Application and Order

In this series of articles on salvation, begun in the June 2024 issue of Sword and Shield, we are interested in the application of salvation to the elect child of God. I noted that we do not have to speak of the application of salvation. In Reformed theology it is common to distinguish between the appointment to salvation in the eternal decree of God, the accomplishment of salvation at the cross of Jesus Christ, and the application of salvation to the elect child of God. Yet it may never be forgotten that while we may speak of the application of salvation to the elect child of God, that application of salvation is the salvation of the elect child of God. The fact is that some aspects of salvation take place at the subconscious level, and other aspects of salvation arise to the conscious level. According to the baptism form, the elect, infant children of believers are partakers of the grace in Christ without the infants’ understanding or knowledge:

Although our young children do not understand these things, we may not therefore exclude them from baptism, for as they are without their knowledge partakers of the condemnation in Adam, so are they again received unto grace in Christ. (Confessions and Church Order, 259)

The people of God are joined with Christ and regenerated in the narrow sense below the level of their consciousness, so that it is the regular reality in the covenant of grace that the people of God say that there was never a time in their years of discretion when they did not know Christ because they have been members of Christ from the womb and without their knowing it. Other aspects of salvation take place before the consciousness of the people of God, so that in their minds they are translated by the voice of God from darkness into his marvelous light and from the kingdom of Satan into the kingdom of God’s dear Son, and being called they come. God turns them from sin to the Lord, so that they turn to him in their hearts. Hearing the preaching of the word that God justifies the ungodly, they believe that word and are justified in their consciences by faith. The Holy Spirit sanctifies them and makes them saints, and as consequences they hate the evil, love the good, and walk in all the works that God ordained for them from before the foundation of the world. The Lord works in his people both to will and to do of his good pleasure, so that they are rightly said to repent and to believe.

That salvation is of the Lord. That salvation is strictly and exclusively the work of the Lord. The eternal root and cause of salvation is the election of God, and the election of God bears its fruit and has its effect in the application of salvation. The one who is saved has as little to do with the application of salvation as he does with his election and the work of Christ at the cross. Never in the application of salvation do we come to the point where God does his part and man must do his part in order to receive the next installment of salvation. Never do we arrive at the juncture in which man is first in order that God be able to give his promised grace and blessing to man. For instance, never do we come to the point at which there is a prerequisite repentance on the part of man in order that God be able to forgive man his sins. Such a viewpoint is a total corruption of the truth of salvation. Salvation is of the Lord. Salvation is a golden and unbroken chain consisting of the works of God, which extend from the eternal decree to the everlasting glorification of the elect people of God. All their deeds and activities are always the consequences and fruits of the bestowal of salvation upon the people of God according to God’s decree.

Further, in this series of articles we are interested in what is commonly called the order of salvation. But the name is misleading if the point of the name is to teach that the main issue is the order in which God applies salvation. The order is not temporal. The order certainly does not consist in what God works in man, so that man by his activity triggers the next benefit of salvation. Thus it is a corruption of the order of salvation and the Reformed view of salvation to teach that God works in man to repent, so that man upon repenting can be forgiven by God. This teaching makes man first and God dependent on man and fundamentally brings conditions and prerequisites into salvation. Some try to evade the charge of conditionality by saying that such a conception is not conditional because God works the repenting or that this is simply the order in which God works. However, such an evasion is not a cover or a justification of their corruption. The issue is that their presentation ties the hands of God until man does his part, and whether man does his part by grace or not is entirely immaterial. The only difference between this position and the position of those who use the word condition and say that the condition is fulfilled by grace is that the one who refuses to use the word condition exposes himself to the additional charge of using a cunning deception to prey on the simple.

Salvation is of the Lord.

Focusing on the temporal order or making the main point of the application of salvation to consist in a supposedly God-ordained order leaves two things out of view.

The first is election. There is no election in that temporal order. When election is brought to bear on the order of salvation, then it is impossible that God must wait upon man. God in eternity ordained the complete salvation of each elect sinner, and that election must have its fruit and cause its effect, which consists in the actual and inevitable gift of complete salvation. As election is unconditional, so the application of salvation is likewise unconditional. As man does not precede God in election, so man’s activity never can be what God requires before he will do his part.

