[Note: This is Part A of the sermon on Titus 3:3-8, delivered 24 October 1982, Montreal. The series is titled "Regeneration and Renewal." Part B continues directly.]
Today we need to look at a few more details that could only be touched on last week and need to be examined more fully. I shall read the exposition from Titus chapter 3. We will read from verse 3 to verse 8: "For we ourselves were once foolish, disobedient, led astray, slaves to various passions and pleasures, passing our days in malice and envy, hated by men and hating one another. But when the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of deeds done by us in righteousness, but in virtue of his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewing in the Holy Spirit, which he poured out upon us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that we might be justified by his grace and become heirs in hope of eternal life. This saying is sure."
Now here we need to look carefully. The reason I turn to this passage is also because in this series, I am very concerned to deal with very fundamental and foundational matters. It is distressing to find that foundations in many people have never been properly laid. When the foundation is not properly laid, you can well imagine what happens to the rest of the structure built upon it. This is particularly true of people who come to us from other churches, who are forever struggling on very elementary matters, never able to sort out basic things, let alone get into the deeper matters of the spiritual life.
So often I have to counsel people said to have become Christians twenty or fifteen years ago — and they are absolutely nowhere spiritually. Often they discover to their shock in the process of counseling that perhaps they are not Christians at all. The faith they thought they had turns out not even to stand up to the most elementary examination. This happened in just one case last week, where it was not at all difficult to show the person, so that he could see for himself, that his profession of faith was in serious trouble.
One's heart goes out to such people, because to a great measure the fault is not theirs. People brought up in Christian homes also turn out, in the very elementary things of the Christian life, to have never had a proper foundation. Their whole lives they are frustrated, left in a state of spiritual struggle and weakness. Every time there is a crisis, the wall collapses again. And I find this kind of Christian life is not worth living — either we are Christians or we are not.
I also need to address the confusing fact that some people, after seeing Helen's baptism, said: well, if even she, after so many years, needed to be baptized — where does that leave the rest of us? Now, there needs some correction here. She has in fact not sat under my teaching for very long, as surprising as you may find that. In my student days in London, I was responsible for Bible studies, but Helen was working in a hospital outside of London and could very rarely come into the city — I am not even sure she managed to attend more than a handful of such Bible studies. When we went to Liverpool, our child Ealing was born, and we did not have a relay system such as this. Mothers with young children often ended up never being able to attend the service at all. We had very few tapes from that period because they were either broken or ruined before being properly duplicated. It was only here in Montreal that she first began to truly sit in and listen to the exposition of the Word of God. Only in Montreal was this beginning to be possible for her.
So now let us go to Titus chapter 3, verse 5 and look carefully. God saves us not because of deeds done by us in righteousness, but in virtue of his own mercy. Salvation is not our achievement. As I have constantly repeated, salvation is a work that God does in us, not merely for us. The error so often committed today is the stress on what God did for us at Calvary — as though by simply accepting these things to be true we are saved. That is only one part, and not even the major part of salvation. What matters far more is that through faith — which means commitment in scripture — God's transforming power becomes active in our lives. Salvation is when you know God has come into your life with such power that you are no longer the same person as you were before. As in Helen's testimony, she was once in darkness and now she is in the light. God does something. This is not our achievement.
This faith is not some intellectual exception but a commitment of ourselves — much as a patient entrusts himself into the hands of a doctor so that the doctor may perform the necessary healing. In our case we need more than healing; we need resurrection, regeneration. And this is what we read here: the washing of regeneration and renewal in the Holy Spirit. These two things, regeneration and renewal, are not synonymous. Don't think that one is merely a repetition of the other.
When we fail to distinguish these two things, we begin to ask confused questions: is salvation once for all, or is it a process? Do I die once or do I keep dying to become a new creature? The teaching Helen received before was that we die as a gradual process — that we sort of spend the whole Christian life dying. And so what is supposed to be a regeneration is in fact a long process of death. The result is that the Christian life looks gloomy, going not from strength to strength but from death to death. We must have gotten something wrong here.
When you become a Christian, you must first go to regeneration, and afterward we talk about renewal. Renewing is, as we shall see, a process. Regeneration is not a process — any more than birth is some kind of long drawn-out event. You are born and then you go on living and growing. There is no point talking about growth unless first there has been a birth. And in the spiritual life there is no regeneration without there first being a death. This is what Nicodemus didn't understand when the Lord said that except a man is born from above he cannot see the kingdom of God. Are you a teacher in Israel, the Lord said, and you ask such a question?
If you have never died to your old life, to your old man, you can be perfectly sure that regeneration is not part of your experience. Now let us look at this word translated "regeneration" — the washing of regeneration. For those who know some Greek, the word is palingenesia. Palin means again; genesia means birth. So the word means basically new birth, renewal, recreation. The word occurs only twice in the New Testament: here in Titus 3:5, and in Matthew chapter 19, verse 28, where it is translated "in the new world." Jesus said to his disciples: "Truly I say to you, in the regeneration, when the Son of Man shall sit on his glorious throne, you who have followed me will also sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel." The same Greek word is here translated "in the new world" or "the new creation" — a new beginning, a new recreation.
