Today we continue to expound in the Word of the Lord, and particularly concerning regeneration and renewal, as we continue week by week, each time in this series, to enter more fully and more clearly into the meaning of regeneration, renewal, and perfection. But today we want to give particular attention to this matter of renewal. We have said some things concerning regeneration. We have said quite a lot about perfection. We want to speak a little bit more about renewal. And the reason for that is this: there are some people, even after listening to the series of these messages up to now, who are still not entirely clear as to whether they are regenerate or simply being renewed.
And the problem becomes particularly acute when they commit some sin. And every time they might commit some sin, they begin to wonder, "Am I regenerate or not?" And they are constantly struggling with this question. And maybe every time you commit some sin, this question as to whether you are really regenerate or not comes back again, so that you are never quite certain whether you are a Christian or you are not a Christian, whether you are a disciple or not a disciple, or whether you are hovering somewhere between regeneration and renewal, and you don't really know on which side of the border you are. Now today my aim is that we get this thing very clear in our minds, so that you are not forever wondering, "Am I regenerate or not?" Every time, say, you get angry or you do something that you know to be wrong, you immediately ask the question, "Am I really a Christian? Am I really regenerate that I am doing things like this?"
So what is the clear borderline, the demarcation line between regeneration and renewal? How do we know whether we have crossed the line? I have said before, and I think it should be absolutely clear, that being a Christian does not mean the elimination of sin. It does not mean the eradication of sin. It means that sin as a possibility constantly remains dwelling in our flesh. Paul makes it very clear that the flesh is the root, the base of sin in our lives. And so long as we still have a body of flesh, sin dwells there, lodged there. It is ensconced in, entrenched within our flesh. Now it does not mean that because sin is in the flesh we have to sin. It means though that we have constantly to overcome that sin that is lodged in our flesh. All our life we will be fighting the battle with this ever-present reality of sin. It does not mean that we have to lose the battle. On the contrary, we can always be victorious against sin. But there are times when we do, as it appears, lose the battle. And when we lose the battle, that is when the question arises. That is going to come to your mind: "Am I regenerate or am I not?"
You got irritated the other day. You got very angry the other day. You behaved in an unseemly way, in a disgraceful manner, to your roommate, to your colleague. And you immediately say, "I should never have behaved like this." When you come to your own senses, you realize that a Christian shouldn't behave like that. And immediately, therefore, you ask the question, "Am I a Christian or not, that I behaved in this sort of way?" Now, this becomes a very serious problem for many Christians, especially if they are inclined to lose the battle rather often.
Now, let's understand clearly the definition or the mark of regeneration. One particular mark of regeneration that we find in Romans chapter 6 to 8. In Romans chapter 6 to 8, what is the central mark of being regenerate? That is, how do you know that you are a Christian or whether you are not a Christian? Now, in Romans chapter 6 to 8, we can see Paul has left us in no doubt as to where the borderline is. What he does here — we can establish this simply statistically, just by looking at the way he uses the words in Romans 6 to 8, so that we can take all the guesswork out of the matter. It is not a matter of interpretation. It is a matter simply of exegesis, where we simply look at the recurrence of certain words.
And what we see in this passage shows that in Romans chapter 6 to 8, or specifically from Romans chapter 6 verse 18 to Romans 8 verse 21, in the scope of these three chapters, he uses the word "free" repeatedly. In fact, he uses the word "free" — either in verb form or noun form — he uses it seven times in less than three chapters. Free. For those of you who know some Greek, the word is eleuthero. The word could be "set free," "I free," or "set someone free." In the passive, "I am free." Seven times he uses this word. Three times in Romans 6, once in Romans 7, and three times in Romans 8. Freed from sin. Freed from the slavery to sin. That is what Paul is stressing throughout in these three chapters.
And he uses another word that occurs even more frequently than this word "free." In Romans 6 to 8, he uses the word "slave" or "slavery" or "to enslave" twelve times. He uses it in the verb form "to enslave," the noun form "to be a slave," and so forth, twelve times. For those of you who know Greek, the word is douleo, from doulos, a slave. Now this is quite striking because this word "to be enslaved" in the passive or "to be a slave" is used only four times in the rest of Paul's writings outside Romans 6 to 8. It occurs only four other times in all the rest of Paul's writings. But in these three chapters, it occurs twelve times. It shows you how much the concept of slavery to sin and freedom from sin — these two concepts — occur in Romans 6 to 8.