Second, such a presentation of a temporal order leaves out of view Jesus Christ and that all of salvation is stored up in him. The temporal order becomes a transaction between God and the elect sinner. But the elect sinner is joined to Christ by the Holy Spirit as God’s very first saving act in the heart of that elect sinner. In union with Christ the whole Christ becomes the possession of the elect sinner, so that he is made a partaker of Christ and all his riches and gifts. There is no room in this reality of union with Christ for a salvation by installments. An elect sinner can experience richly the various aspects of his complete salvation in Christ. In his conscience the elect sinner can hear the voice of the Lord address him in the depth of his being; he can be brought to a deep sorrow for sin or a profound love of God; over against the accusation of his conscience that he breaks all God’s commandments and keeps none of them and is inclined to all evil, the elect sinner can be justified and brought to have a sincere and zealous desire to serve the Lord and to reject all that is repugnant to his word. Yet never is it the case that the reception of one benefit of salvation is dependent upon the activity of the sinner who has received a prior grace and performs his part. It is certainly not true that the activity of man as the consequence of having received one benefit—for instance that one is sanctified and consequently he walks in good works—is the trigger for some other blessing or the next installment of salvation.

Rather, it is as the apostle says in 1 Corinthians 1:30: “Of him are ye in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption.” This word comes in the context of God’s election of his church: “God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty” (v. 27). Out of that election as the root and cause, we are united with Christ by God. By that union Christ Jesus is made unto us the whole of our salvation. For these reasons it is better to speak not simply of the order of salvation but of the riches of Christ. All the riches of salvation that we receive are what Christ is made unto us of God. Always in the consideration of the application of salvation to the child of God, we must keep front and center Jesus Christ as the divine treasure-house of salvation. It is as the apostle says, “Unto me, who am less than the least of all saints, is this grace given, that I should preach among the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ” (Eph. 3:8).

 

Regeneration Necessary

Among the principal benefits of salvation is regeneration.

Understand that when we speak of regeneration as one of the principal benefits of salvation, we are not denying or leaving out of view that justification is the principal benefit of salvation. Justification is rightly said to be the principal benefit of salvation. Justification is that on which all the other benefits depend. When we consider justification as an eternal decree of God forgiving the sins of his people, then the application of salvation to the elect child of God is the consequence of his eternal justification. The same may be said of our justification at the cross of Christ. Romans 4:25 says concerning Christ that he was delivered because of our offenses and raised because of our justification. The translation of the King James Version obscures this point when it says “delivered for our offences, and was raised again for our justification.” The translation “for” makes it seem as though Christ was raised in order to justify us, but the teaching of the text is that the resurrection of Christ was the divine seal upon the justification that Christ had accomplished for his elect church at the cross. Because we have been justified at the cross, it is just and necessary that we be made partakers of the salvation that Christ accomplished for us and that we be made alive. God loves and blesses the righteous. God always loves and blesses the righteous. God only loves and blesses the righteous. Because we are righteous in eternity and we are righteous at the cross, it is only just and right that as righteous, we be saved and that in our own consciences and experiences. We must be made alive, called out of darkness into God’s marvelous light, justified in our consciences, sanctified, and glorified. Righteousness in eternity and righteousness at the cross stand as the foundation of our salvation.

Rather, when we call regeneration one of the principal benefits of salvation, we are holding to the subjective viewpoint. In the order of salvation, we are interested in the application of salvation to the elect child of God and thus also consciously in his experience of that salvation. Basic to this is that the child of God, who by nature was conceived and born dead in trespasses and sins and ignorant of all spiritual things, must be made alive in order to see the kingdom of God. It is necessary even to see the kingdom of God that a man be born again.

The necessity of regeneration in Christ is that by nature the child of God is dead in Adam. Man is conceived and born dead in trespasses and sins; he walks 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; and he fulfills the lusts of the flesh and of the mind (Eph. 2:1–3). The imaginations of man’s heart are only evil continually (Gen. 6:5). David confessed about himself that he was shaped in iniquity and in sin his mother conceived him (Ps. 51:5). The natural man is from below, and he is born of the flesh and the will of the flesh, so he minds only the things of the flesh and cannot have any conception of the kingdom of God, which is heavenly and spiritual; and he has no power to become a son of God (John 1:12–13; 3:3–6). Man, being carnal, cannot know the Spirit and cannot receive the Spirit or the things of the Spirit, for they are foolishness to him; and he cannot know the Spirit’s things because they are spiritually discerned (14:17; 1 Cor. 2:14). Thus it follows:

