Faith as Union

I have been examining the riches of Christ that become ours when we are united to Christ by faith. This is the application of our salvation to us. We do not need to speak of the application of salvation, but we do so to distinguish that part of salvation from the appointment to salvation in eternity and the accomplishment of salvation at the cross. Salvation must come into the possession of the children of God. Being united to Christ by faith is the application of their salvation. Yet we can speak simply of the salvation of the children of God. The application of salvation to the elect is the salvation of God’s elect.

The essence of the salvation of the children of God is their union with Jesus Christ. This is true eternally in the counsel of election. We are elect in Christ and form one corporation, or body, with Christ in eternity. This eternal decree of election must have its fruit and effect in the separation of these elect children of God from the ungodly world in which they are conceived and brought forth and in the joining of the elect children of God to the corporation of Christ that was established by Christ’s incarnation, crucifixion, and resurrection. This union with Christ we call faith. Faith at its essence is union with Christ. Faith is the bond through which we are partakers of Christ and all his benefits.

In many places the Reformed creeds emphasize that faith is union with Christ and that the essence of salvation is that union with Jesus Christ. Lord’s Day 1 states that my only comfort is that “I…belong unto my faithful Savior Jesus Christ.” This belonging is not merely my being a possession, although as Lord, Christ possesses me. But belonging is also my union with Christ’s corporation, which Lord’s Day 1 makes clear when it states that “by His Holy Spirit, He also assures me of eternal life.” By his Spirit, Christ is in me, I am in him, and Christ operates within me to assure me of eternal life. Lord’s Day 7 states that Christ saved those “who are ingrafted into Him, and receive all His benefits, by a true faith.” Faith is the graft of the elect children of God with Christ. Lord’s Day 12 says that “I am a member of Christ by faith.” Lord’s Day 18 teaches that the ascended Christ will “take up to Himself, us, His members.” Lord’s Day 19 says that from heaven Christ by His Holy Spirit “pours out heavenly graces upon us His members.” Lord’s Day 20 confesses that the work of the Holy Spirit is “to make me, by a true faith, partaker of Christ and all His benefits, that He may comfort me and abide with me for ever.” Lord’s Day 21 says that “all and every one who believes, being members of Christ, are, in common, partakers of Him and of all His riches and gifts.” Lord’s Day 23 teaches that “I am righteous in Christ.” And Lord’s Day 24 teaches that we are “implanted into Christ by a true faith.” Faith is our implanting into Christ. Through that union with Christ, we are members of his corporation and also then partakers of his righteousness and justification. Lord’s Day 26 teaches that to be washed with Christ’s blood and Spirit means “to be renewed by the Holy Ghost, and sanctified to be members of Christ.” Lord’s Day 28 says that to eat Christ means “to become more and more united to his sacred body by the Holy Ghost, who dwells both in Christ and in us.” Lord’s Day 29 teaches that the Lord’s supper assures us “that we are as really partakers of His true body and blood (by the operation of the Holy Ghost) as we receive by the mouths of our bodies these holy signs.” Lord’s Day 30 says that the Lord’s supper testifies to us that “we by the Holy Ghost are ingrafted into Christ” (Confessions and Church Order, 83–84, 90, 96, 102–4, 107, 109, 115–16).

Added to the above are two quotations from the Belgic Confession. Article 22 says that “faith is an instrument that keeps us in communion with Him [Jesus Christ] in all His benefits, which, when become ours, are more than sufficient to acquit us of our sins.” Article 35 says that Christ in heaven labors to “make us partakers of Himself by faith,” and at the Lord’s supper “Christ communicates Himself with all His benefits to us, and gives us there to enjoy both Himself and the merits of His sufferings and death” (Confessions and Church Order, 50, 72).