Now the point is quite simply this: that the unregenerate person is enslaved to sin. That's the point of Romans 6 to 8. He is so completely under the dominion — in fact, the word "dominion" is again another word used in Romans 6 to 8 quite exclusively in Paul's writings — that the person who is unregenerate is completely under the control, the dominion, the slavery of sin. But the person who is regenerate, who has died with Christ and risen with him, is freed from sin and from the bondage and dominion of sin. Now that is the basic point that Paul wants to make. That's the central thesis of Romans 6 to 8, put very simply and clearly.
So Paul does not leave us in doubt as to what is the situation, where the line of demarcation is between the regenerate and the unregenerate. The regenerate person is a person, therefore, who discovers that the shackles of sin, the chains of sin, have been broken. That whereas before he sinned by sheer compulsion — that he had no option but to sin, he could not but sin — now that he is regenerate, that he is a new person, that he is dead with Christ and risen again, he does not have to sin. It does not mean he cannot sin. But he is no longer under the kingship, the lordship of sin. He does not have to sin. You may still get angry. Indeed, you may still lose your temper as you did before. But you don't have to. Because now, the Holy Spirit has come into your life. The Holy Spirit enables you to overcome the power of sin.
Those are Romans chapter 8, verses 1 and 2. Those are the points made in Romans chapter 8, 1 and 2: that the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set me free from the law of sin and death. Set me free. That's it. That law can no longer compel you. The law of sin and death can no longer compel you to sin. Now that is the important distinction. And therefore, applied into your life, you can see it right away. Do you sin? And you try to break out of that sin, but you cannot? And you try again and you cannot? Then you are not regenerate. If you find that you are so enslaved to a sin that its power is compelling — you cannot say no to that sin, or in other words, you can say no to it, but it doesn't take any notice of you, you will still sin, it will still compel you to do what you don't want to do.
Now I must draw an important distinction here, which I have drawn somewhere else before. The compulsion to sin in the unregenerate man is not necessarily because he wants to sin. It is not to say that his will is in bondage in the sense that he cannot will what is good. His will is in bondage only in the sense that though he can will what is good, he is incapable of doing it. Now, having said that, let's get this distinction perfectly clear in our minds. The unregenerate person then may like to do something good. Sometimes he might even succeed in doing it. The point that Paul is making is not that an unregenerate person never does a good deed. The point he is making is that he cannot consistently live a life of righteousness. He might occasionally manage to say something kind. He may occasionally do something that seems to be good. But he cannot consistently live a righteous life. Because sin has got him bound.
Now, the case with the regenerate person is precisely the reverse. It is the case in the saved person that he can consistently live a righteous life, though he does also occasionally commit a sin. You see, the unregenerate person occasionally does something good, but he cannot consistently live in righteousness. The regenerate person lives consistently in righteousness, or ought to do, but occasionally commits sin. And we shall look into the reason why he occasionally commits sin, because the reason for that is important to understand.
Now, what is your situation? If you manage from time to time to do something good, but you cannot consistently live the Christian life — and the word is "consistently" live the Christian life — if you find yourself under the bondage of sin, that when you say no to a sin, you still do it anyway, then you know that you have a problem with regeneration. You are still under the lordship of sin. You are still living under its bondage. If, on the other hand, you find that when you are dealing with a sin and you say no to that sin, you are able, in fact, to break out of that sin by the power of the Lord, then you are regenerate. But you do occasionally commit a sin. And when you do commit that sin, you do not have to say to yourself, "Am I regenerate or not?" Because we have already indicated that the regenerate person will also occasionally commit sin. And as I said, we shall see in a moment why this is so. But as soon as he commits the sin, his conscience is profoundly disturbed, and he immediately repents of that sin.
If you sin and your conscience doesn't bother you, and you don't repent of the sin since it doesn't bother you, then you have reason to consider whether you are really regenerate or not. Because if the Holy Spirit dwells in you, your conscience becomes strangely sensitive. Things that didn't bother you before have a way of bothering you a lot now. And that is a sure sign that the Holy Spirit is working in you. When I see a person sin and immediately they are deeply pained by it, they are deeply contrite about it, I know at once that that person is a child of the Lord. The conscience is so deeply sensitive that it is evident that the Holy Spirit is working in that person's heart. The sheer pain of having sinned, the grief of having sinned, is evidence that that person is a child of God. But the person who sins and says, "So what? What does it matter? Everybody does it anyway" — that kind of person is not a Christian. The conscience is dull. It is hardened. Insensitive. And not listening to the voice of the Lord.
