The Spirit of Life - Regeneration

Intro

Having been considering this doctrine of union with Christ, and the ways in which the Spirit applies and realizes that union in our own Christian experience, we now turn to the great foundational outcome of our Spirit-sealed union with Christ, the outcome that is the basis for all the other outcomes.

That foundational outcome is life. Now I mentioned last week that we understand our lives as Christians to be two-fold. Our lives exist in this already-not yet space, both fulfilled and being fulfilled even as we speak today. What do I mean by that? Simply that in one sense, we are alive, but in another sense we anticipate being made alive at a future point in time.

One of the great mysteries of our lives as Christians is that we live under a true and better covenant, the covenant of grace that is mediated to us by Christ. Yet we still long for the full and final fulfillment of all these promises. We still long for the completion of the work that God is working in us, both individually, collectively, and together with all the saints of God’s church throughout history.

And that mystery is what is in view here for Paul as we consider the depth and breadth of his statement here in verse 10.

Let’s once again observe the text to determine Paul’s logical and reasonable intent.

Look at the text

As we considered last week, Paul utilizes a conditional phrase here, “if Christ is in you.” The word if here is used on purpose to force the reader to consider the question: Is Christ in fact in me? Paul’s use of the word if, as opposed to the word because or since, is to force the reader to appeal back to the truths put forth in chapters 3-5 regarding justification by faith. Have you indeed believed God, and had it counted to you as righteousness? If so, you are in Christ, and Christ is in you. So if that much is true, then the rest of Paul’s statement can be true, the rest of that statement being, of course, that those who are in Christ and in whom Christ is, have a spirit that is alive, they have a vital connection to Christ, a life-giving relationship. Life then becomes for Paul a key benefit of Christ. This is something that many Puritans speak of, and I think they hit the nail right on the head. Being in Christ comes with benefits. It’s not as if you believe and place your faith in Christ and get nothing out of it. Many times in an effort to quell selfish attitudes, Christians tend to turn the focus away from what we get out of our relationship with Christ. Now we don’t want to lose sight of the greatest intent of all God’s actions: his own glory. But there are also great goods that are accomplished for us through Christ, and much of Paul’s argument after chapter 5:1 is proving to us that we have certain benefits, certain good things that come to us because we are in Christ by faith. The first is peace with God, we see that in chapter 5, we also see reconciliation or restoration of a lost relationship in chapter 5, we see sanctification in chapter 6, freedom from sin in chapter 7, freedom from condemnation in chapter 8, along with Spirit-service, spiritual mindedness, and Spiritual walking in chapter 8. But what Paul laces throughout this entire section, in 5-8, and what He brings to a climactic point here in verses 10 and 11, is that the greatest endgame benefit of our salvation is life. And for Paul, that life consists in two parts. First, spiritual life - the already part of our life in Christ. This is known as regeneration. Second, physical life- the not yet part of our life in Christ. This is known as resurrection.

And as we will see this morning, the already part of our life in Christ exists in the face of death. Look at the text. Christ’s life in us results in spiritual life, despite the fact that our bodies are dead and dying.

So let’s consider this idea of life. Vitality, if you will.

Life in cultural perspective

If we want to really come to grips with the Biblical significance of new spiritual life and new physical life, with regeneration and resurrection, we should start by looking to the world around us, to help us set the stage.

How does our culture perceive life? Google provides four definitions for life.

The condition that distinguishes animals and plants from inorganic matter, including the capacity for growth, reproduction, functional activity, and continual change preceding death. This definition is interesting. It echoes some of the Imago Dei, the image of God. Notice the distinctiveness that is pointed out, along with growth and reproduction. But the last part smacks of Heraclitus, the ancient Greek philosopher who proposed that the only constant in life is change. Benjamin Franklin, who was something of a philosopher himself, said that when you are finished changing, you are finished. In other words, for Heraclitus and Benjamin Franklin, the most fundamental part of being alive, as opposed to inanimate, is the ability to, of yourself, change. We see this physically. Trees grow. Babies develop into toddlers, into teenagers, into functioning adults. Even at the cellular level we can observe a constant state of change. Scientists have observed that the entirety of the human body on a cellular level is completely replaced approximately every ten years. Which means I’m two and half refresh cycles in. So culturally speaking, life is perceived as the ability to and indeed the constant state of change, as distinct from inanimate object.

The existence of an individual human being or animal. This considers life as simply a state of being. Life, as existence, is the opposite of non-existence. This is a reflection of the heresy of annihilationism, which says that there are only two states for human beings, existence and non-existence. Before you were born, you did not exist. After you die, you do not exist. There is no afterlife, no heaven, no hell, just nothingness.