Article 1.7 of the Canons of Dordt teaches,

This elect number…God hath decreed to give to Christ, to be saved by Him, and effectually to call and draw them to His communion by His Word and Spirit…and having powerfully preserved them in the fellowship of His Son, finally to glorify them for the demonstration of His mercy. (Confessions and Church Order, 156)

Article 5.1 of the Canons teaches that God calls the elect “according to His purpose, to the communion of His Son, our Lord Jesus Christ.” The Canons of Dordt summarizes its whole doctrine of salvation taught in the previous heads of doctrine as being called into communion with Christ according to God’s eternal purpose. And the Canons concludes its positive section in article 5.15 with the lovely description of the elect church as “the spouse of Christ.” She is bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh, and she is married to the risen Lord (Confessions and Church Order, 173, 176).

This thought that the believer is united with Christ stands behind the creeds’ language of faith as the embrace of Christ. For instance, Lord’s Day 28:

Q. 76. What is it then to eat the crucified body and drink the shed blood of Christ?

A. It is not only to embrace with a believing heart all the sufferings and death of Christ, and thereby to obtain the pardon of sin and life eternal…” (Confessions and Church Order, 112)

So also we read in Belgic Confession article 22: “The Holy Ghost kindleth in our hearts an upright faith, which embraces Jesus Christ with all His merits, appropriates Him, and seeks nothing more besides Him” (Confessions and Church Order, 49). Behind faith’s embrace of Christ stands faith as union with Christ, in which there is intimate communion between Christ and the believer.

I cite from these places in the creeds to show how fundamental the truth of union with Christ is to the Reformed confession of salvation. These quotations also show how important is the subject that I am treating in this series of articles. The Reformed conception of salvation is simply inconceivable without the fundamental truth of union with Christ. Especially this point must be emphasized: every teaching about faith that does not view faith at its essence as union with Christ invariably makes faith primarily an act and thus also a condition of salvation.

Life in Christ

The first benefit that the elect person who is joined to Christ enjoys is his regeneration. Regeneration is the principal benefit of that union, for out of the elect sinner’s regeneration he lives and acts in the world. 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 person. By nature he has no right to life but only to death. Since he is made alive, the only ground for that new life is the righteousness of Christ imputed unto him. His regeneration can be thought of as his calling, if we understand calling not as the preaching but as the address of 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 the elect’s conversion, sanctification, and glorification, so that the whole of his salvation simply can be summarized in this way: 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. The child of God possesses with that gift of regeneration eternal life, so that he cannot die, for that seed of regeneration can never be lost.

When considering regeneration, we must answer some important questions, such as, in what does regeneration consist, or what is regenerated in the elect child of God? How does one explain the mysterious language of scripture that one and the same person cannot do evil but is perfect, yet he cannot do good and is sold under sin? For instance, 1 John 3:9 says, “Whosoever is born of God doth not commit sin; for his seed remaineth in him: and he cannot sin, because he is born of God.” And 1 John 5:18 says, “We know that whosoever is born of God sinneth not; but he that is begotten of God keepeth himself, and that wicked one toucheth him not.” According to that seed of regeneration that is implanted in him by the living and abiding Word of God, the elect child of God cannot sin, and the wicked one cannot touch him. Yet Romans 7:14 says, “We know that the law is spiritual: but I am carnal, sold under sin.” The regenerated apostle Paul condemns himself as carnal and, what is more, as sold under sin, so that he appears yet to be in bondage to sin. The issue is, how is this language to be explained? What in the child of God is regenerated?

Related to these questions is the application of the truth of total depravity to the regenerated child of God. Must he say about himself that he is yet totally depraved? And if so, what does that mean, since he is also regenerated?

It is essential to answer these questions so that we never forget the truth of union with Christ in the discussion of regeneration. Christ is the one who has brought to light life and immortality. Christ is the one who lives, and all life is concentrated in him. There is no life outside Christ, and only by being made partakers of Christ are we then also made partakers of his life. The regeneration of the elect never can be considered outside that union. Regeneration is not then the implanting of a packet of life in the elect apart from Christ. The elect do not possess life in themselves apart from Christ. Always it is Christ who lives in the elect, and they live by Christ. The truth of answer 76 of Lord’s Day 28 must be central in our thinking about regeneration:

Besides that [to embrace with a believing heart all the sufferings and death of Christ, and thereby to obtain the pardon of sin and life eternal], to become more and more united to His sacred body by the Holy Ghost, who dwells both in Christ and in us; so that we, though Christ is in heaven and we on earth, are notwithstanding flesh of his flesh, and bone of his bone; and that we live and are governed forever by one Spirit, as members of the same body are by one soul. (Confessions and Church Order, 112–13)

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.” And Christ says in John 6:57, “As the living Father hath sent me, and I live by the Father: so he that eateth me, even he shall live by me.” By this Christ does not mean simply that he is the agent of our life and the one who creates that life in us. Rather, he means that in union with himself he is our life, just as in the union of the human nature with the divine, that divine nature is the life of the human nature and its real power. This life of Christ in us, or Christ in us, or the Spirit of the risen Lord in us, is the essence of our regeneration. We are partakers with Christ and partakers in him of the divine nature, which is the power of God in us. Thus we have become new creatures.

Further, in answer to the question regarding what is regenerated, there are two important passages in the Canons of Dordt to which I must do justice. First, there is the statement in 3–4.11: “Infuses new qualities into the will, which, though heretofore dead, He quickens; from being evil, disobedient, and refractory, He renders it good, obedient, and pliable.” Similarly, there is the statement in 3–4.12: “Whereupon the will thus renewed…” From these two creedal statements it seems that the creeds are teaching that the object of regeneration is strictly the will of man, and in regeneration new qualities are infused into the will (Confessions and Church Order, 168–69).

Later, when rejecting the Arminian error, the Canons itself defines these new, infused qualities:

The Synod rejects the errors of those…who teach that in the true conversion of man no new qualities, powers, or gifts can be infused by God into the will, and that therefore faith, through which we are first converted and because of which we are called believers, is not a quality or gift infused by God. (Canons of Dordt 3–4, error 6, in Confessions and Church Order, 172)

Stated positively, the teaching of the Canons in rejecting the above error is that in the regeneration of man, new qualities are infused into the will and among these new qualities is faith.

How is this all to be understood? In regeneration by the work of God, man’s will, which is in bondage to sin by nature, is liberated and made good, obedient, and pliable.

This has implications for the Christian and sin. The Christian in his sinning in some respect sins against his will. He does not will to sin, yet he does sin. In this respect his relationship with his sin is that he hates sin as that which he did not will to do but which he did. The good that he does will, he does not do; and the evil that he does not will, he does.

This is because regeneration is seated in the heart of the elect child of God, while his flesh remains totally depraved. He has a perfect heart in a totally depraved flesh. His person is not regenerated. The person is the subject of all his life. The child of God is regenerated in his heart, and he lives out of that perfect heart. Yet all that he does, he must do with his flesh; and he is also then able to be taken captive by that flesh and sin, while his heart is not in it, and his will is against it. Such is the state of the regenerated Christian.

This mystery I can describe no better than by using the words of Herman Hoeksema, which I quote below:

Different attempts have been made to explain this apparently irreconcilable contrast between the old man and the new man in the Christian. It has been maintained that regeneration is really not a renewal of the heart, but the increating of an entirely new man within the sinful man. The Christian is really a dualism. He is not one, but two persons. There are in him two egos. In actual life this view led to antinomianism. In his one person the Christian can never do any good, and he is delivered over unto corruption. In his other person, however, the Christian can never sin, for he is born of God. Hence the one person in the Christian does not hold himself accountable for what the other person does, and the attempt by the regenerated person to fight against and to overcome that evil person in the Christian is simply vain.

This presentation certainly does not solve the problem, nor is it in harmony with Holy Writ, which speaks of exactly the same person as being under the influence of both the flesh and the Spirit.

Others have tried to explain this apparently irreconcilable contradiction by distinguishing between the person or the ego and the expressions or manifestations of that ego in the nature, in the mind and will of the Christian. According to this presentation, the person is entirely renewed. He is a new man. But the manifestations and expressions of that renewed person in the consciousness and will of the Christian are still under the influence of the operations of sin.

