The Culture of Hope Founded on Faith
Regeneration is God’s response to our faith in Jesus Christ. When God created the world and everything in it, He created us in His image. But because we are naturally born spiritually dead in sin, His image in us is marred. When we accept His Son as our Savior, we are born again, our human spirit recreated back into the image of God.
Ephesians 2:1-4 explains regeneration in terms of a complete about-face from the bondage of sin: “You hath he quickened (made alive), who were dead in trespasses and sins. Wherein in time past ye walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now works in the children of disobedience among whom also we all had our conversation in times past in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind. And we were by nature the children of wrath, even as others.”
God replaces our sin nature with His living presence within us along with His spiritual and eternal life. Titus 3:5-7 says: “Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to His mercy He saved us, by the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Ghost which He shed on us abundantly through Jesus Christ our Savior; that being justified by His grace, we should be made heirs according to the hope of eternal life.”
It is through this new life that we are able to have fellowship with God. “Even when we were dead in sins, He hath quickened us together with Christ (by grace ye are saved) and hath raised us up together to make us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus that in the ages to come he might show the exceeding riches of his grace in his kindness toward us through Christ Jesus. For by grace are ye saved, through faith, and that not of yourselves. It is the gift of God; not of works, lest any man should boast” (Eph. 2:5-9).
It is through the power of God in us that we are able to operate within this new life, in spite of the unredeemed body we continue to inhabit while on earth. Our new life in Christ is reflected by the way we live: “Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature. Old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new” (2 Cor. 5:17). “For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them” (Eph. 2:10).
