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{Sermons on John 1:47
The Doctrine Confirmed
The Principles and Doctrines of Godliness Are Not Fantasy
Of Regeneration
The Change Made by Regeneration Is an Inward Change}
The change made by regeneration is an inward change. Regeneration is the uniting of dead souls to Christ. “My little children, for whom I am again in the anguish of childbirth until Christ is formed in you!” (Galatians 4:19 ESV). Here note three things. First, the result of this union with Christ is new life (1 John 5:12). He who has the Son has life.
In this regeneration there is a death and a life. With respect to the death, “You have died” (Colossians 3:3). That is, your sins are dead and your old man is dead. “Our old man was crucified with Him” (Romans 6:6).
With respect to the life, there is new sense and motion. There is a living power transferred to souls united to Christ, by which they are enabled to move and act in a holy, spiritual, and heavenly way that was impossible before. Grace is a living thing that energizes and animates all the faculties anew and puts life into all the duties and deeds of the saints. These duties might have been done as only outward actions before, but they were only the dead carcasses of duties rather than the things themselves.
The second thing to note is that this life is a new nature, the saints’ participation in the nature of Christ, and a change of the qualities of the soul. They are new creatures that have experienced the new birth. The Second Adam,162 as well as the first, brings forth his children in His own likeness. The divine birth is the bringing forth of the divine nature (2 Peter 1:4). As they said vainly, “The gods have come down in the likeness of men” (Acts 14:11), it may here be said truly that men are raised up in the likeness of God, renewed after His image, and made partakers of His holiness. Those who treat this change as anything less than becoming a new creature make regeneration to be as much of a complete contradiction as the popish transubstantiation.163 Bread is made a god, and yet it is bread still. An animal is made a saint, and yet remains an animal still. A god is hidden by the properties of bread, and a saint is hidden by the properties of a pig.
The third thing to note is that this new nature is a glorious nature that contains in it a divine light. By this light, the saints are enabled to understand and look into the depths of eternity, the invisible things of God, and the mysteries of the glorious Gospel. They are enabled to understand divine love, faith, hope, and the whole train of glorious graces together with the principles of righteousness, truth, mercy, charity, and so on. By these virtues and principles, they are made capable of enjoying fellowship and communion with God, of bearing His Name, of showing forth His virtues and praises to the world, and of doing His will. In sum, it is the image of God and the epistle of Christ written on the tablets of their hearts. And, this is the significance and meaning of scriptural expressions such as “new creatures,” “partakers of the divine nature,” “partakers of His holiness,” or “children of light.”
What a strange piece of vanity we would make of the Scriptures if all of these various high expressions were to signify no more than that empty and pitiful thing that carnal people deem their religion or godliness. Regarding that ignorant, stupid, formal, brutish generation that has no more of the knowledge of God than a heathen, no more of the life of God than a log, and no more of religion than to say over a prayer by rote—they are so far from being partakers of the new nature that they do not even know whether there is any such thing or what it is. How could such a blind, senseless multitude ever be imagined to be the people whom the Scripture means by “new creatures,” “the children of God,” “the children of light,” or “the images of God”? Much more than that: there are those who live according to the flesh, and are proud, covetous, sensual, filthy, and beastly in their ways of life. But, they have been baptized and have passed under that sacramental “regeneration.” Now and then, they say “I repent” or “God forgive me.” How could these also be children of God and have that new birth that is necessary to their seeing the kingdom of God? Who can, with any pretense of reason, imagine it? Those who can make themselves believe this have so much abandoned rational thought that, in time, they may even believe that the devil is divine, that Hell is Heaven, and they may even take up the Koran as their Bible and view the Scriptures as a fable.164
Sinners, think for yourselves. Is there any such thing as the new birth? Can there be a new birth without a new life? Does Christ bring forth dead children? Or do dry bones live [while still dry bones]? Does the Gospel bring forth monstrous births: children without eyes, without a head, without a heart, or with the heart of a beast under the face of a man? Does the Gospel bring forth serpents, vipers, dogs, or pigs for its children? And must the kingdom of Heaven be peopled with such inhabitants as these? If these are the children of the kingdom, where or who are the children of this world? The Nathaniels who are the Israelites indeed and in whom there is no guile—are they the children of this world? Are the monsters the true seed and the saints spurious? Are the monsters the sons and the saints illegitimate?
