobedient, or some translations say, the sons of disobedience. This is even in some ways greater than the transgression, because here it carries the idea of disbelief or a rejection, a hostility almost to the things of God. And then it talks about gratifying our desires, our sinful nature. Let me just read these verses so you see where this comes from. Verse 2:
“...in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world.”
That's culture.
“...and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air...”
That's the power that is. And it says:
“the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our flesh[a] and following its desires and thoughts.”
And so there are three things that are at work - culture, spiritual powers, and our own nature - which is making us dead in trespassing passes and sins, where we can't just say, I'm going to choose to do everything that God calls me to do.
M.J. Lenderman is an artist who, in his last release, wrote quite a bit about in his music about just some of his spiritual longings. And he's clearly a tortured Catholic who feels this guilt and yet this pull to God and yet being swept down the pole of culture. Here's what he writes in one of his songs. He says:
“You open the Bible in a public place
You've opened the Bible to the very first page
And one of these days, it will all end
Your tired approach to original sin”
And what he's saying is, he's saying, you try to say, I'm going to follow God, but your tired approach to original sin just keeps sweeping you down this stream, more or less. And then, forgive the grammar of the next line, but it works in the music.
“You once was a baby, and now a jerk
Standing close to the pyre, manning fireworks
Once a perfect little baby, who's now a jerk
Standing close to the pyre, manning fireworks”
And that's the title of his release, but his idea is this. You started in one form, but you ended up a jerk. Original sin got the better of you. Now you're standing next to the pyre, the guy who lights off the fireworks, and you're about to get burned. You're about to destroy your life because of original sin. It is pulling you down. It is your nature. So what we see is that we're dead. It's our condition, that we're powerless. It's because of the culture, the powers of the air, because of our own nature.
And then we see the consequence. And this is in verse 3. And it just simply says this:
“Like the rest, we were by nature deserving of wrath.”
I don't know how that hits you, but probably there's at least a few of us who say, how can we be deserving of wrath if we are by nature? How can this be something that says, if you're powerless, you deserve wrath? Well, in the Bible, there are two ways that sin is described. One, at least two. One is that it is what we are by nature. We were born with sin, original sin, but we're also sinners by choice. We choose to do things that are counter to God. Therefore, we are subjects who deserve the wrath of God. That's what we see in the text.
Now, I was trying to think about a way to illustrate this and say, how do those two things fit together? And we've had a little issue with our one dog when it snows this year. So here are my dogs. This is Zion in front. He's the big guy, Zoe in back. And to be clear, they are my wife's dogs, not mine. They're two rescues. But Zion, the guy in front, decided that when it snowed, if he would go outside, he could relieve himself immediately outside the door on the deck, that he didn't need to go off the deck. Now, as his secondary owner, that frustrated me. And so I had this battle with Zion where I would step outside and say, get off the deck. And I would become irritated, angry with my dog who was doing what dogs do, because dogs are dogs. When a dog wants to go to the bathroom, the dog goes to the bathroom, wherever the dog wants to go to the bathroom. And if it's a kid, the kid's gonna say, hey, you know, okay, I learned some things. I understand. I can't relieve myself on the deck. But the dog? Says, snow, it's cold. I don't want to go any farther. And he is by nature a dog, and yet deserving of my wrath. Now, I don't know if that works, but it was the best I could come up with this week for this idea.
And here's my point. We may be powerless because we're dead in our trespasses and sins, but it makes us no less deserving of the wrath of God. But this isn't where the story ends. You were dead. And then verse 5 says, but you were made alive. I want you to see why we're made alive. It is because of the great love of God, that God is rich in mercy, because of his grace and because of his kindness. All of these phrases are used here, verse 4:
“But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved.”
There it is - regenerates us, changes us. And I mentioned this last week, that the grace that we've been saved is this idea, very simply, that the word in its original form is in a perfect passive. And a passive construction means that we don't act on it, it's acted for us. And perfect means that it had an initiation in the past, with a continuing result that goes into now and goes forward in perpetuity. So a perfect verb, a passive verb, means you have been saved once from God in the past. It continues today, it will continue. And it isn't your work. That's what that means grammatically. And this word shows up, this salvation word, several times in the New Testament. Here are just a couple. Matthew, chapter 1, verse 21:
“She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.”
How is salvation found? Through Jesus Christ. It is Jesus who brings salvation. Romans, chapter 5, verse 9 gives us another use of this word, this idea of being saved. Verse 9:
“Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God's wrath through him!”
