Reconciliation, regeneration, and sanctification, do you know the difference? Needham dwells on regeneration in this section.
This is a review of Birthright by David Needham with study questions added to turn them into lessons. These lessons are part of a wider study on Sanctification by Faith which has as its goal the fulfillment of Gal 5:16
But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not carry out the desire of the flesh.
I’ve set these studies in a specific order so that all may easily build on the foundation of Christ with the finest materials - gold, silver, and precious stones (1 Cor 3:10-13). God has gifted the Church with amazing evangelists, pastors, and teachers to help us in this building project (Eph 4:11-16). I invite you to study along with me. You can see an overview of the complete Sanctification by Faith study here. To go to the start of the current lesson (Birthright) click here.
Now may the God of peace Himself sanctify you entirely; and may your spirit and soul and body be preserved complete, without blame at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. 1 Thess 5:23
The Apostle to the Gentiles Looks at Sin
So much for the Apostle John. But what about Paul? What about his claim to be “the foremost” of all sinners (1 Timothy 1:15)?
It’s true he used those words. So then, what hope is there for any one of us? But wait. We dare not miss the fact that he clearly had in mind his life before he was born again.
Paul was “formerly a blasphemer, a persecutor, and a man of violence” (1:13, italics mine). Paul could think of no sin worse than persecuting Jesus and his people, even though he had done it in ignorance. Paul’s whole point was, if God’s grace had reached low enough to save him, “the foremost of sinners”—after what he had done—God could save anyone!
The apostle touched on the same idea in 1 Corinthians 15:9 when he said he was “the least of the apostles.” Why? Because he currently was such a sinner? No! Rather it was because he had “persecuted the church.” Probably this same thought was in Paul’s mind in Ephesians 3:8, “I am the very least of all the saints.”*
*Footnote Paul’s use of the present tense, “I am the foremost [sinner],” and “I the very least [saint]” (1 Tim. 1:15; 1 Cor. 15:9; Eph. 3:8), points not to the present sinfulness of his life, but to the fact he still deserved these claims in light of sinful acts committed thirty years before. If by using the present tense he had wished to expose his present wickedness, one would expect he would have chosen more recent examples. Another passage erroneously used to support the essential sinfulness of Christians is James 4:8, “Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded,” as though this were an appropriate description of believers—including James himself. His earlier reference to double-minded individuals (James 1:8) demonstrates that James assumed the bulk of his readers were not double-minded (cf. 1:1–7; 5:7–12), any more than the bulk of his readers were the wicked rich described in 5:1–4 or the “adulterers” of 4:4. Nevertheless in light of the danger of falling into sin, James concludes his book by making reference to the importance of rescuing the believer who “wanders from the truth” (5:19–20). It is commonly taught that the beatitude, “Blessed are the poor in spirit,” refers to believers who are aware of their spiritual bankruptcy (Matt. 5:3). Would it not be more reasonable to assume Jesus was expressing that which was also true of himself when he said, “I am gentle and humble in heart” (Matt. 11:29)? The next beatitude, “Blessed are those who mourn,” is assumed to refer to mourning over one’s sins (Matt. 5:4). Not only is there nothing in the context to support this idea, but five verses later we find Jesus’ words, “Blessed are the pure in heart.” Jesus was “a man of sorrows” (Isa. 53:3, NIV). He both grieved and wept. If God intended us to assume automatically that “mourning” referred to sorrow due to sin, it is surprising that none of Paul’s references to his sorrows were due to continuing sin in his own life. (See comments later in this chapter regarding Rom 7:24.) Some argue that since in the Lord’s Prayer, “forgive us our debts” is preceded by “give us this day our daily bread,” we must assume Jesus expected sinning in the Christian life to be as continual as our need of daily bread (Luke 11:3–4; cf. Matt. 6:11–12). Rather, the parallel Jesus made was between God forgiving us and our forgiving our debtors. In both cases, forgiveness happens whenever it is needed. |
Some have pressed their point using Philippians 2:3. “There,” they say, “Paul urged believers to see themselves as worse sinners than anyone else because the passage says ‘regard others better’ than themselves.” But in view of the immediate reference to Jesus and the overall emphasis on humility, the idea of “better” in the sense of “more important” (NASB), not only fits the context, but also agrees with the meaning of the Greek word used.*
*Footnote The Greek word huperechontas was more commonly used to express the idea of prominence, importance, rather than relative moral goodness (cf. Phil. 3:8; 1 Peter 2:13). |
Proper humility does not in itself require a person to believe they are the worst sinner in the world. Paul also reminded each of us “not to think of yourself more highly than you ought to think, but to think with sober judgment.” May we never forget that whatever worth we find in ourselves is there only by the grace of God (Romans 12:3; cf. 1 Corinthians 4:7).
Still others would argue from Romans 7:14–25 that Paul’s life continued to be marked by personal moral failure—“for I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do.… Wretched man that I am!” To add support to the view that Paul believed this wretched state is the expected, normal Christian experience, they would point to the inward groaning that Paul described as he longed for the day when his body would be redeemed (Romans 8:23–25). They also would rush us to Galatians 5:17 to prove that for now, at least, this sad state is unavoidable.[1]
“But take heart. It’s not all that bad,” they would add, “remember you have been justified. God sees you as righteous. And that’s what really counts. So quit expecting so much out of yourself. Until you get that glorified body, you will keep right on sinning—just like Paul.”