[Abraham] Kuyper makes distinction between the center and the periphery of our life. The center, according to him, is the very kernel or pith of our ego. From the ego the lines run to the periphery. In the periphery lie our consciousness, our perceptions, our inclinations and desires, our will, and our acts, personally, in relation to others, and in relation to the whole world. According to Kuyper, the pith of our ego is regenerated. From the center of that regenerated ego, our consciousness, our desires, our inclinations, our will, and our mind are influenced in conversion. But there are also reacting influences from the periphery upon the regenerated ego, and those reacting influences are not holy, but sinful. So Dr. Kuyper explains that although the regenerate man always sins, yet he remains holy in the very center of his ego…

It should be evident that the explanation of Dr. Kuyper is in harmony neither with Scripture nor with reality. According to his theory, the regenerated person or ego of the Christian really stands outside of his sinful life. That person or ego is regenerated and therefore holy. The pith of his ego always does that which is good. The person of the Christian, therefore, really is presented as standing outside of his sinful deeds and as unable to be held accountable for them. In this way Kuyper’s theory tries to account for the expression, “Now…it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me” (Rom. 7:20). But this explanation is impossible and certainly is not in harmony with the language of Romans 7.

One who pays close attention to the words of the apostle in Romans 7 will admit immediately that the one who speaks there does not put his person or his ego outside of his sinful deeds. For he says, “I am carnal; I am sold under sin; I do not what I will; I do what I hate; I do not do the good that I will to do; I do the evil that I do not will; I serve with the flesh the law of sin” (vv. 14, 15, 19, 25). It is very evident that the same person, the same ego, speaks these words.

How can one and the same ego speak in such apparently contradictory language about his own life from a spiritual, ethical viewpoint? This question is not answered by saying that the very pith of the ego is regenerated and therefore is completely holy and sins no more, because the apostle teaches in Romans 7 exactly that the ego of the Christian indeed sins. When Paul says, “With the flesh [I serve] the law of sin” (v. 25), he admits that according to his flesh—in his old man—he serves the law of sin. Nevertheless, it is still his person that is serving sin. If the theory of Dr. Kuyper were correct, namely, that the person or ego is entirely holy and separated from sin, it would be entirely impossible that the same ego still serves sin. His explanation, therefore, is not in harmony with Holy Writ…

Not the person or the I of the Christian is regenerated, but the heart, and from that heart, the nature. The essence of the nature in regeneration is radically changed from a spiritual, ethical viewpoint.

This is also plain from a comparison with what took place through the fall of man. We do not say that through the fall the person was corrupted, but the nature. Through the fall of our first parents, our nature was so corrupted that we are wholly incapable of doing any good and inclined to all evil. This we must surely bear in mind if we would understand somewhat what Scripture means when it speaks of flesh and spirit, of the old man and the new man, in the child of God…

The heart is the center of all the issues of life from a spiritual, ethical point of view, that is, from the viewpoint of our self-determination in relation to God. According to Proverbs 4:23, from the heart are the issues of life (cf. Matt. 5:28; Matt. 12:34–37; Matt. 15:18, 19; Mark 7:18–23; Luke 6:45). As the heart is, so are our thoughts and desires, our willing and thinking, and our deepest inclinations and the hidden recesses of all our existence, not from a natural, psychological, but from a spiritual, ethical point of view. The heart is moved either by the principle of love or by the principle of hatred. It is pure or impure. And as the heart is, so are all the issues of the heart. All the lines, according to the teaching of Holy Writ, run always from the center to the periphery, never from the periphery to the center. The entire presentation of the theory of common grace—as if there were an operation of the Spirit upon the periphery, influencing even our willing and our thinking—is directly in conflict with Scripture. When the tree is good, the fruit is good; when the tree is evil, the fruit is also evil (Matt. 7:17–19; Matt. 12:33; Luke 6:43, 44)…

The influence of sin is of a spiritual and ethical nature. Spiritually and ethically, man’s nature was put into reverse. His knowledge became darkness and the lie, his righteousness was changed into unrighteousness and iniquity, and his holiness became hatred of the living God. Instead of the love of God in his heart, there was enmity against the Most High, for the minding of the flesh is enmity against God (Rom. 8:7). Out of the heart are the issues of life in the natural man (Prov. 4:23). Because his heart became evil, his thinking and willing, his inclinations and deepest recesses of his nature became evil, and he became an enemy of God in all his life. In the natural man there is no conflict from a spiritual, ethical point of view. He loves sin with all his heart and follows it in all his life. He is an enemy of God who minds and wills sin. He is totally depraved and stands in enmity against God with all his mind, heart, soul, and strength.

