Regeneration and Impersonal Love; 1 John
5:1
Titus 3:5 NASB
“He saved us, not on the basis of deeds which we have done in righteousness,
but according to His mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewing by the
Holy Spirit.”
We have phase one salvation
because we believe in Christ—faith alone in Christ alone. In Titus 3:5 we see
that there is a breakdown of this concept of being saved. It can be taken from
the Greek that this is a synonymous repetition that the washing of regeneration
is the renewal by the Holy Spirit; it is the Holy Spirit who regenerates us. So
regeneration precedes full salvation. In other words, there are logical steps
that precede salvation. What we can say is that first perfect righteousness is
imputed to the believer. At that same instant and instantaneously God declares
that individual to be justified. He is declared to be
just not because he is personally righteous or moral but because he has
received the perfect righteousness of Christ. We are clothed in His righteousness, we have received that imputed righteousness,
and God the Father looks at us in terms of Christ’s perfect righteousness. So
first there is the imputation of righteousness, then there is justification by
faith alone, then we have at that instant regeneration and we receive a new
human spirit and are then spiritually alive. That is the process.
What has happened is that
teachers have come along who are teaching that regeneration comes before faith.
There are two passages that they base that on and we want to ask what the Bible
teaches about this.
In Ephesians 2:1 Paul
states: NASB “And you were dead in your trespasses and sins.” That
is a reminder to the Ephesians that they were born spiritually dead. That
doesn’t mean anything else other than that before salvation they were still positionally in sin; after salvation they were positionally in Christ. [2] “in
which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to
the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the
sons of disobedience.” The “in which” refers to sin, so verse 2 is a
description of sin, of the word “sins,” and it concludes with the fact that
“this is the spirit that now works in the sons of disobedience. [3] Among them … ” To whom does the “them” refer to? The
sons of disobedience. So verse 2 explains the last word in verse 1;
verse 3 explains the last phrase in verse 2.
“ … Among them we too all formerly lived in the lusts of our flesh,
indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children
of wrath, even as the rest.” The English Bible ends that were with a period but
the Greek does not. [4] “But God, being rich in mercy,
because of His great love with which He loved us.” The subject here is God; it
is not back in verse 1. Verse 1 is dependent upon what happens in verse 4. Paul
piles up all of these clauses at the beginning to give a little background
before he hits the main idea, which is God. Then he has a relative clause
following “God” which is describing God—“ being rich
in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us.” [5] “even when we were dead in our
transgressions, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been
saved), [6] and raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenly
{places} in Christ Jesus.” There are three key verbs in vv. 5, 6: God is the
subject; “made us alive together with Christ”; “Christ raised us up He
together”; “made us sit together in the heavenly places.” That is a threefold
compound verb for what God does for us at salvation. Then we have a purpose
clause in verse 7: “so that in the ages to come He might show the surpassing
riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.” So v. 7 describes
the ultimate long-range purpose of our salvation.
Notice something at the
end of verse 5. Following the first of the three compound verbs we have the
parenthetical thought: “by grace you have been saved.” God made us alive
together with Christ and Paul says, “By grace you have been saved.” That is the
main thought of this whole section from v. 1 to v. 9. Grace means it is a free
gift; it is not due to anything that we do. God says it is ours whether or not
we take care of it, no strings attached.
Review: The main subject
of the lengthy sentence in the original Greek is God in verse 4. There is a
three-fold compound verb: being made alive together, raised together, and
seated together. There is an independent, grammatically unrelated clause that
applies to being made alive together, the action of God, and that is by grace,
and is summarised by faith.
That idea—by grace you
have been saved through faith—is then picked up and expanded, sort of like an
overlap. Then Paul is going to add the idea that you were dead in trespasses
but it is by grace you have been saved. Then he is going to pick that idea up
again in verse 8. Eph 2:8 NASB “For by grace you have been saved
through faith; and that not of yourselves…” “Faith” is a feminine noun in the
Greek; “that” is a demonstrative singular pronoun that is in the neuter gender.
A pronoun must always agree with its antecedent in case, number and gender. So
a neuter gender pronoun cannot refer to a feminine gender noun. The problem is
that many popular teachers say that the “that” refers to faith, and they come
up with abstruse reasons that have nothing to do with Greek grammar in order to
demonstrate that, and their conclusion is that the faith is the gift, i.e.