This is no small matter!
If this view of Paul’s perspective is correct—if this is the normal, to-be-expected Christian life—we must draw two conclusions:
First, Christians are wrong in hoping for even partial victory over sin. Instead, they should anticipate total failure. Why? Because total failure is what Romans 7:14–25 is all about. Read those verses to see if you can find even a moment of victory. In addition, we must resign ourselves to the wretchedness he described, with our only hope being that day when we will be rescued from our physical bodies. (For additional clarification of the meaning of Romans 7:7–25, please see Appendix.)
Is this really what Paul meant? Let’s listen to his answers in the verses before and after Romans 7.
Should we continue to sin in order that grace may abound? By no means! How can we who died to sin go on living in it?…We know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be rendered inactive.…* But thanks be to God that you, having once been slaves of sin…having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness.… For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death.… So then…if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live (Romans 6:1–2, 6, 17–18; 8:2, 12–13).**
*Footnote Translating the Greek word katargeo as “rendered inactive,” is in agreement with most scholars, even though many English versions use the word destroy. See F. F. Bruce, The Epistle of Paul to the Romans (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Pub. Co., 1963), 138; The New International Dictionary of N. T. Theology, vol. 1, ed. Colin Brown (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, 1975), 73; John R. H. Stott, Men Made New, An Exposition of Romans 5–8 (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 1966), 44. Stott comments, “It means rather to ‘make ineffective or inactive’, and is used of unproductive land and unfruitful trees. They are still there. They have not been destroyed. But they are barren.” John R. H. Stott, The Cross of Christ (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 1986), 240. |
**Footnote Regarding Rom 6, John Stott writes, “if we have died with Christ and risen with Christ, it is inconceivable that we should go on living in sin.” He then comments that “Each [of the two parallel sections of Rom 6] elaborates the same general theme, that sin is inadmissible in the Christian.” (Stott, Men Made New, An Exposition of Romans 5–8, 30.) |
Why is it in our eagerness to paint the darkest picture we can, we choose to ignore Paul’s important flow of thought? Yes, our hope in the future redemption of our bodies is delicious to think about. And yes, in our flesh (Romans 7:18) there will be nothing but failure. That’s all true—but I am sure Paul would have shouted out to those who so misuse Romans 7, “You are not in the flesh anymore! If you choose to limit God by depending on your own flesh-level resources to fulfill his law, you will make the same agonizing discovery I did. You will find yourself locked in as ‘a captive to the law of sin.’*
*Footnote Because Paul’s concept of himself as expressed in Rom 7:14, “but I am of flesh, sold in bondage to sin,” is in direct contradiction with Rom 8:5–13, it certainly was not a description of Paul’s present state as he was writing, but rather he was standing in the shoes of a pious Old Covenant believer who was struggling with the demands of God’s moral law without a personal awareness of Rom 6 or 8. See D. Martin Lloyd-Jones, Romans, the Law: Its Functions and Limits, Exposition of Chapters 7:1–8:4 (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, 1974). Harrison assumes that Paul was describing a hypothetical situation reflecting the despair of a Christian who still lives as though he were under the law. Everett F. Harrison, “Romans,” Expositor’s Bible Commentary, vol. 10 (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, 1976), 84–85. (See Appendix.) |
Why not see yourself as you truly are? You are not a captive to sin anymore! You have been set free. The ‘law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death.’ You are free to ‘walk’ and ‘live’ under this greater law—the law of the Spirit. So get busy and ‘walk by the Spirit.’ The result will be God’s moral law actually lived out in you” (Romans 8:2–6; cf. Galatians 5:16, NASB. Note: The negative in this verse is emphatic in the Greek text—“you will by no means fulfill the desire of the flesh”).
Freedom from the Law of Sin
In light of these verses, it would be wrong to conclude that Paul understood our freedom from the law of sin as being based only upon the doctrine of justification—that God sees us “in Christ” as the one who fulfilled the requirement of the law for us. Remember the screen example used earlier?
The freedom described in Romans 8 is not extrinsic (the way God sees me), while all the time I am intrinsically the “wretched man” that Paul has just described.* Instead, the emphasis in the verses that follow Romans 7 underline the truth of an interior miracle that has infused a new quality of life within. It is Christ in us (See especially Romans 8:9). The contrasts we find could not be sharper as we move from Romans 7:7–24 to Romans 8:1–10.