So I hope that this basic point is absolutely clear. And it is not difficult to discern the lines, at least for yourself. It may be hard sometimes for other people to discern whether you are regenerate or not. But at least in your own mind it should be perfectly clear whether you are free from sin or not. I don't think that is a question that should leave anyone in doubt. You should not have any difficulty discerning this matter. It is not vague or uncertain and muddled. It is very clear.
Now, the question then arises: if we are regenerate, why is it that a Christian still sins from time to time? Why is it that you do the things which you know are not pleasing to the Lord, but somehow you were not quite aware of it at the time? Now notice that before I go on to this — maybe I should say a word about Romans chapter 7. There is an important distinction there too.
In Romans 7, Paul is describing a state of affairs which he experienced in the days when he lived under the law. That is, when he was a practicing Pharisee and tried to fulfill the righteous requirements of the law in his own strength. And he soon discovered that he couldn't do it. That the good that he really wanted to do, he couldn't do. In other words, the religious person — and this is also important to understand from Romans 7 — is in no better state than the unregenerate person. I have elsewhere already made it clear that there is an important difference between being religious and being spiritual. In Romans chapter 7, Paul is describing the state of a religious person under the law. In Romans chapter 8, he is describing the condition of a spiritual person living under the Holy Spirit. So there is a distinction there, an important distinction.
Some people acquire a religion. And I have often said to you, I don't want you to become a Christian in the religious sense, that you adopt a religion. Because religion will not save you. Only Christ will save you. Now religion can do all kinds of interesting things for you, as Paul discovered as he lived a long time under religion. But what it could not do for him is to free him from the bondage of sin. You can see that Romans 7 is different from earlier chapters, because Paul is speaking in the first person: "I." "I this," and "I that." That's the interesting thing about Romans 7. It's all in the first person, because he is speaking from his intensely deep personal experience of what it is like to be a Pharisee, a religious person, a person living under the law as a Jew, but not freed from the bondage of sin.
And therefore, remember this: there are a lot of religious people out there in the world, maybe also in our midst. But a religious person is not a regenerate person until he is freed from the bondage of sin, until the Holy Spirit comes into his life. And so we find that in Romans 6, 7, and 8, we have three distinct categories. We have a state of affairs in which a person is unregenerate as a Gentile. In chapter 7, we have a person who is unregenerate as a Jew, and yet having the law of God. And then only in Romans 8 do we have the picture of a regenerate person. These three chapters are among the most crucial chapters in the Bible. To understand that is to understand the whole essence of being a Christian, of regeneration and renewal.
Now, once you have actually become regenerate — you have died with Christ, you have been freed from the law, you have been freed from sin, and now you live under the lordship of Christ through the Holy Spirit — only now do you enter into the stage that we can talk about renewal. There can be no such thing as renewal when you are unregenerate. But once you have been regenerate, once you have been freed from sin, now renewal can begin.
At this point, let us turn for a moment to 2 Corinthians chapter 4, verse 16. Second Corinthians chapter 4 and verse 16. And this is what we read here in Paul's writing. And he says this: "So we do not lose heart. Though our outer man" — not nature; the Greek word here is "man" — "though our outer man is wasting away, our inner man is being renewed every day." The inner person is being renewed every day. Renewal is a day-by-day method. Today you are being renewed. Yesterday you were being renewed. Tomorrow you will still be renewed. And then it goes on and on, every day, until we see the Lord. That's why renewal is so important. It has to do with the present, right now. Now if you are already regenerate, you are being renewed even this very day, at this very moment, while you are listening to this word of God. You are being renewed. It's an ongoing process.
But now notice this: the very use of the word "renewed" — Paul says we are being renewed — implies that there is something to be renewed. That means there is still something old. Because if the old is no more there, there is nothing more to renew. To renew implies that there is still something old still present, is it not? Because if all the old has gone, we are already totally new, and there is nothing left to renew. But the very word "renewed" implies that there is still something old present. And this something old is in the process of being removed or displaced every day. Every day you are being moved somewhat closer to the image of Christ.
Now we can take the picture somewhat like walking. You are walking towards a goal, towards a particular destination. Now every day is like a step. You are taking a step forward, and that means you are putting more distance behind you and drawing closer towards where you are going. You see, and therefore this constant renewal is like the walking towards the goal. When you look back after a time, you see that you are further away from what you were before, and you are getting nearer to what you ought to be in Christ. There is progress, step by step. Every day we are drawing closer, or ought to be drawing closer, to what we should be in Christ.