You deserved wrath because you were dead in transgressions and sins. And yet, because of God's love, because of his mercy, because of his grace, you now experience salvation. That is what we find, and it is in the work of Jesus Christ on our behalf. And then in verse 7, it talks about his kindness. And he says, you have been made alive because of these factors of God, what God has done.
And then if you think about this idea of being made alive, it's always tied to our position in Christ. And you even see this in Ephesians 2. When you read through it. It keeps saying, “in him”, “in Christ”. And it's about a union with Christ where God makes you alive so that you can become one with Christ. And therefore, you have this new spiritual life.
Rankin Wilburn, who wrote a book on being in Christ, said this. He said:
“To be found in Christ means that you don't have to prove yourself anymore. You can rest in Christ.”
Now, that does not mean that you're resting and there's no compulsion not to sin. In fact, it means the exact opposite of that. Here's what 1 John, chapter 3, verse 9 says again about this idea of regeneration being born of Jesus:
“No one who is born of God will continue to sin, because God's seed remains in them; they cannot go on sinning because they have been born of God.”
What regeneration means isn't that you'll say, well, okay, since it's all God's work, I don't need to do anything. It means that you will not want to sin because you cannot, because your nature has been changed. It doesn't mean you're incapable, that you cannot in the sense of there's no ability. What it means is it will not be what you want to do anymore. And here's what this really means. It means that you won't be comfortable with sin if you've been reborn. You will hit a point where there will be conviction. It isn't that you won't sin. It's that you won't be comfortable saying, it's okay, and I'm just floating down the river, and I don't have a concern, and I don't have a career. But instead you will say, I do not do the things that I want to do, and I want to surrender My life to God. That's what that means. That's what spiritual life is. And the evidence of spiritual life ultimately is that you say, I want what God wants. When you don't have spiritual life, you're afloat on this river, dead in your transgression in such a way that you're not even aware that there's a fall ahead, or that you're in a current. You're just doing life.
And then he tells us why God does this also. He does it in part because of his love, his mercy, his grace, his kindness. But in verse 7 it says:
“...in order that in the coming ages he might show his incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in the kindness to us in Christ Jesus.”
Do you know what God is doing? He is bringing a people to Himself that will be the displays and the trophies of his grace in all eternity. Where he'll say, this one was dead and I regenerated them, I pulled them to myself, I gave them spiritual life. They now are part of my
trophies. And he says he raised them and he seated them in the heavenly realms. Meaning it is something that God has done on your behalf, on my behalf.
Now, what does this mean? Well, some of us today are really unconcerned about anything spiritual. Maybe somebody promised you a lunch today, so you came. Maybe it's just been your habit, but when the songs are sung, when the Word is taught, it's just kind of, you are currently in the culture, in the river, dead in your trespasses and sins. And what that means is it's time to ask God for mercy and his grace and his kindness.
But many of us aren't even aware. It's like we're on a party boat and we think this is the place to be. Some of us get under conviction from time to time, and what we do is we try to turn our boat around and paddle really hard upriver. This is the religion of human effort that says if God has a standard and it's been violated, then I need to meet the standard. I need to do what. is right, so I'm going to work really, really hard to meet the standard. But regeneration means that you can't paddle your way upriver enough, that it is God who either brings a gust of wind to your sail and moves you up river or starts your engine, whatever analogy you want. They both, by the way, break down at this point. But at some point, God turns you and gives you the power to head back up the river, is what he does. And that's what it is to be regenerated, to be reborn.
And some of you right now are rightly asking the question you're saying, so if this is God's work, can I respond? And your question may not be for you, but it may be for your son, your daughter, for your spouse, for a co worker, for a mom, a dad, somebody you love. And you're sitting here and you're saying, I know somebody who's been around it a lot, and they don't seem to believe. Does it mean that they were chosen by God, and some aren't chosen by God and therefore some don't get regenerated, therefore, they don't actually get to respond to the Gospel?
Well, my answer to that, hopefully, is a Scriptural answer. I want to show you two verses in John chapter 1 that seem to say two contradictory things. And the reason that I point to this is because so often what happens when we get stuck in a question that feels like it puts us in a corner, is we have stopped actually reading and saying what the Bible says, and we've started saying what are the logical conclusions of some Bible verses rather than saying what the whole Bible says. This is John 1, verse 12 and 13. Here's what it says:
“Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become the children of God...”