Or if you wish, reject these vile ones of the earth as not of the seed, and take only the best of carnal people who have the fairest face of religion and form of holiness, but without the inside, the new nature. Are these saints? Is the shadow the substance and the substance only a shadow? The inward life of godliness is the spirit and soul of Christianity. To say that it is just imaginary and that the outside is all there is to Christianity is reasoning that is just as valid as to affirm that a picture is a man and that a living man is just a picture. It is also theology just as good as I myself heard preached at Oxford thirty years ago by a zealous advocate for the lawfulness of sports on the Lord’s Day. He was preaching on keeping the Sabbath and distinguishing between the substantial and incidental duties of that day. He said that preaching is a religious ceremony and praying is a religious ceremony. But bowing at the Name of Jesus, standing at the Creed and Gospel, holy and religious feasting, and holy and religious dancing were the substance.165 Hence it follows:
Regeneration Is a Genuine Change
{Sermons on John 1:47
The Doctrine Confirmed
The Principles and Doctrines of Godliness Are Not Fantasy
Of Regeneration
The Change Made by Regeneration Is an Inward Change
Regeneration Is a Genuine Change}
Regeneration is not an imaginary, artificial, or counterfeit change. There is a distinction made between people and people. The regenerate and the unregenerate are not one and the same any more than the living and the dead.
Regeneration Is a Change of Basic Nature
{Sermons on John 1:47
The Doctrine Confirmed
The Principles and Doctrines of Godliness Are Not Fantasy
Of Regeneration
The Change Made by Regeneration Is an Inward Change
Regeneration Is a Change of Basic Nature}
Regeneration is not a mere change from one substance to another, where the two substances or things are related to one another, such as justification and adoption. Regeneration is a change of basic substance and nature, and the old and new substances have different natures and are not at all related to one another.
Regeneration Is Not a Superficial Change
{Sermons on John 1:47
The Doctrine Confirmed
The Principles and Doctrines of Godliness Are Not Fantasy
Of Regeneration
The Change Made by Regeneration Is an Inward Change
Regeneration Is Not a Superficial Change}
Regeneration is not a superficial change or merely outward, going only skin-deep. It is not, as it is said concerning baptism, merely the washing away of the filth of the flesh and the cleansing of the outside,166 while leaving lust to reign within. Regeneration is the change of the person and not barely of the external manner of life.
Regeneration Implies an Expectation of Godliness
{Sermons on John 1:47
The Doctrine Confirmed
The Principles and Doctrines of Godliness Are Not Fantasy
Of Regeneration
The Change Made by Regeneration Is an Inward Change
Regeneration Implies an Expectation of Godliness}
The change worked by regeneration implies an expectation of all godliness. We may often find out what is the purpose of something from its form. We may know the reason something was made much better if we understand how it is put together. God’s expectations may be seen from His activities. We may understand much of our work by observing God’s work on us. Since God made people living souls, that tells us He expects other things from them than from dead logs and stones. Since God made people capable of reasoning, that tells us that He expects people should live other lives than dogs or pigs. In like manner, when He makes people Christians and partakers of the divine nature, He makes it obvious that He expects that they should live different lives than other people.