Now the second thing concerning this renewal that we need to bear in mind is that this renewing process is not a self-effort. Even here it is not merely a matter of works by which we sort of renew ourselves. Because Titus chapter 3, verse 5, tells us that we are being renewed in or by the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is the chief engineer of this renewing process. He is changing us every day. That means every day the Holy Spirit is working in our life, using various circumstances of your daily life. We will come back to that in another message — the tools that he uses to renew us and to perfect us.
Maybe, for example, you find yourself in circumstances which are less than happy. Maybe your marriage is a problem. Maybe your roommate is a problem. Did you ever realize that your roommate, or your marriage problems, or your physical problems, your health problems, your problems you have at your work, at your studies — all these kinds of difficulties are actually being used by the Holy Spirit in the process of renewing you? That's very important to understand. Because if we only understood that, we wouldn't be groaning and moaning about these things. But we always forget it.
You see, because those of you who do work, you have to know something. When you want to make something beautiful, you have to polish it with sandpaper. Or you have to work on the rust spots on the car from time to time. And what do you do on the car? Well, you have this rust spot. You have to use a sharp instrument to cut out the rust, literally to scrape out the rust until the bare metal is exposed. And you work at it, and you bang at it, and you hammer at it, until all the rust is being taken out. And then having done that, you put in maybe some fiberglass, and then you cover up the hole. And then you're going to use a machine, or by hand, you sand it down with a very rough sandpaper, scraping and grinding away. And then you use another sandpaper which is less rough, to smooth it out to a better finish. And then what do you do? You spray on a coat of paint, and then another coat of paint, another coat of paint. And all this paint is flying around, and all this smell of gas is around the place, and those of us who are allergic to it — it does all kinds of things to your breathing system.
But you see, it's the process. And after you finish, oh, so beautiful. Nobody ever knew that there was anything wrong with this. The car has been renewed. You see, the old has been removed. The new has come again. It's being renewed. It starts looking nice again. But in the process, you have to use sharp tools. You have to use banging and chiseling and grinding and scraping. And the Holy Spirit does that when he wants to renew us. He does that too. We have these rust spots coming up when we have exposure to the world. And the Lord has to go to work on us. And maybe it's your husband or your wife that turns out to be the rough sandpaper that he needs to grind off these rust spots, and later on to grind off these rough edges, so that he can make you beautiful. But of course, we are not very grateful at that time to our wife, or to our husband, to our roommate, or whoever happens to be rubbing us all the wrong way, at least we think, and banging all the rust spots off us, and doing all these what we feel to be rather nasty things to us. Right. But without it, how are we going to become beautiful?
And that is why Paul says, "In all things give thanks." Because under God's hand, everything works out for good. If you take it in the right way, you are going to become very beautiful. Of course, if you take it in the wrong way, you might get more ugly, because the thing is not going to work very well on you. Right. But we will come back to this in another message. Important at this point simply to remember: it is the Holy Spirit who is doing his work on us every day, renewing us through various circumstances in life, making us yet more beautiful, conforming us to the image of the Son of God.
The third thing to notice in this connection about renewing: the first thing I said was that renewing implies that the old is present. The second is that the Holy Spirit is the one who works in us. And the third is that what most essentially needs to be renewed is our minds. Our minds need to be renewed. That is to say, the way we think. The way we think is the way we act. Why do we get angry? Why do we lose our tempers? Because the way we think is like this. Our minds cause us to do. It is out of the fullness of the heart that the mouth speaks. Why did you say something unkind? Because you thought something unkind. Really.
So if we want to change our speech or our conduct, clearly the Holy Spirit has to go to work on our minds. Let's turn to Ephesians chapter 4, verse 23. Ephesians 4:23. Well, we can read from verse 22. Ephesians 4:22: "Put off your old man which belongs to your former manner of life" — see, the former manner of life — "and is corrupt through deceitful lusts." And verse 23: "And be renewed in the spirit of your minds." You see, the spirit, the attitude of your mind, has to be changed. And this is what the Holy Spirit has to do with us. And we also know Romans chapter 12, verse 2, of course: "Be not conformed to the world, but be transformed through the renewing of your minds." Made new again.
Now, we have certain attitudes of mind which are rather hard to change. But one thing we must remember very clearly — you and I must remember very clearly — and that is this: the old and the new are incompatible. The old and the new are incompatible. They just cannot coalesce together. They cannot get on with each other. The Lord Jesus made this very plain in Matthew chapter 9, verses 16 and 17, where he speaks about the fact that you cannot take a new patch of cloth and put it on an old garment. You cannot take new wine and pour it into an old wineskin. Because they will — the one will destroy the other. They are not compatible. They just cannot harmonize.