*Footnote Seifrid, representative of this view, states, “The salvation which Paul describes in Rom 8 is extrinsic, building on the earlier argument. Deliverance from ‘the law of sin and death’ is an act of God external to the believer (Romans 8:2). ‘The law of the Spirit of life’ which frees the believer is based on the resurrection of the incarnate Son whom God sent to overcome sin (Romans 8:3). God will raise to life those who belong to Christ, just as he raised Christ from the dead (Romans 8:11).” I assume that by this Seifrid meant that the despair expressed in Rom 7:14–25 has no answer outside of the eventual redemption of the believer’s body. Seifrid notes that the word fulfilled in Romans 8:4 is a passive form of the verb pointing to the truth that since “believers will continue to sin as long as they remain in this life,” that the fulfilling is “realized by an external act by God in Romans 8:2, 3, 11.” Later he states, “The juxtaposition of a description of extrinsically accomplished salvation in Rom 8:1–4 with the intrinsic plight of the ego described in 7:14–25 makes it clear that the argument of Rom 7, and of 7:14–25 in particular, is related to Paul’s earlier explication of ‘justification by faith alone’ ” (Rom 1:16–5:21). Mark A. Seifrid, “The Subject of Rom 7:14–25, Novum Testamentum XXXIV 4 (1992):331–32. See also Francis Schaeffer, True Spirituality (Wheaton: Tyndale House, 1971), 56. Though Packer would appear to hold the same perspective by stating “the holiest saint is never more than a justified sinner and never sees himself any other way,” (p. 105) he also states, regarding Rom 6–7, “they have been raised with him to walk in newness of life; this means that the power that wrought Jesus’ resurrection is now at work in them, causing them to live differently because in truth they are different at the center of their being in what Paul in Rom 7:22 calls ‘my inmost self’ and Peter in 1 Pet. 3:4 calls ‘the hidden person of the heart.’… This change wrought by what John Wesley and his apostolic namesake, following Jesus himself, called the ‘new birth’.” (Packer, Keep in Step with the Spirit, 107, italics mine.) |
Bondage and death contrasted with freedom and life.
Clearly, this is not positional truth, but a “walking” truth.
In other words, Romans 6–8 are rooted in not one, but three marvelous saving acts of God—justification, reconciliation, and regeneration.[2]*
*Footnote For the sake of simplicity I will occasionally refer to regeneration as inclusive of reconciliation in the sense that both involve God’s interior change in believers. A similar combination appears in Toon’s question regarding whether Old Testament believers were regenerate. “If by ‘regenerate’ is meant that they had a right relationship with God and enjoyed communion with him, then certainly they were regenerate.” Peter Toon, Born Again: A Biblical and Theological Study of Regeneration (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1987), 61. I believe it would be more accurate to connect “right relationship” and “communion” with God to the truth of reconciliation, yet because it involved an interior work of God as does regeneration, his approach is understandable. |
Only from these sources can sanctification (holiness) blossom. True, Paul’s emphasis in Romans 3–5 was on justification by faith. But the goal of the book of Romans is not to declare our new status before God; it is about an entirely new dimension of life—risen life, eternal life.
Gods act of justification was never intended as an end in itself. Rather, having made that external declaration on the basis of Christ’s perfect life and his substitutionary death, God could then in perfect righteousness perform that marvelous internal miracle of regeneration based upon his resurrection.29
*Footnote Though happening simultaneously, justification and regeneration are in some sense sequential. For example, in Rom 5:9–10, the “much more” of being saved from God’s wrath because of justification and reconciliation, is followed by the “much more” of being “saved by his life.” In 7:21, justification leads to eternal life. In Titus 3:5–7 the “rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit” is based upon one’s already “having been justified by his grace.” Justification saves us from God’s wrath, but it does not qualify us for a holy heaven. This requires a new quality of life, the impartation of life from God—his own divine nature. Jesus’ answer to Nicodemus was not “You need to be justified,” but “You need to be born again.”[3] |
When our old self was crucified with him and when we recognize as a fact that we are now actually alive to God, we are declaring in a most expressive way the implications of the miracle of new birth, new life—eternal life.*
*Footnote This fact is often missed due to the standard outline for the book of Romans—“Sin,” chapters 1–2; “Justification,” chapters 3–5; “Sanctification,” chapters 6–8. Actually, Rom 6–8 is loaded with “regeneration” truth. Toon states, “what God declares believers to be as he views them in Christ is also what he intends they shall truly be: thus justification leads to their actually being made righteous through the inner renewal of the Spirit (Rom 6).” In the same paragraph, Toon equates the renewal of the Spirit with the new birth. (Toon, Born Again, 64. See also F. F. Bruce, Paul, the Apostle of the Heart Set Free [Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Pub. Co., 1977], 205, 206; Millard, J. Erickson, Christian Theology, vol. 3 [Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1985], 944; Ronald Mayers, Evangelical Perspectives [University Press of America, 1987], 139–42; Renald Showers, The New Nature [Loizeaux Brothers, 1986], 11, and throughout his comments regarding Rom 6–8.) Regeneration has been understood by many as the initial miracle in God’s overall work of sanctification. See Toon, Born Again, 67. |
Questions & Notes
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Though it is not his own view, Barclay M. Newman does an excellent job of summarizing this view in his article, “Once Again—The Question of the ‘I’ in Romans 7:7–25,” The Bible Translator 34 (Jan. 1983):126–27. ↑
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In other words, Romans 6–8 are rooted in not one, but three marvelous saving acts of God—justification, reconciliation, and _________. ↑
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Jesus’ answer to Nicodemus was not “You need to be justified,” but “You need to be _________ _________.” ↑
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