And whenever this kind of terminology is used in scripture, it implies that there has to be a breakthrough with the past before something new can come. How can you be a new creation when most of you is still old? How can there be a new world unless the old world has passed away? We tend to think that when we became Christians, we have the old there and now we have the new — old and new side by side, like two horses pulling in different directions. And little wonder your Christian life is one unending misery. You are literally being pulled asunder. But this condition is of our own making, because it is not in the scriptural teaching at all. Constantly in the scriptural teaching, the old must pass so that the new may come.
What you have, when you try to keep the old and add on the new, is not a regeneration at all. What you have is the old garment being patched with a new piece of cloth — and you know what the Lord said would happen: it would tear apart. Mixing the old and the new is most destructive. It is like putting new wine into an old wineskin that has lost its elasticity. When you put the two together, you have an unseen result: Christians who end up literally with a mental breakdown. Because the inner struggle becomes too much to bear. I have seen Christians break down mentally from this constant being torn apart in conflicting loyalties. I don't want to see any more people having mental breakdowns.
I say to you: don't be a Christian at all unless you will go all the way. Either you serve God or you serve yourself. The Lord says you cannot serve God and Mammon. When you try to play this game, you are going to end up with a mental breakdown or — which may be just as bad — with hypocrisy. Outwardly you look fine: the Bible is well-worn, you sound very spiritual. But you don't live it. You don't behave like a Christian. You only sound like a Christian. The church has too many of these, and the world doesn't need any more of this kind of hypocrisy. It is not that most people intend to be hypocrites — the fearful thing is that the circumstances and the teaching they have received is such that they simply cannot live the Christian life. They sincerely want to, but they cannot. And how do you deal with a situation like that? The old self is there; it has never died. So you end up as Paul says in Romans 7: "With my mind I serve the law, but with my members I serve sin."
[Continues in Part B]
# Regeneration and Renewal (Part B) — Extra-Biblical Palingenesia; Matthew 19:28 New World; 2 Peter 3; Universal and Individual Regeneration; God Wants the Heart; Renewal as Continuing Process; Colossians 3 and Ephesians 4
[Note: This is Part B of the sermon on Titus 3:3-8, delivered 24 October 1982, Montreal. The series is titled "Regeneration and Renewal." Continues directly from Part A.]
In fact, most people tell me they still can't understand this teaching. As long as the old self is present, of course it cannot be understood. The old self is not going to accept someone slapping you in the face. There is no way somebody with the old man still in them is going to accept the Sermon on the Mount in practice. There has to be a transformation — there has to be a rebirth before such a thing is possible. And there we can see whether we have been reborn or not. The Bible doesn't leave us in doubt.
Now let us look at this word translated "regeneration" — palingenesia. In order to establish the meaning of the word, let us look at how it is used in extra-biblical Greek, that is, Greek outside the Bible. In non-biblical Greek this word is used, for example, of the renovation of the world after the flood. The Jewish scholar Philo of the first century uses this term to describe the regeneration of the world — the recreation of the world, the renewal of the world after the destruction of the flood, which wiped out everything except Noah and his family. Notice again that the word holds this meaning: something new comes after the old has been wiped out.
It is also used by the Stoics. Stoicism is a Greek philosophy, and the Stoics taught the renewal or resurrection of the material world out of fire. They believed that fire was going to destroy this material world — and they were not far wrong on that point, as we know. The material world, as it were, would rise again: a new, regenerated, purified material world rising from the flames of that holocaust. Again, total destruction, then this palingenesia, regeneration, something new coming forth after the old has been destroyed. The word was also used to refer to resurrection and restoration after death. That is why some of the early Church Fathers understood this word as equivalent to anastasis, resurrection — and in fact they understood Matthew 19:28 as referring to resurrection.
In Matthew 19:28, then, "the new world" refers to the restitution and restoration of all things referred to in Acts 3:21 — the new heaven and the new earth that will come after the fire of God's judgment has totally purified and destroyed the existing world order. Let me read from 2 Peter 3, verse 10: "The day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a loud noise, and the elements will be dissolved with fire, and the earth and the works that are upon it will be burnt up." The Stoics were not far wrong on this point. And verse 13: "But according to his promise we wait for a new heaven and a new earth in which righteousness dwells."
So we see this constant fact: regeneration on the universal scale. In Titus, regeneration refers to the individual; in Matthew 19:28, it refers to the universal scale — the whole world being renewed, all things renewed in Christ. The vision of the Bible is much bigger than the individual. We tend to emphasize almost entirely the regeneration of the individual. But in the Bible, the redemption and salvation of the entire universe is very much in view. We need to broaden our scope to see things as God sees them.
And as in 2 Corinthians 5:17 — a verse we have often quoted — "Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed, not is passing away one day, but has passed. Behold, the new has come." All of this is to emphasize one point: you cannot have the new without the old passing away. You will not be a new creation until you can truly say the old has gone in your life. Otherwise you are going to be caught in that squeeze between old and new — torn apart, the battlefield of a determined conflict. And if you particularly enjoy being a battlefield, carry on. But that is not what the Christian life was meant to be.