The Christian, however, is fundamentally and in principle renewed through the work of regeneration. This is not an essential change, but a spiritual and ethical conversion. The regenerated man remains man. His nature remains a spiritual, ethical, moral, psychological, material, earthly nature. He remains in the same relation to the earthly creation as before his regeneration. The suffering of this present time is also his suffering as long as through the body he stands in organic relationship with the human race. He is neither entirely delivered from death and from the operations of death in his members, nor does he regain the original natural gifts in all their power and glory, but retains the likeness of sinful flesh.

But from a spiritual, ethical viewpoint the Christian undergoes a radical change. He goes from death into life, from darkness into light, from unrighteousness into righteousness, from the corruption of his nature into holiness. This change is presented in Scripture as a radical change of heart. The proper life-center of this change is found in the resurrected and glorified Christ. Through his Spirit, Christ himself dwells in the heart of the elect sinner, connects that heart forever with himself, and dominates it by grace. He imparts to that heart new life, his own resurrection life, the life of God, so that the Christian may boast with the apostle, “I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me” (Gal. 2:20). From that heart the lines run from an ethical, spiritual point of view throughout his whole nature. “Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new” (2 Cor. 5:17). The Christian wills and thinks, desires and longs, hears and sees, tastes and touches, speaks and acts differently from the natural man. He has become partaker of the divine nature. The motive power of his whole life is the love of God in Jesus Christ his Lord.

However, the new life of the Christian meets with all kinds of opposition, which frequently bring him into captivity to the law of sin in his members. To start with the periphery of things, there is the old world to which he belongs from a natural perspective, in which he must live and on which he is dependent for his whole existence. In that old world are the old sinful forms of life, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life. These sinful forms of life he meets everywhere. In the world is the language he learns, the garment he wears, and the book he reads. With the sinful forms of that world he is in contact in commerce and industry, in state and society, in factory and office, on the street, and in the home. These forms of life are as old as sin itself and dominate everywhere. In the midst of that world with its old sinful forms of life, it is not always easy for him to know what is the good will of God. Those sinful forms lead him astray and take him into captivity to the law of sin so that he does not do that which he wills (Rom. 7:21–23).

Further, according to his old nature, the Christian is of that world. By nature he is born out of a sinful race and, therefore, receives a nature in which for centuries the principle of sin and enmity against God has been operating. The Christian does not stand all alone, merely as an individual, but is organically one with the human race. The human nature that he receives through his parents is centuries old. In that human nature, in body and soul, in mind and will, deep ruts have been dug by the operations of sin.

Even as the world in which the Christian lives and moves is not yet the new creation in which righteousness dwells, so also his body is not yet the body of the resurrection, the spiritual body. His nature is not yet the glorified human nature. These operations of sin, the old ruts of sin, the Scripture calls “the motions of sins…in our members,” the “flesh,” and “the body of this death” (Rom. 7:5, 18, 24). Although this must not be understood in such a way that sin is really material and physical, it nevertheless is clear from all these expressions that especially the psychical body has long been an instrument of sin, that it adapts itself very easily to the sinful forms of life in the world, and thus takes us into captivity under the law of sin. In the regenerated Christian, evil thoughts and desires no longer issue from the heart. He has received a new heart through the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ. But in his nature there still are the old operations of sin. This causes conflict and opposition so that he is frequently led astray in the direction of unrighteousness.