“that [faith] is not of yourselves, it is the gift of
God…” According to that your faith is a gift of God, and the kind of faith that
is exercised at salvation is a “special kind” of faith, i.e. “saving” faith.
What they do, then, is place the significance on the kind of faith exercised at
salvation and not the object of faith.
It is the object of faith
that makes it salvific. The reason we are saved is
not because we have a special kind of faith but because our faith is directed
to the proper object of faith which is the Lord Jesus Christ. The word that is
used for faith throughout the Scriptures is the same word that is used for the
every-day use of faith. It is not a special quality of faith that saves, it is
a faith directed toward the proper object, which is the saving work of the Lord
Jesus Christ.
If we look at the
construction of verse 8 we have the statement: “For by grace you have been
saved,” which is picked up from verse 5, “through faith.” The “through faith”
is a completely new idea that is not germane to the subject of the verse. The
subjective of the verse is “For by grace you have been saved.” Then we have,
“and that not of yourselves.” It is the grace salvation that is not of yourselves; it is the grace salvation that is a free gift of
God. What we learn from Ephesians 2:8, 9 is that the end result of our
salvation is “by grace”; that these verses do not teach that faith precedes
regeneration. Regeneration precedes the final result, the salvation.
In 1 John chapter five
John is still talking about the abiding Christian life and avoiding shame and
embarrassment at the judgment seat of Christ. One of the major themes that John
has introduced in chapters three and four is that the believer must abide in
Christ in order to come to a position of knowing God. (Knowing God is not
another phrase for salvation) As we come to understand the dimensions of salvation
we begin to appreciate who God is more and more and we begin to fall in love
with Him. Knowledge comes only after we are saved and after a certain level of
spiritual growth and understanding of the Scriptures, and then as we come to
know Him we come to love Him. This means we have to understand his Word, know
His Word and apply His Word or we don’t really love God and we don’t love one
another. We have to reach that stage of spiritual maturity otherwise there is
going to be some embarrassment at the judgment seat of Christ.
In 5:1-3 John is
concluding what he began in verse
1 John 5:1 NASB
“Whoever believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God, and whoever loves
the Father loves the {child} born of Him.” The issue in the first part of this
verse is the Greek construction. He begins with a present participle—“Who ever
believes that Jesus in the Christ is born of God.” The main verb is “is born.”
Notice how it is translated in the English as a present tense. In Greek it is a
perfect passive indicative. The perfect means it refers to an action that has
been completed in the past. Whenever there is a perfect tense it emphasises
either the completion of the action, which is called an extensive perfect, or
it is emphasizing the present results of that completed past action; that is
called an intensive perfect. This is emphasising the present consequences of
regeneration. You were born again at some time in the past when you put your
faith alone in Christ alone and at that instant you were regenerated. So he is
emphasising the present reality of a past action, and it is translated in the
English as a present tense; but in actuality it is a perfect tense in the
Greek. That perfect tense is preceded in the context by a present participle,
and here is where things get a little complicated. Participles don’t have time per se, they are all related to the time
aspect in the main verb. So an aorist participle precedes the action of the
main verb. A present tense action goes along with the same time as the action
of the verb, and a future tense would come after the action of the verb. Well
this is a present participle and that indicates that believing would be viewed
as cotemporaneous with being born again. That doesn’t really tell us anything.
The problem is that we get a number of people who come along and look at this
perfect tense and they want to say that is past action. What that means is that
we are regenerated first and then we believe afterwards. They interpret this
verse to relate to phase one salvation because of the phrase “believes that
Jesus is the Christ.”
This grammar is not
uncommon in 1 John—a perfect tense main verb preceded
by a present tense participle. What we have to do is look at the other examples
of this in the Greek to see exactly how John uses it.
1 John
1 John 3:9 NASB
“No one who is born [prefect tense] of God practices sin, because His seed
abides in him; and he cannot sin, because he is born of God.” So a consequence
of being born of God is that we cannot sin—while abiding.
1 John 4:7 NASB
“Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God; and everyone who loves
[present participle] is born of God and knows God.” Here we have the same
construction. There it seems like loving is a consequence of being born.
1 John 5:1 NASB
“Whoever believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God, and whoever loves
the Father loves the {child} born of Him.” But if we look at the other examples, that seems to indicate that Jesus is the Christ is
a consequence of being born of God; that faith comes after regeneration.
1 John 5:4, same
construction: NASB “For whatever is born of God overcomes the world;
and this is the victory that has overcome the world—our faith.” Because we are
born of God a consequence is overcoming the world.