Why must we live a wretched Christian life when the Lord wants to give us the best? Because we will not let go of the old. The Lord says: he who has tasted the old wine says the old is good. We have become used to the old life, the old ways — somehow hard to let go. And often not until a person's life becomes a total misery and they are near mental breakdown are they willing to let the whole thing go. But there are some who still won't let go even when the breakdown comes. That is just dreadful.
I beg of you therefore: not only for your own peace of mind, not only that you will not end up with a mental breakdown or become a hypocrite, but have some regard for the glory of the Lord you profess to live for. What kind of witness is this? What kind of testimony? People look on and see the same old person they saw before. There is nothing new there, nothing worth desiring.
Only when once and for all, totally, you are willing to finish with the old self, the old life, the old man in you, the old way of thinking — only then do we talk about the washing of regeneration. That is when baptism comes in. Nobody should contemplate baptism who wants to hang on to the world, to the old self, to money. When I became a Christian, I knew that everything I had held before had to come under the Lordship of Christ. Six months I struggled to let go of my cherished ambitions, my dreams of the future, my whole way of thinking built up painstakingly over many years. And only on that day when I knelt down and said, Lord, I surrender all to you, did I stand up with nothing. I had no more direction, no idea where to go from there. I stood there truly as one newly born: utterly naked, having nothing, not knowing where to go. That is regeneration.
Naked I came into this world, naked I leave it. When you are born again, you have lost everything. Not even one shirt on your back is any more your own. Everything is in the Lord's hands. Whatever you are studying is now totally at the Lord's disposal. You have no more studies, no degrees anymore — it is all the Lord's. You have no more career, no profession. Neither do you, if you are born again. That has to be the inward change. This is not a question of giving things up externally — total commitment is not just a matter of giving up a job. It is a way of thinking. God doesn't want your job, he doesn't want your money. He wants your heart. If you haven't given him all that is in your heart, if you don't love him with all your heart and soul and strength, he doesn't want one of your pennies, he doesn't want your offering, he doesn't want your house, he doesn't want anything from you.
At regeneration, if you are truly regenerate, you know you came forth naked. And then, when you have the inward thing right, only then can we talk about what you will do with your job and possessions — those are secondary things. First things first.
Now let us look at the second point: renewal. The word is anakainosis. Ana means again; kainosis means renewal — to renew, to renovate. This same noun occurs only twice in the New Testament. The only other place it occurs is in Romans 12:2, well familiar to us: "Be transformed by the renewing of your mind." Be transformed — present tense. Renewal is a process. And this renewing process can only begin after the washing of regeneration. Bear this clearly in mind.
You cannot have the renewing without first the regeneration, and you cannot have the regeneration without totally once for all finishing with the old life. When you are born again, you came naked into the spiritual world. And in the spiritual world you live totally upon the mercy and grace of God, moment by moment — not as some teach, that we were saved by grace once in the past and now we don't need it anymore. In the scriptural teaching you come into the world as a spiritual infant and live constantly, indeed forever, upon the mercy and loving kindness of our God.
The verb anakaino, to renew, occurs in Hebrews chapter 6, verse 6: "It is impossible to renew again to repentance those who have once been enlightened, who have tasted the heavenly gift, and have become partakers of the Holy Spirit, if they commit apostasy." This is a fearful condition to be in. If you are truly regenerated and totally committed, and then thereafter apostatize — not commit one or two sins, but deliberately turn away from God — it is impossible to renew; there is no more new beginning.
The same verb is used in 2 Corinthians 4:16: "Though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner man is being renewed every day." Renewal is a continuing process. Regeneration is once; you don't keep being regenerated. But the renewing is a continuing process — if indeed there has been a regeneration. Many people have tried to skip the regeneration part and go straight to the renewal part, and they can't tell the difference between the two.
Colossians 3:9-10: "Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old nature with its practices, and have put on the new nature, which is being renewed" — present participle, constantly in the state of renewing. Ephesians 4:22-24: "Put off your old nature, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful lusts, and be renewed in the spirit of your minds" — be renewed, present tense — "and put on the new nature." Notice the contrast: the putting off is in the aorist, once for all; the renewed is present tense, a continuing process.
So then, our time is gone. Let me sum up. There is something that happens once for all, namely regeneration — you are born. Then comes the renewing process, in which you gradually grow into the fullness of the stature of Christ. But you cannot have the renewing without first the regeneration. If the Christian life is one unceasing, unhappy conflict in which you cannot get the victory, in which there is a continuing stalemate — if you cannot say with Paul "thanks be to God who always gives us the victory in Christ Jesus our Lord" — then regeneration is probably not yet part of your experience. What has happened is that you have skipped regeneration and gone straight to renewal, and you have been trying to patch your old garment with a new piece of cloth. Carefully determine what is true in your own experience. Only then will it be possible to experience the renewing — growing from strength to strength in the Christian life. That is not an unhappy process; it is a joyful process of growing up in the Lord. May the word of God speak to our hearts. The washing of regeneration. The renewal by the Holy Spirit, by his power. Let us be quiet before God in prayer.