And that is why, when your mind is not renewed, you are going to have a bad time. Because the old and the new are going to fight each other in there. And your mind is going to be in all kinds of trouble. You are going to have a lack of peace, a lack of joy, inner conflict that is going to make life very difficult for you. In fact, life can be quite unbearable.
# The Attitude of Perfection (Part 2)
We continue today in the Word of God. And we have been studying in a series of messages — and I say this again for those of you who are new in our midst, so that you know what we are doing — we have been studying the biblical teaching about what is called regeneration, renewal, and perfection.
Now, regeneration is simply the term used by the Apostle John in John's Gospel, as he conveys to us that aspect of the Lord's teaching that tells us what happens to us when we become true Christians. I have to stress the word "true Christians," because half the world claims to be Christians in some sense or other today. The true Christian is someone who has been regenerated, to use the more popular term: to be born again. Regeneration, then, which is simply a parabolic way of speaking about entering into a new kind of life, the life of God — regeneration, then, is not some mystical term. It simply means that before you lived a life separated from God, a life cut off from God because of your sins, and when you become a true Christian, you are born again. That is, like a newborn child, you enter into a new kind of life. This new kind of life is the life that is now lived by the power of God in you. The power of God in you.
Before, you lived a self-centered kind of life, a life dominated by your selfish interests, a life dominated by the flesh, as the Bible calls it — the flesh being all your physical desires and lusts that dominate your self-centered thinking. That is the old way of life. But when you are born again — a much misused or little understood term — it simply means now you come into a new kind of life, and this new kind of life is no longer self-centered. It is God-centered. It moves away from the self outward towards God and towards other people. And it is motivated and empowered by God, by the Spirit of God. That is what, put very simply, regeneration means. Born again means.
And in this series of messages — and I think they are coming now to the 22nd in this series — these series of messages deal with regeneration, and renewal answers the question: what happens after I become a Christian, a true Christian? Well, the biblical answer is — many people think that when you become a Christian, that is the end of the matter. You know, that now all you do is twiddle your thumbs until you get to heaven. And there is a long wait. And in the meantime, all this time between the time you became a Christian and the time you get to heaven is all more or less wasted while you are waiting to get there. No, no. There is an intensive program that God has for you, in which he renews you. He progressively changes, transforms you, into the plan that he has, the kind of person that he wants you to become. And the beauty of that person is something that boggles the mind, if we could each one become the kind of person that God wants us to be.
So when you become a Christian, that's not the end. It's the beginning. And I'm speaking particularly again to those who are being baptized today. It's the beginning of God's renewing program in which he keeps changing you and changing you, molding you, molding you, and transforming you into the beauty of Christ — a beauty that no plastic surgeon could ever so transform your appearance as to make you look like some Hollywood star. Well, that is nothing, nothing, with what God will do with the likes of you. God is a plastic surgeon that doesn't work on the superficial outside, if you like. But he will change you inwardly until the beauty of Christ will shine out from inside of you to make you radiate with his glory. That is the beauty of God's message.
Renewing, then, can be simply described as God's deep, transforming, beautifying work. And he will not stop this process of renewing us. Once you have become a true Christian, he will not stop this process of renewing us until the perfection of Christ will be manifested in us on that day. On that day. I think that on that day, when we stand in the presence of the Lord, what a community of beautiful people there will be. And I don't mean just outwardly beautiful. Outward beauty all fades away, doesn't it? And you see the hair getting a bit thin on top, you know. You look at a picture of yourself 20 years ago and you say, "Wow, that's not bad." But you hold up the picture to yourself in the mirror — better put it away. Put it away. Don't remind yourself again of those days.
But when God gives us beauty, that beauty not only doesn't fade away, it increases. Have you ever heard of a beautiful person becoming more beautiful? Well, not until you know about the biblical teaching of renewal. There are people who have come to the Lord, and you knew them in the first year when they first came to Christ. And you say, "Wow, quite a transformation." Compared to what that person was before, you see the transformation. But you know, that person gets more beautiful if he walks on with the Lord. Two years later, you look at him again and say, "Hey, how come he's even more beautiful than before?" And five years later, he's even more beautiful. That's why I say, when God goes to work to beautify a person, no plastic surgeon can manage that. Because what the plastic surgeon manages to do will start deteriorating too with time. But what God does shines, as the apostle says, more and more unto the perfect day. That is truly wonderful. More and more unto the perfect day. Weren't they singing about the perfect day just a moment ago? Yes, the perfect day. Isn't that wonderful? Shines more and more.