9. We have before proved both Jews and Gentiles, that they are all under sin;

10. As it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one:

11. There is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God.

12. They are all gone out of the way, they are together become unprofitable; there is none that doeth good, no, not one.

13. Their throat is an open sepulchre; with their tongues they have used deceit; the poison of asps is under their lips:

14. Whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness:

15. Their feet are swift to shed blood:

16. Destruction and misery are in their ways:

17. And the way of peace have they not known:

18. There is no fear of God before their eyes. (Rom. 3:9–18)

All of this is true of the children of God in their first father, Adam. By virtue of Adam’s headship, all the children of Adam are guilty for Adam’s sin in the garden; therefore, they come into this world dead in sin. Being guilty of Adam’s sin, they are worthy of Adam’s punishment, which was death.

From this it follows that with their new head, Jesus Christ, must also come the life of Christ that flows from the head to the members of his body. As in Adam all whom he represented died because of his unrighteous deed, so also all who are in Christ must and shall be made alive because of his righteous deed. It is as the apostle says in Romans 5:17–18:

17. For if by one man’s offence death reigned by one; much more they which receive abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness shall reign in life by one, Jesus Christ.

18. Therefore as by the offence of one judgment came upon all men to condemnation; even so by the righteousness of one the free gift came upon all men unto justification of life.

The phrases “justification of life” and “righteousness shall reign in life” speak of the same reality. The opposite of this reality are the phrases “by the offence of one judgment came upon all men to condemnation” and “by one man’s offence death reigned by one.” In Adam all men entered death. We did not enter death because of our own individual sins, but the whole human race entered the house of death because of the sin of Adam and the condemnation of that sin passed on all Adam’s children. The opposite is also true: the justification of the elect church at the cross and the righteousness of the cross of Christ mean that the whole elect church enters life for that reason. The justification of life is the justification that brings life. Being justified we are also delivered from the sentence of death and the house of death and are worthy of eternal life. Righteousness, the righteousness of Christ, thus reigns in life.

The life of regeneration is Christ in the sinner by Christ’s Spirit. The life of regeneration is not like a packet of life that is implanted in the sinner without any connection to Christ. Never can regeneration be conceived of outside the sinner’s connection to Christ. But the life implanted into the sinner is implanted into him because of his union with Christ and is Christ in him by Christ’s Spirit through faith as a bond with Christ. So the apostle says in Galatians 2:20: “I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.” The word “nevertheless” does not belong. The apostle speaks of the connection of the elect children with Christ from eternity and by divine election. They are one with Christ, and so they were crucified with him. Because they were crucified with him, they also live with him. When the apostle says “faith of the Son of God,” he does not mean Jesus’ believing. Rather, the apostle defines the connection of the elect with Christ as faith and says that by this faith Christ lives in the elect. There is no life outside Jesus Christ; and the only life that the elect have is life in Christ, and that life is Christ in them.

It must be clear that we are speaking of regeneration in the narrow sense. Frequently Reformed theology speaks of regeneration as it includes conversion and sanctification. The Reformed simply use the term regeneration to include the whole work of God to change the sinner in his heart and in all his life. This we call regeneration in the broad sense. But in this article regarding regeneration, we strictly refer to the first work of God to make the dead sinner alive. This we call regeneration in the narrow sense.

This regeneration, as with all the works of salvation, is a divine work. So says Canons of Dordt 3–4.12:

And this is the regeneration so highly celebrated in Scripture and denominated a new creation: a resurrection from the dead, a making alive, which God works in us without our aid. But this is in no wise effected merely by the external preaching of the gospel, by moral suasion, or such a mode of operation that after God has performed His part it still remains in the power of man to be regenerated or not, to be converted or to continue unconverted; but it is evidently a supernatural work, most powerful, and at the same time most delightful, astonishing, mysterious, and ineffable; not inferior in efficacy to creation or the resurrection from the dead, as the Scripture inspired by the Author of this work declares; so that all in whose heart God works in this marvelous manner are certainly, infallibly, and effectually regenerated and do actually believe. Whereupon the will thus renewed is not only actuated and influenced by God, but in consequence of this influence becomes itself active. Wherefore also, man is himself rightly said to believe and repent by virtue of that grace received. (Confessions and Church Order, 168–69)

The truth of man’s total depravity means that regeneration cannot be established by the work or will of man—either through man’s cooperation with God, man’s not resisting the work of the Spirit, or man’s accepting an offer of salvation. The elect sinner must be born from above of water and blood and of the Spirit by the will of God and not the will of the flesh or the will of man (John 1:13; 3:3, 5; 1 John 5:8).

