What does the Bible say about regeneration?

• Deuteronomy 30:6, love God so that you will live
• Ezekiel 36:26, "A new heart I will give you..."
• John 1:12-13, to all who receive Christ, power is given to become children of God
• John 3:3-8, "no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit
• Ephesians 2:1-10, by grace you have been saved
• Colossians 2:13, when you were dead, God made you alive
• 1 John 2:29,"If you know that he is righteous, you may be sure that everyone who does right has been born of him"
• 1 John 4:7, let us love one another because love is from God
• 1 John 5:1,"Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God"

Sermon ideas about regeneration

The Greek verb for "being born" in Jesus' famous words to Nicodemus, is aorist, passive, subjunctive, suggesting that the blessed event of being born from above is a single event and one in which, as in physical birth, we are passive. We do not choose to be born either time. Being born from above is a work entirely of God's Spirit. In John 3:8 ("the wind blows where it chooses"), Jesus suggests the Spirit's sovereignty and mystery in causing regeneration.

Paul's language is not of birth, but of resurrection. "You were dead . . . but God made us alive." "When you were dead . . . God made you alive." Again, the decisive action is God's. And that's a good thing, because dead people can't do much for themselves. That's why the grace of God is so urgently necessary: "By grace you have been saved, through faith, and this [this whole phenomenon of being saved by grace, through faith] is not your own doing; it is the gift of God. . . ."

The language of being reborn or being resurrected suggests how ambitious regeneration is. It's a miracle, in fact — an on-the-ground, God-Almighty, Holy Ghost miracle. The 17[th]-century Reformed creed The Canons of Dort describes regeneration as follows: "It is an entirely supernatural work, one that is at the same time most powerful and most pleasing, a marvelous, hidden, and inexpressible work, which is not lesser than or inferior in power to that of creation or of raising the dead . . . ." (Third and Fourth Main Points of Doctrine, art. 12). Here, again, is the language of rebirth (creation) and of resurrection.

Famous conversion stories sometimes emphasize the involuntary nature of regeneration. C. S. Lewis, for example, wrote that "amiable agnostics will talk cheerfully about `man's search for God.' To me . . . they might as well have talked about the mouse's search for the cat . . . You must picture me alone in that room . . . night after night, feeling, whenever my mind lifted even for a second from my work, the steady, unrelenting approach of Him whom I so earnestly desired not to meet. That which I greatly feared had at last come upon me. In the Trinity Term of 1929, I gave in, and admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed: perhaps that night the most dejected and reluctant convert in all of England . . . .The Prodigal Son at least walked home on his own feet. But who can duly adore that Love which will open the high gates to a prodigal who is brought in kicking, struggling, resentful, and darting his eyes in every direction for a chance of escape? . . . The hardness of God is kinder than the softness of men, and His compulsion is our liberation" (Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Life (Harcourt, Brace & World, 1955), pp. 227-229). The title of the chapter in which Lewis wrote this? "Checkmate."