And that is why we spoke about — and I hope you understand clearly now the terms, because I don't want to use terms that you don't even know what I'm talking about. Regeneration: becoming a true Christian. Renewal: God's program of sanctification, or spiritual beautification. Because when you use "sanctification," nobody knows what you're talking about. These are high, technical theological words. But why not talk about beautification? Until that beauty becomes perfect, we have glorification. That is what perfection is. So regeneration, if you still want to talk in theological terms, regeneration is equivalent to justification. And renewal is equivalent to sanctification. And perfection is equivalent to glorification. So for those of you who are theologically oriented, you've got it all there. Okay? Justification, sanctification, glorification. And I hope it makes you feel good to mouth these great big words that nobody understands.
Now, all these three things have to do with salvation. There are three aspects of salvation. And so the first part, regeneration, is the first stage, the first step of salvation. But never let us think that that is the whole of salvation, because there are some Christians who imagine that to be saved is to be justified, and that's all there is to salvation. Not at all. Salvation has as its first step regeneration, becoming a Christian, the transforming work of God in our lives. The next step is renewal — there is an exciting program, as we said, the program of beautification. And then the third stage is glorification, or perfection, to which we are going, we are heading for.
Now, so I would like us to grasp these three things very clearly. It is put in the Scripture — these three stages are put in another way. We die with him, we live with him, we reign with him. That's another way the Scripture puts it. You can see that, for example, in 2 Timothy chapter 2, verses 11 and 12. We don't need to turn to it now. But 2 Timothy chapter 2, verses 11 and 12, has that: "If we die with him," the Apostle Paul says, "we shall also live with him. And if we endure with him, we shall also reign with him." There you have the three things. Die with him — that's when what happens now as these dear ones go into baptism, they will die with him. As we saw last time, it is not just that Christ dies for us. We are not saved simply because Christ dies for us. We are saved because we die with him. He dies for us, and it's true. But we also must die with him. We have expounded that in detail last time, and you see it here again in 2 Timothy 2:11 and 12.
But if we die with him, we shall also live with him. Now notice: living with him is this part that we have described as renewal, or the Scripture describes as renewal. And then we shall also reign with him. That is glorification. That is perfection. That is why we have to be perfect. Because God will not have anyone reigning with him who is not like him. We would totally misrepresent him if we reign in his name on his behalf and we are not like him. What are we going to be? We are going to become petty little dictators trying to run places in God's name. And you know, there are some pastors, I'm sorry to say, who are like little dictators. They think that they are really somebody. When they become pastors, they get a little drunk with their power. And if their church is a little bit bigger, they think they are really small kings strutting around on the earth. Nobody should have authority in the church of Christ who does not become like him in some measure. We are servants. We are servants. And no one is going to reign who does not know what it is to be a servant. The Lord Jesus said, "I came into the world not to be served, but to serve, and to give my life a ransom for many." And he said the same thing with you.
So, you see how important it is to have this spiritual perfection that is the character of God in us, so that we may reign. That is, to be able to serve him in a manner that rightly represents him. In our last message, I pointed out this very thing. That is why every Christian in the process of renewal models his life on Christ. You are not a true Christian, and you will know that you are not a true Christian, if you do not make it your aim to model your life upon him. And in our last message we saw that the true Christian knows that he is a true Christian precisely because his whole life has as its goal the modeling upon the life of Christ.
Now today these dear ones are going to be baptized. They are taking the first step to model their life on Christ. How? In that Christ died for sin and to sin, so they also will die for sin and to sin. They will die. Notice: it is not just that Christ died for them and for us. It is they taking the positive step on their part to die to sin, to finish with what we saw as the old self-centered way of life. While you are watching that baptism, I hope you bear this in mind. What are they doing? Is this some mysterious thing? No. They are doing in an outward action what is taking place in their inward lives. Namely, they are finishing with — they are dying to — the old self-centered, sin-dominated life. That's what it means. Bear that in mind while you watch the baptism. Otherwise the whole thing becomes a meaningless exercise to you.