The period between the birth and death of a living thing, especially a human being. This is the chronological conception of life, and generally what you mean when you walk up to your buddy and say “Hey man, how’s life?” This definition acknowledges our life as the stick by which we measure the flow of time as it passes by us individually.

Vitality, vigor, or energy. This is where we start getting close to a Biblical definition of life, and we will return to this later. This is perhaps the most basic definition of life but also the most profound. In many ways it encompasses and transcends the other 3 definitions that we see here.

Now for the most part, our world perceives life as valuable. What do I mean by that? You may say “We abort millions of babies a year, our culture hates life.” That is true, and that is the deep irony and even deeper hypocrisy of our world. On one hand we sacrifice the lives of others wantonly, with no regard for the moral or ethical implications. But on the other hand we do whatever we possibly can to preserve and extend our own lives. Our own lives are the most valuable things we possess, humanly speaking. We will quite literally do anything to preserve our own lives, or at least comfort our own minds by doing things that we believe will help us preserve our own lives. Look no further than the billions of people worldwide who have injected themselves with experimental lab chemicals and destroyed their lungs by obstructing their airways with filthy pieces of cloth for the last two years. All because they are afraid that the common cold may kill them. Our world values life, to the point that it becomes an idol. We are obsessed as a culture with life-extension techniques. Ads pop up online all the time for some miracle superfood that will add ten years to your life. Joe Biden commands the United States to stop eating hot dogs because they may shorten your life span. Ironic coming out of the mouth of a guy who’s got one foot in the grave, but I digress.

If you want a popular expression of our culture’s abiding obsession with life, look no further than Alphaville’s 1984 Billboard hit Forever Young. Listen to the lyrics:

It's so hard to get old without a cause I don't want to perish like a fading horse Youth's like diamonds in the sun And diamonds are forever

So many adventures given up today So many songs we forgot to play So many dreams swinging out of the blue Oh let it come true

Forever young I want to be forever young Do you really want to live forever Forever, and ever?

People will give anything for their lives, both to preserve and to extend it.

You may wonder why. Why will people live inside for two years to try and save their own life? Why will people pay millions of dollars to surgeons to implant blobs of plastic in their bodies to look younger? Why have miracle drugs always existed? Why are hippies obsessed with superfoods? Why has every major culture throughout all of history had some sort of myth or legend or religious story about a fountain of youth or some sort of vital potion or life-giving elixir? Why the obsession with life?

It’s simple actually. It’s hardwired into our nature. In one of the most profound theological statements in all of God’s Word, Paul tells the philosophers at the Areopagus in Athens, the center of human reason in his day, this:

Acts 17:22–27 NASB95

So Paul stood in the midst of the Areopagus and said, “Men of Athens, I observe that you are very religious in all respects. “For while I was passing through and examining the objects of your worship, I also found an altar with this inscription, ‘TO AN UNKNOWN GOD.’ Therefore what you worship in ignorance, this I proclaim to you. “The God who made the world and all things in it, since He is Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in temples made with hands; nor is He served by human hands, as though He needed anything, since He Himself gives to all people life and breath and all things; and He made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined their appointed times and the boundaries of their habitation, that they would seek God, if perhaps they might grope for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us;

Did you catch that? Paul, preaching under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, tells a big gathering of pagan philosophers that the God of the universe is near to each of them, and not only each of them, but all people. He goes on to quote one of their esteemed philosophers, the Stoic Aratus, who said this:

“Let us begin with Zeus, whom we mortals never leave unspoken.

“For every street, every market-place is full of Zeus.

“Even the sea and the harbour are full of this deity

“Everywhere everyone is indebted to Zeus.

“For we are indeed his offspring ”

Aratus was so close. Paul got it. Even the Greeks understood the basic nature of who God was. They called him by the wrong name, they worshipped hime falsely, they didn’t understand what his true plan of redemption was, but they were, as Paul says, near. God was near even to the pagan Greek philosophers, and he has been near to all people throughout history.

The true, living, triune God of the Bible is not the distant clockmaker God of deism, who creates the universe and then allows it to run on it’s own terms, at it’s own pace. No, Yahweh is the personal God of theism, who is intimately involved in the operations of that which He created. And as those who bear his image, or to use the language of Paul in Acts 17, as those who are his children, we can sense his presence, we can sense the truth and the reality of the existence of God, even as Paul says in Romans, because we can see His attributes, namely his divinity, creativity, and power.

Because of all this, we can sense, whether we can articulate it or not, whether we are in Christ or not, whether we have opened a Bible in our lives or not, that we are not as we were meant to be. The world as it is now is not the world as it was designed or created. We as a human race can sense innately, because of the image of God within us, that there is something wrong with our world. We miss the root cause, we miss the solution, but we rarely miss the problem itself. And what is the chief outcome of the problem? The most recognizable fruit of the fallen state of our world? It is death. We know in our hearts, no matter how far we are from God, that we are not designed to die. That death is unnatural. Whether Christian or not, we grieve death because we understand that it shouldn’t be this way. Many people can’t articulate this, but when you watch people grieve, you know they feel it.