1 John 5:18 NASB “We
know that no one who is born of God sins; but He who was born of God keeps him,
and the evil one does not touch him.” So not sinning would be something that is
a consequence of being born of God.
Those are the verses where
we have this perfect tense of ginao
[ginaw], the verb for regeneration. The key verses are 1
John 2:29; 4:7; 5:1. Looking at them again we see the phrase “the one who
practices righteousness,” present active participle, “is born of Him.” So the
practicing righteousness here looks like it is a consequence of being born; 1
John 4:7, loving a consequence of being born; 5:1, whoever believes that Jesus
is the Christ is born of God, so believing seems to be the result of being
born.
Some observations: First,
in
What John is saying in 5:1
is exactly what he has been saying in
Therefore what John is
saying here is not phase one salvation. He is looking at the person born of God
in each of these verses, a person who is in the family of God and who is
continuing to abide. He is assuming this is a growing believer. In the other
two verses he says the person born of God doesn’t sin; he is assuming the
person born of God and abiding doesn’t sin. He is looking at a person who is
manifesting his new birth. There are certain things that are going to
characterise a person who is manifesting his position in the family of God. And
that is, they are going to love their brother, they are not going to sin, and
they are going to continue to believe that Jesus is the Messiah. But a
disobedient believer in reversionism, living in
carnality, walking according to the flesh and not paying attention to the truth
of Scripture, then he is going to hate his brother, is not going to practice
righteousness, and it going to get caught up in false doctrine and may even
reject the deity of Christ and that he is the Messiah. That makes sense when we
look down to verse 13 where John says: “These things I have written to you who
believe in the name of the Son of God, so that you may know that you have
eternal life.” The point is there were those who weren’t continuing to believe
that Jesus was the Messiah. As a result of that John is addressing them as one evidence of their carnality.
Faith comes first, then
regeneration. Neither Ephesians 2 nor 1 John 5 can support the pernicious
doctrine that regeneration precedes faith. If regeneration precedes faith then
our volition is not involved at all in our salvation. That goes along with the
hyper-Calvinist doctrine of unconditional election, that God just chooses us
and then is going to regenerate us, and then He is going save us and we don’t
have anything to do with it at all. It happens because God made the decision
and our will wasn’t involved at any point. The concept of regeneration
preceding faith isn’t in John’s mind at all but we had to address it because that
is the error that we face in our modern times.
What John is saying is
that whoever is manifesting their position in the family of God is going to
love one another. This is what he goes on to emphasise in the second half of
the verse: ‘…whoever loves the Father loves the {child} born of Him.” He is
still dealing with what it means and how it is evidenced that we love God.
1 John 5:2 NASB
“By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and observe
His commandments.” We know we love God when we do what He says to do. So we are
ruled by an external system of integrity—the character of God—and we live according
to that external system of integrity which is God’s plan for our lives. In
order to live according to that plan we have to know it. In order to know it we
have to make the knowledge of God and His Word the highest priority in life. So
John follows a rigorous stair-step of logic here and he concludes it in 1 John
5:3 NASB “For this is the love God of [for God: objective genitive],
that we keep His commandments; and His commandments are not burdensome.”
1. The person who loves God also loves the child of God
whom He has begotten.
2. The person who loves the child of God loves God and
keeps His commandments.
3. Love for God consists in keeping His commandments, therefore love for God consists in making the
knowledge of His commandments and the application of those commandments the
highest priority in life.
4. To get to that point requires a tremendous amount of
spiritual maturity. That is why the issue in all of this is maturity. Loving
God and loving one another only happens when we have reached a level of
spiritual adulthood. It doesn’t happen when a person is a spiritual child. Only
by becoming a spiritual adult can we be sure that we are going to make it at
the judgment seat of Christ, not lose rewards and not embarrass ourselves and
the plan of God.
5. It doesn’t have anything to do with gaining salvation
or the approbation of God so that we will spend eternity in heaven. It has
everything to do with glorifying Him so that we are demonstrating the opposite characteristics
of Satan in Satan’s fall. Satan said the creature can exalt himself, be
absorbed with himself, and do it his own way and be
successful. God is demonstrating through the church age that the only way the
creature can have real success in life and in eternity is to be completely oriented
to God’s plan, to love God, and to manifest just the opposite characteristics
of Satan. Not arrogance but humility; not hatred but through genuine love.