Every Christian goes through that step where he finishes with the old way of life. And we will see in other ways how we know whether we are true Christians or not, whether we have finished with the old way of life. But one evidence of it lies precisely in this: that there is the determination to model our lives upon him. As we saw, the scriptural teaching of imitating Christ, from beginning to end, from death with him to life with him now in the present, to glory with him in the future. Because if you don't die with him, you will not live with him. If you don't live with him, you will not be glorified with him. That's as clear as that. There's nothing difficult to understand about all this, I'm sure you will find.
And that modeling of your life upon Christ is the concrete expression of faith. That is what Abrahamic faith is. Abrahamic faith is not just talk about faith. It is not intellectual belief about faith. It is following God's plan for our lives in Christ. That is what discipleship means. What following Christ means. What imitating him means.
Now let me say this. You can believe in Christ in some sense or other without following him. But you cannot follow him without believing in him. So you can believe without following. You can believe without being a disciple. You can believe in some sense or other, just as James says, "Even the devils believe, and they tremble." You can believe that all these things are true without doing anything about it, without obeying the call to life in Christ. But you cannot follow without believing. That is why I pointed out the last time that the imitation of Christ in the biblical sense can only be done through faith. Nobody can imitate Christ in his own strength and in his own wisdom. You try it and you'll see it's impossible. You need faith — Abrahamic faith — to be able to imitate him, to be able to follow him wherever he goes. That is why salvation is by faith. Faith of this kind. Not some profession of faith, not some acceptance of some doctrine. But a practical faith that lives in living relationship with God, following him wherever he leads us.
We need to press on. And I want to deal immediately with this question. The first step in this message is: how do we know whether we are regenerate or not? How do we know whether we are true Christians or not? I find that after a whole series of expositions, I still have people coming to me and still finding that they don't know whether they are truly Christians or not. They still are uncertain. And the rest of this message is going to be occupied with one or two ways — maybe specifically two ways — of how we know for certain, with full assurance, whether we are or are not true Christians. There is a true assurance; there is a false assurance. And many Christians base their lives on a false assurance. We want to look at true assurance. And I hope that nobody here today will come to me afterwards and say, "I still don't know whether I am regenerate or not. I still don't know whether I am born again or not. I still don't know whether I am a true Christian or not." Well, how long are we going to go on without knowing these things? It is essential that today you establish once and for all.
Now the first thing that we can say at once is that the characteristic of your being a non-Christian — at least let me start from the non-Christian position, because at least you know what it is to be a non-Christian — and the non-Christian life has been well described by Paul in Romans chapter 7, particularly verses 19 onwards, where he says that "the good that I would do, that I don't do, and the evil that I don't want to do, I find myself doing." Now all this business about New Year's resolutions and things — you are very familiar with. You resolve that in the new year you will not do this and you will not do that, and you will do this and that, and you find you cannot do it. Now we are all very familiar with this. And every non-Christian knows that it's not that you didn't want to do any good. The point is that when you came to try to do it, you found you couldn't do it. Right? We are talking experience. We are not talking about theory here. We are simply talking about facts.
You could not have seriously ever tried to do anything good as a non-Christian, to try to live consistently a good kind of life, and you found you couldn't really do it. Well, not unless you lower the standard to such a low extent that anyone could do. But even when it's lowered to a very low extent, you would be surprised how difficult it is just to do a few little good things. You find that sin is so powerful and the habit of sin is so powerful that you can't break its grip. It seizes you and binds you with chains so that you cry out, "How come I can't do the good that I want to do?"
So the first mark of regeneration is simply that you are freed from this grip and this power of sin. The first mark of your knowing whether you are born again or not, whether you are a new person or not, is when you do something good and you resolve to do something and you find that you are free to do it. You can do it. In other words, what happens at regeneration, what happens when you died with Christ, is that you were freed from sin. That's what Romans chapter 6, verse 7, says: that when we died with him, we are freed. Not only verse 7, but the whole of Romans 6. The whole of Romans 6 talks about the fact that we are no longer under the dominion of sin. We are no longer slaves of sin. We are free to do what is good.
The Lord Jesus said, "When the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed." That's it. Have you experienced that? You find for the first time you are going to do something, you are going to live a life of righteousness, and you can. Now if you can't — if you still can't — then you know that you have not been regenerate. You are not free from sin. That Romans chapter 6 is not true in your experience. It is false. And no wonder Christians of this kind cannot survive for long, because they will say, "But Christianity is not true." That's right. Christianity will not be true in your experience if you are still simply baptized outwardly, you accept this and that to be true in your mind, but you have not broken with the old way of life, and you have not yielded your life to the lordship of Christ.
