Rebirth and Renewal by the Spirit
But when the kindness and love of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy. He saved us through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us generously through Jesus Christ our Savior…
Titus 3:4–6
There are passages in the Scripture where even under the inspiration of the Spirit the human authors seem overwhelmed to explain adequately all of the blessings that come to the children of God. These verses above are such a passage. These beautiful words need to be applied to our hearts by the Spirit that we can better understand the hope of His calling to us who believe.
The Apostle Paul explains with typical and precise detail just what God does in our hearts, why He does it and how He does it. God works on the basis of grace but He works through our faith, not through our righteous acts. The difference between the two is our sincerity. Someone may go through religious actions, participate in religious rites, even do good deeds for others, but may still be very far from God in his heart. “Righteous things” that we do have not the power to save us from our sin. God looks into our hearts to see if genuine faith is there, authentic sorrow for sin, sincere trust in Christ.
The person without faith complains that this is too easy. But the one who sincerely believes knows that it is never easy to genuinely believe, it is never simple to surrender our heart to God, to bend our thinking to His view, to honor Him in our private and personal thoughts. It requires a miracle of God to bring the conviction of the gospel, and somewhere in the majestic work of God, the individual must believe himself. None of us is able to explain the precise mystery of our faith, for it must always begin and end with God, but there must be something done on our part. We must believe. We must trust. We must come to the end of ourselves and in our hearts accept that Jesus is everything He claims He is — “If you confess with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believe in your heart that God has raised him from the dead, you will be saved” (Rom 10:9).
The Spirit then works in two ways in our life: to bring rebirth to our spirits and renewal to our souls. Spiritually we are dead without Christ. That part of us created to know and commune with God’s Spirit is dead in transgressions and sins. God must cause this to be reborn, to come alive, to be resurrected. The word in Greek is paliggenesia, literally “born again” or “resurrected.” It was a precise word that had a philosophical content in Paul’s day. The Stoic philosophers used it for the idea of the human spirit continuing on after death, but Paul took it and went a different way. He used the concept for the rebirth of human life to the condition and purpose of God.
Throughout the centuries some failed and dangerous ideologies have used this word — such as Nazis and Fascists — for rebirth to a certain kind of human destiny, which is really no change at all — just another human commitment to the old ways of terror and brutality. But in God’s Word it means to be brought back to life, to be spiritually reborn. We cannot train or educate people to achieve this condition. It is a miracle of God, one that He performs through the gospel and by His Spirit.
Once by the Spirit of God our spirit is reborn, then our soul must be renewed. Our soul is our mind, emotions, and will, that part of every human, whether saved or lost, that functions in the world. Without the Spirit giving life to our spirit, our souls, our thoughts and feelings, get old and tiresome. The ideas begin to fade, the imagination lags, and we become morose, sentimental, nostalgic, and out of date. We think of childhood as the ideal and moan our becoming old.
But once the Spirit regenerates our spirits, then He begins to renew our souls, as well. We now look forward to a new day, we look to the future. Our imaginations are sparked not by the past, not by nostalgic memories, but by the love and hope that is in Christ, by His promises of eternity, and of future blessings. “Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day … so we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal” (2 Cor. 4:16–18).
He has poured out His Spirit on us lavishly, generously, not stingily but openly and in abundance. God does not redeem partially, forgive incompletely, and transform only slightly. His work within us is always described in the highest possible terms. He is not like a wealthy father, someone who owns everything in the world, who takes us his children out to a nice restaurant for a meal, but then forbids us to have dessert! He is the very opposite of this. He gives good gifts to His children, and He gives them in abundance.
May the Spirit take these wonderful truths and apply them to each of our hearts, that we might live happily, expectantly, and redemptively for His glory.