This fact is implied in the very terms for this divine transformation of the sinner. It is a new creation, according to Ephesians 2:10: “We are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them.” Light played no part in its creation, and neither does man in his recreation. The elect sinner is begotten again from heaven. It is a regeneration or rebirth. The baby plays no part in his conception and birth but is conceived and is born. So the sinner plays no part in his spiritual rebirth. It is called a resurrection. As the dead body cannot revive itself or have any desire for new life, so the sinner does not play any part in his spiritual resurrection from the dead.

 

Words and Concepts

The Bible uses many terms and concepts to describe what theologically we call regeneration in the narrow sense.

The terms translated as “regeneration” in the following passages mean to be born again. In Matthew 19:28 the Lord applied the term to a renewal of the entire creation: “Jesus said unto them, Verily I say unto you, That ye which have followed me, in the regeneration when the Son of man shall sit in the throne of his glory, ye also shall sit upon twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel.” In Titus 3:5 the term is applied to the elect church: “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.” The point of the word “regeneration” is renewal by birth. However, the word denotes the restoration of a thing to its pristine state, its renovation, as the renewal or restoration of life after death. In the passages above the term is applied to the renewal of all things and to the renewal of the in-himself dead sinner.

When talking to Nicodemus about the necessity of regeneration, the Lord used a word that means born and refers to the generating power of the Father plus a word that means something from above, so that the origin of this first work of the Spirit is the regenerating from above. This is what the King James Version translates as “born again.” “Jesus answered and said unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God” (John 3:3). The word “born” is properly used of a man’s begetting a child, thus the generative power of the father. Rarely the word is used of the mother’s act of bearing a child, for instance in John 16:21: “A woman when she is in travail hath sorrow, because her hour is come: but as soon as she is delivered of the child, she remembereth no more the anguish, for joy that a man is born into the world.” The word translated as “again” in John 3:3 is properly used to signify something from above or from a higher place and rarely is used to mean again. In John 3:3 the word “again” should be understood as begotten from above. The Lord was teaching Nicodemus that what is necessary is a begetting from above, of which no man is capable, but it is the wonder of God alone.

There is another word that means born again. So we read in 1 Peter 1:3: “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, which according to his abundant mercy hath begotten us again unto a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.” The word is used again in verse 23: “Being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the word of God, which liveth and abideth for ever.” This contrasts our first birth into sin and death with our second birth into life everlasting.

In James 1:15–18 there is another word with the same basic reference to being born and that is translated as “bringeth forth” and later as “begat”:

15. Then when lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin: and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death.

16. Do not err, my beloved brethren.

17. Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.

18. Of his own will begat he us with the word of truth, that we should be a kind of firstfruits of his creatures.

In verse 15 the word is used in connection with sin. When sin is finished, it brings forth death. Sin begets death. In contrast to that, God of his own will begat us with the word of truth. God brings forth life and a new creation. The idea of the word is that one is pregnant and then brings forth from the womb. In all these above words, the idea is of begetting or birthing. This is the physical picture or analogy of the spiritual reality of regeneration.

Scripture also uses various concepts to represent regeneration. Putting all these words and concepts together, we get a full picture of the wonderful, mysterious, and ineffable work of regeneration.

In Ezekiel 36:26 the prophet represents regeneration as a radical heart surgery: “A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh.” God takes out one’s stony heart and gives to him a heart of flesh. The old heart is dead to God and to spiritual things, and the new heart is alive to God and to his word.

In Ezekiel 37:1–10 the prophet sees the work of regeneration as the work of the Spirit—or breath of God—that makes a heap of dead and dry bones to become men who live.

Regeneration is called the circumcising of the heart in connection with the Old Testament rite of circumcision. Colossians 2:11 says, “In whom [Christ] also ye are circumcised with the circumcision made without hands, in putting off the body of the sins of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ.” The same thought is found in Romans 2:29: “He is a Jew, which is one inwardly; and circumcision is that of the heart, in the spirit, and not in the letter; whose praise is not of men, but of God.” The circumcising of the heart is the removal of the callousness of unregeneracy, unbelief, and impenitence, so that a new and living heart reigns.