The new life, or life of godliness, is made evident by our new birth, or new natures. The regenerate “are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them” (Ephesians 2:10 NASB). Created for good works indicates two things:
Intended for good works
Made capable of good works
{Sermons on John 1:47
The Doctrine Confirmed
The Principles and Doctrines of Godliness Are Not Fantasy
Of Regeneration
The Change Made by Regeneration Is an Inward Change
Regeneration Implies an Expectation of Godliness
Intended for Good Works}
In making Christians new people, God intended them to do good works. This was God’s mind and meaning when He foreordained that they should walk in them. He did not set up such a light in people to be put under a bushel basket (Matthew 5:15). He did not bestow such a talent on people to be bound up in a handkerchief (Luke 19:20).167
{Sermons on John 1:47
The Doctrine Confirmed
The Principles and Doctrines of Godliness Are Not Fantasy
Of Regeneration
The Change Made by Regeneration Is an Inward Change
Regeneration Implies an Expectation of Godliness
Fitted for Good Works}
In making Christians new people, God equipped them for good works; He created them capable of doing good works. That is, they were brought forth with a holy nature and endued with divine light, holy principles, powers, emotions, dispositions, and inclinations—all of a kind that equipped them for an active, holy life. The divine and excellent structure of this new creature signifies two things: first, what this life is intended to be; and second, that this intended life is an excellent life, indeed. There is something sure in this godly life. God did not make people new for nothing, but for something of worth and real excellency. Otherwise, He would not have paid such a high cost168 in preparing people for it. If there were no other godly life than that which the carnal world counts godliness, no new creation would have been needed to equip people for it. What is there in the whole frame of the religion of most people that a carnal person may not reach to? As for the devotional part of it, what great difficulty is there in saying or hearing a prayer or observing days, rites, customs, and so on? May not a tax-collector do the same? Indeed, may not a harlot, drunkard, or idiot do the same? Such devotions will neither disturb their lusts, nor will their lusts interfere with or disable such devotions. As for the righteousness of it: to love those who love them, to be good neighbors, to not be extortionists, adulterers, and so on—there is not so very much in that. As Christ asked His disciples, do not even the Pharisees do the same? What do you do more than others? (Matthew 5:46–47). What exceptional or excellent thing do you do? God has done exceptionally well to you: you are fearfully169 and wonderfully made, and as it is true of the natural birth, how much more is it true of your new birth? You are carefully and precisely made, not in the lower parts of the earth, but in the highest heavens; you were born from above. God has done more for you than for others; what do you do more than others? To this question, it may be that some would have answered that there is no more to be done; all that is done more than others is mere fantasy or conceit. But beloved, when you look at that sapless,170 lifeless, empty way of religion with which others are content, I think your brains should demand thus: What? God has made me anew and made me partaker of the divine nature and of the life of God—and for no more than this? God has given such a glorious Gospel, raised up such a mighty Savior who has shed such precious blood, and sent forth such a glorious Spirit. He has commissioned such multitudes of heavenly ambassadors to preach, persuade, beseech, exhort, and to travail in birth171 with me until Christ has been formed in me. Has God done all this to bring me to no better life than this? Surely there is something further for which the Lord has paid all of this cost and built this structure.
Study this new birth. Study this new creation more thoroughly. See how it pleads for a most holy, heavenly, and spiritual way of life, a way of life that is a radical change from the old and contains the seeds of further growth. If you do not see this, then let godliness pass for a fantasy forever. Only let the regenerate live precisely according to their new nature, and if that life is not the exact godly life we contend with you about, then call us what you wish.
162Second Adam: Christ (Romans 5:19; 1 Corinthians 15:45).
163popish transubstantiation: a Roman Catholic superstition that the bread and wine used in the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper are actually changed into the physical body and blood of Jesus Christ, yet appear to the senses to remain bread and wine.
164This is a serious warning. God often gives unrepentant sinners up to all manner of worse sin, depravity, irrationality, and foolishness.
165It appears that this is a reference to the “Book of Sports,” which detailed recreational activities to be done on the Sabbath. This was a use of civil and ecclesiastical law to oppress those who believed in keeping Sunday, the Sabbath, holy according to the Fourth Commandment. That which is described as preached at Oxford is such nonsense that it could hardly be equaled by a drunken moron.
166This is a reference to: “There is also an antitype which now saves us—baptism (not the removal of the filth of the flesh, but the answer of a good conscience toward God), through the resurrection of Jesus Christ” (1 Peter 3:21 NKJV).
167Alleine slightly confuses Matthew 25:18, which used talents as the monetary unit, and Luke 19:20, which used minas (1/20 of a talent). This type of difference in narratives shows that the Lord Jesus must have given His teachings and parables multiple times, adapting as needed to the situation and audience.
168The cost was the price our Lord Jesus Christ paid from His incarnation at conception to His resurrection. Consider, for example, His forty-day fast and temptation, and especially, the crucifixion.
169fearfully: as used here and in Psalm 139:14 (KJV, NKJV, ESV, NASB, WEB), done in a manner that inspires astonishment, reverence, awe, and fear of the Lord.
170sapless: as a dead tree with no sap in it.
171See Galatians 4:19.
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