So who becomes the children of God? All who believe. What does that mean? Anybody can come. What does verse 13 say?
“...children born not of natural descent, not of human decision or of a husband's will, but born of God.”
In other words, it isn't your ancestry, it isn't your ability, it isn't anything that goes on, but it is all God. So what do you have in these two verses? You have, it is you who believe that God gives the right and it is all God. You have these two things that are held in simultaneous tension. And here's why this is important. If you're here today and you have been saying, look, spiritual life, I might get to it some other day. If you have had very little in that, you can respond today by saying, I know that I have been dead in my transgression and sins, I'm deserving of wrath, but Jesus paid for it, and I am trusting God's regeneration. And whether the logical order puts regeneration first or second, I can respond today. And what it means if you've already believed is at least three things.
One, if you've believed, it means you have an incredible reason for worship. I mean, think about this. When you were dead in your transgression and sins, what did God do? He made you alive so that he could make you a display of his kindness for all eternity. Talk about a reason to say, oh, that is cool. You, if you are a believer in Jesus, have been made alive by the God of heaven so that you would believe in Jesus Christ, so he could make you a display of his kindness for all eternity. I mean, that's better than, like, a puck going through a net. That's better than so many things that we get excited about.
But it's also a comfort. And I say it this way. Some of us have family members, friends, children, spouses, coworkers, parents, who don't seem to believe. And we have this thing inside of us that says, well, maybe if I had done this differently, if I had done this better, if I had said this, then they would believe. But what this teaching does is it says, this is God's work, this is not your work. And if you had done it better or worse, that is not what is determinative, because it is the spirit of God that is determinative in how people respond.
Sometimes people will come to Orchard Hill, who've been at other churches, and sometimes they're good churches that teach what we teach here about how people come to faith in Jesus Christ. And they'll come here and they'll say, you know, I never got it before, but now when I'm here, I have come to believe. And do you know what I do? I'm like, yeah! No, I don't do that, because it has nothing to do with me. God has taken the blinders off. And I know that there are people that have been here, that have grown up here that right now seem to be in a place where they're saying, I don't know if I believe, but sometimes when they get to a college ministry, sometimes when they're older, sometimes at different times of life, they'll say, now I get it. And it was this place over here in which I got it. God took the blinders off. And the comfort is in saying, it isn't up to you as a parent, as a spouse, as a friend to say, I have to do it just right. My job is to be faithful and to let God do his work and to say, I can take comfort in that. Now, I know that some of us will still say, yeah, but what about if it's God's work? What does it mean? At some point we just have to say, God is in charge, I'm not in charge, and that is a good thing.
Then I would say there's one other implication. If you have already believed in Jesus, been reborn, and that is it takes away our excuse for being lax with our own sin. Because if it is true that you were dead, but you've been made alive, what it also means is that those who have been born of God cannot go on sinning. And what that means, ultimately, is if you've gotten comfortable or you've just started to say, I guess I'm just one of those people who doesn't, who can't. And whether it's an attitude, a behavior, a lack of joy in who Christ is, a lack of belief, whatever it is. At some point, if you have been made alive, you do not have the reason to say, I can't help myself, because being made alive means God has given you the ability, the power to begin the process of choosing what is right and good. Now, it does not mean that you will do it perfectly. That's the whole idea. Romans 7. Paul says, Sometimes I do what I don't want to do. But what it means is that as you have those experiences and you get convicted about, about a sinful attitude, a pattern, a behavior, a way of thinking that you can say, God, you have made me alive, and you can begin the process of changing.
So what regeneration does is it gives us a great cause for worship. It gives us comfort, and it gives us no reason to excuse our choices that aren't in line with who God is and what God wants for us. And my hope today is that wherever you come from, in terms of thinking about who God is, what God's done with you, that there would be a sense in which you hear this and you say, if I've never trusted Jesus, I want to respond today.
And if I have trusted Jesus, it is because of his amazing grace, his sola gratia, his grace alone, and it changes the way that we relate to God. Let's pray.
God, as we're gathered today, I ask that we would be aware of what it's meant to be dead, but we would also be aware of what it is to be made alive. And that we would revel in the reality of what you've done. That we would worship you, find comfort in you, that we would find motivation because of the transformation. And God, we would invite others to come along, knowing that it is your work. And so we can invite boldly and expectantly. And Father, we commit these things to you in Jesus name. Amen.
Thanks for being here. Have a great week.
This transcript was automatically generated. Please excuse errors.