Scripture also calls regeneration a new creation. The fallen and dilapidated creature that is man is restored and renewed. Ephesians 2:10 says that “we are his [God’s] workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them.” And 2 Corinthians 5:17 says that “if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.”

Particularly does this designation of regeneration have to do with the restoration of the image of God in man. Man was created in the image of God; and in the fall in Adam, man lost the entire image of God and was turned into the image of his new spiritual father, the devil. So Christ says in John 8:44: “Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it.”

This statement of the Lord does not refer only to the Pharisees as the inveterate enemies of Christ, but it is also a revelation of what man became in the fall. Man did not merely lose the image of God, so that he came from a high spiritual state into a neutral one in which he stood in the middle between God and Satan, but man took the side of the devil, and he bears now the devil’s image. This total corruption of the image of God in the fall is what is meant by Canons of Dordt 3–4.1:

Man was originally formed after the image of God. His understanding was adorned with a true and saving knowledge of his Creator and of spiritual things; his heart and will were upright; all his affections pure; and the whole man was holy. But, revolting from God by the instigation of the devil and abusing the freedom of his own will, he forfeited these excellent gifts, and on the contrary entailed on himself blindness of mind, horrible darkness, vanity, and perverseness of judgment, became wicked, rebellious, and obdurate in heart and will, and impure in his affections. (Confessions and Church Order, 166)

The image of God in man was not merely lost but was destroyed; and man took on the image of Satan, which consists in the blindness of man, horrible darkness, vanity, perverseness of judgment, obduracy of heart and will, and the impurity of all his affections.

Thus in regeneration, as regeneration is a recreation of the elect sinner, especially the image of God is on the foreground. We are made sons of God again and now not merely after the image of the earthly but after the pattern of the heavenly. We bore the image of God in Adam; now we bear the image of God in Christ, so that there is not a return to the primitive state in Adam, but there is a going up and above the possibility that the image can ever be lost again.

The other truth that the designation of regeneration as a new creation teaches is a comparison of the manner of regeneration with the manner of God’s creation of the world. God created by his Word and Spirit; so the new, elect man is the work of God’s Word and Spirit. God created by his own power, without the cooperation of any creature; so the new, elect man is a work of God alone, which God works in the elect man without man’s will, aid, or cooperation.

In connection with regeneration as a new creation, scripture also makes the closest connection between regeneration and calling, so much so that regeneration is described as a creative calling in the same way that God called the physical universe into existence by speaking his almighty Word. The Word calls the elect sinner into existence in a sense as a new creature. Romans 4:17 says, “(As it is written, I have made thee a father of many nations,) before him whom he believed, even God, who quickeneth the dead, and calleth those things which be not as though they were.” Alluding to the creative work of God in Genesis 1 of calling the universe into being, the apostle says of regeneration that God calls things that are not as though they were. Second Corinthians 4:6 says, “God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.” Here regeneration and calling are so closely connected as to be inseparable. While we distinguish regeneration in the narrow sense as a calling, and in this the sinner is not necessarily conscious of that calling, we recognize that there is a conscious calling of the sinner to knowledge that must inevitably follow.

Regeneration is also described as a resurrection: “As the Father raiseth up the dead, and quickeneth them; even so the Son quickeneth whom he will” (John 5:21). Paul writes of the same thing: “Even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ, (by grace ye are saved;) and hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus” (Eph. 2:5–6). The elect sinner is dead by nature, and his regeneration consists in God’s resurrection of him from sin and death, so that he lives and can never die.

Regeneration is salvation, not merely one installment of salvation. Regeneration is the very first act of God in the elect sinner who is united to Christ, and in regeneration the whole of salvation is basically included. Implied is the righteousness of the regenerated. The elect sinner who is regenerated has no right to life by nature but to death only. Seeing that he is made alive, the only ground for that is the righteousness of Christ that has been imputed unto him. Regeneration can be thought of as the calling of the elect sinner, if we understand this not as the preaching but as the living and abiding Word of God, who is Jesus Christ. God always calls the things that are not as though they were. Regeneration includes in principle man’s conversion, sanctification, and glorification, so that the whole of his salvation can be summarized thus: he is born again, begotten from above to the new heavenly life of the resurrection of Christ Jesus, the Lord. Regeneration in the broad sense means that the child of God is turned from sin to God, made a saint, and in principle he sits already in heavenly places in Christ Jesus.

Next time we will consider other aspects of the truth of regeneration.