Thus we can somewhat understand that the same person can appear in this world as two egos. One and the same person, the one subject of all the Christian’s actions, of all his thinking and willing, seems to become two egos from a spiritual, ethical viewpoint. Insofar as his person is the subject and knows himself to be responsible for all the acts and operations of sin in his nature, he is brought into captivity under the law of sin in his members (Rom. 7:23). He performs that which is evil, and he serves sin (v. 25). But insofar as the same person is the subject of the new operations, of the new life that arises from his heart, he hates evil, even the evil that he does, and he loves the good and strives after sanctification of life (v. 15).

Yet for the Christian these two subjects are not identical, even for his own consciousness. For his own consciousness the reality is that old things have passed away and that all things have become new (2 Cor. 5:17); he can say, “It is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me” (Rom. 7:20). The old man of sin and the new man in Christ do not stand on the same level. The old man is his person as it is the subject of the old operations of sin in his nature. The new man is the same person, but as it is the subject of the new operations of grace and righteousness in the same nature. But these two do not stand in the same position, even before his own consciousness. The Christian certainly is conscious of the fact that the operations of sin do not arise any more out of his heart. Even when he sins, he sins differently from the purely natural man, for although sin is not dead in the Christian, yet he certainly is dead to sin. He does that which he hates; nevertheless, he hates it. Formerly he loved sin; now he has become enmity against all sin.

Thus it is clear that the life of sanctification is a continual battle, even unto the day of our death. Sanctification does not consist in the Christian’s gradually becoming more regenerated and of his being gradually delivered from his old nature. For, according to the Heidelberg Catechism, the very holiest men while in this life have only a small beginning of the new obedience. But sanctification does consist in a continual putting off of the old man and the continual putting on of the new man, and in a continual battle to let the power of grace from the heart dominate the motions of sin that are in the members of the believer. The Christian must fight the good fight of faith against Satan, the flesh, and the world to the very end.¹

There is one question that remains: Is regeneration mediate or immediate? By mediate regeneration I mean that regeneration takes place through the instrumentality of the preaching of the word. By immediate regeneration I mean that regeneration takes place without the instrumentality of the preached word, although, I hasten to add, in closest connection with the preached word. Scripture leads me to say that regeneration is immediate. First, there are the analogies between regeneration and other immediate acts of God. Regeneration is a new creation. In the creation of the world, God did not use the preaching or other instruments, but God called forth the things that are not as though they were by his creative Word. Regeneration is also a resurrection from the dead. In the resurrection of the dead, God will call the dead from their graves. There will not be ministers of the word standing over those graves, but God himself will call the dead by his Word. By these analogies scripture is also teaching us that the manner of God’s working in the regeneration of the elect is the same.

In considering this question further, there is the important passage found in 1 Peter 1:

23. Being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the word of God, which liveth and abideth for ever.

24. For all flesh is as grass, and all the glory of man as the flower of grass. The grass withereth, and the flower thereof falleth away:

25. But the word of the Lord endureth for ever. And this is the word which by the gospel is preached unto you.

In this passage the child of God is said to be born again, or regenerated, “by the word of God.” There is also a distinction in these verses between the preaching of the gospel and “the word of God.” This Word is preached to us. Nevertheless, in this passage things are said of this Word that cannot be said of the preaching. This Word lives and abides forever. It is this Word himself and not the preaching of this Word that is the power of regeneration. Regeneration is immediate, that is, it takes place by the living and abiding Word of God and not by the preaching of that Word. This passage also points out that regeneration takes place in the closest connection with the preaching of the Word. The sphere of the covenant into which the infant children of believers are born is an environment saturated with the preaching, and regeneration serves the purpose that those elect children when they come to years of discretion hear and receive the word and see the kingdom of God. On the mission field the Lord opens hearts and regenerates the elect, so that they hear and receive the preaching and are justified.

It is this view of regeneration as immediate that is also the only explanation of the regeneration and salvation of infants who die in the womb or shortly after birth or in their infancy before they can consciously hear the preaching. Scripture gives an example of regeneration in the womb in John the Baptist, who leaped with joy at the coming of the pregnant virgin Mary to Elisabeth.

Having considered the wonder of regeneration, I end by quoting what the Canons of Dordt says about regeneration in 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…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)