Jesus is not absolutely Lord in your life. What we have talked about in paraphrased form is total commitment. Total commitment is simply nothing more or less than the absolute lordship of Christ in your life. That's all it is. We don't have to use the word "commitment." We just use "lordship." It says exactly the same thing. Jesus is Lord in your life. Because when he is Lord in your life, his power comes into your life and enables you to do what in your own strength it is impossible to do. To live a life that is beautiful. No one can do that in their own strength. This is the point. The life in sin, spiritually, morally, is a very ugly life. Since when was a selfish, self-centered person beautiful? Have you ever seen a self-centered person beautiful? "I want this, and I want this, and I want that," and so on. It is all to the self. But a person first becomes beautiful when God so changes him that his life goes outward to others. There is the change.
So if you find freedom from sin a reality in your life, then you know you are regenerate. That is as clear and simple as that. But we will go on to something else by which we can test this matter. And I will go on to another aspect of the Lord's teaching. And this aspect of the Lord's teaching is something that shows us another means, a second means, by which we can examine whether or not we are freed from the power of sin.
But first, before I go on to this, let me make it very clear to you once again that regeneration, renewal, and perfection are three aspects of the same thing, namely three aspects of salvation. And therefore, the reason I'm saying this to you is that you can in fact understand one in terms of the other. What do I mean by that? See, what is true of one will be true of the other. It is impossible to be perfect — that is, to be Christ-like. Perfection is simply Christ-likeness in Scripture, to be like him. It's impossible to be perfect unless we are being renewed. It is impossible to be renewed unless we have been regenerated. So these three things are in sequence, one after the other. But they also share the common elements. They all have to do with salvation.
So the meaning of this is like this: regeneration is the first step in perfection. Perfection is not something far away at the other end which we have to study with binoculars. The moment you are regenerate, you have already got the first ingredient of perfection. Your perfection starts from the very moment — like these dear ones, when they come out of the pool — perfection has already begun. That's what is seen in Hebrews chapter 10, verse 14: "That through one sacrifice Christ has perfected those who are sanctified." Perfected those who are sanctified. Perfected, in this passage in Hebrews 10 that I have expounded before, means to be cleansed, to be freed from sin.
So it's important for you, when we speak about perfection, that you don't think perfection is something far, far away, that maybe on the other side of the grave, then we will talk about perfection. No, no. In the Bible, perfection starts. It starts from the moment you stand up out of that water and enter into newness of life. That's where perfection starts. So you see, regeneration is the first step in perfection. And renewal is the process of being perfected until we become fully perfect. We become fully perfect. So you can see that when we speak about perfection, we are not talking about some far-off thing. We are talking about something that is in progress right now. If you have already been regenerate, you are right now in the process of being perfected. Renewal is the process of perfection — being conformed to the image of Christ.
Now that's important to understand. So what we speak about regarding perfection is also true in our daily lives right now. Okay, now let me try — having given you this introduction — let's go on to that aspect of the Lord's teaching that we want to deal with: the characteristic marks of perfection, or of renewal, or of having been regenerate. Let us turn to Matthew chapter 5, verse 48. Matthew 5:48. And we come back to this verse that we have looked at quite a number of times. But now we're going to look at it in a very practical way. I want to show you how practical the Lord's teaching on perfection is. It's not some airy-fairy, some idealized dream, some castle in the clouds. I'm going to show you that it hits you right now in the way you live.
Matthew 5:48: "You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect." Our life is to be like his. It's a command that we are called to this perfection. Our life is to be modeled on him. But what does this perfection mean in this context? Look at it very carefully. "You therefore." Therefore? What's the "therefore" pointing us to? Well, the "therefore" is pointing us to the previous verses. It is a basic principle in understanding the Bible that you look at a verse in its context. Let's look at the context. Let's go back to verse 43, the beginning of this paragraph, for the context.
And we read here: "You have heard that it was said, 'You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.' But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. For if you love those who love you, what reward have you? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you salute only your brethren, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same?"
Let's look at the other side of verse 48. "Beware of practicing" — chapter 6, verse 1 — "beware of practicing your piety before men in order to be seen by them, for then you will have no reward from your Father who is in heaven." And so this paragraph goes on. Verse 2: "Thus, when you give alms, sound no trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may be praised by men. Truly I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you give alms, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your alms may be in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you."
Now all this is familiar to you, right? Do you get the message? What's the message? The "therefore" — the "therefore" is referring to this whole context. So what's there in this context that the Lord wants to say to us? What does perfection mean? He is telling us therefore what perfection he is talking about. So.