So we do everything in our power to avoid, suppress, and put off death. We do this because we know that it is not part of what we were created to be and do and experience.

Yet, because of the sin of Adam, because of the fall of humankind, death has entered the world. Go back to Romans 5, through one act of disobedience death enters into the world. Death is the great overarching curse of sin. After all, God said it, did he not? If you eat of this tree you will surely die. There is no promised curse for sin initially out of the mouth of God other than death.

And so the great longing of the human race is to return to that pre-curse state, that pre-fall existence, to return to the blissful, vital life of Eden.

Paul understands that, which is why he centralizes his argument for not only the book of Romans but indeed for his entire ministry on the concept of life. The greatest benefit that comes to us out of our union with Christ is life, inner and outer, spiritual and physical, temporal and eternal.

So we understand a cultural and historical perspective on life. But let’s consider the argument of Paul:

The spirit is alive

Our fourth Google definition from earlier probably captures most closely what the Bible means when it speaks of life, though the others certainly play a part. Life in the Scriptures is intimately connected with vitality, with the energy and animation that come specifically with having the Spirit of Life within you. Genesis 2:7 records that humans had this breath of life in them, this vitality, this energy, this animation.

Genesis 2:7 NASB95

Then the Lord God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being.

In Genesis 6:17 God determines to destroy everything in which is the breath of life:

Genesis 6:17 NASB95

“Behold, I, even I am bringing the flood of water upon the earth, to destroy all flesh in which is the breath of life, from under heaven; everything that is on the earth shall perish.

So just from the opening chapters of God’s Word, we see that the Biblical conception of life is different than our culture’s conception of life. We tend to define life purely biologically, but God’s Word defines it more spiritually. In fact, the Old Testament actually uses two different words for life, one referring to biological life, and one referring to spiritual life. Hay-ye typically refers to biological life, while Hay-yim refers to spiritual life. Any “living thing” in the Old Testament can possess Hay-ye. but only those who are image bearers, humans, can possess Hay-yim. But the Old Testament goes a step further in describing this inner life, with another Hebrew word you may be familiar with: Nephesh. This word is usually translated soul, and this is the type of inner life that Paul speaks of in Romans 8. When he says the spirit is alive, he means that the soul, the nephesh, has been revitalized, made alive.

So when Paul says that the Spirit is alive because of righteousness, he means that our soul has been revitalized because of righteousness, and he’s making reference to a famous passage from the Old Testament, Habakkuk 2:4, one that he’s already referenced directly multiple times and indeed is the fountain out of which the whole book of Romans springs:

Habakkuk 2:4 NASB95

“Behold, as for the proud one, His soul is not right within him; But the righteous will live by his faith.

Habakkuk is making a poetic contrast between those who are prideful and those who are righteous. The righteous live, the proud die. The righteous are right in the soul, the proud are not. The righteous has life in his soul because of his faith, the proud has death in his soul because of his faith. The difference is, of course, the object of the faith.

The proud man of Habakkuk has no life in him. He is spiritually dead. He must therefore be made alive, or as our Lord would say, he must be born again.

Paul then has in view in Romans 8:10 this doctrine of regeneration. The “you” of the phrase if Christ is in you is the regenerate person, the person who has been born again, the person who has new life imparted to their spirit by the work of the Spirit. It might help us to read this phrase in the negative. If Christ is not in you, the body is dead because of sin, and the spirit is also dead because of sin.

In other words, as we know, our sin renders our souls as dead. The nephesh, the Spirit-life of our souls is plucked away, leaving us dead inside.

Listen to this quote from John MacArthur’s Biblical Doctrine:

In his natural state, man is characterized by spiritual death. By nature he is a spiritual corpse, entirely unresponsive to the spiritual truth proclaimed in the external call of the gospel. Sin has so pervaded man that all his faculties are corrupted by it. Indeed, the natural man is devoid of spiritual life, for Scripture says that his heart is a heart of stone, cold and unresponsive to the meaning of divinely revealed truth.

But the rich truth of the gospel is that God takes our dead soul, and re-inserts that divine nephesh, and breathes his life into us. This truth is captured in three of the most glorious passages in all of God’s Word.

First, from the pen of the disciple who Jesus loved: John 3:1-8

John 3:1–8 NASB95

Now there was a man of the Pharisees, named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews; this man came to Jesus by night and said to Him, “Rabbi, we know that You have come from God as a teacher; for no one can do these signs that You do unless God is with him.” Jesus answered and said to him, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.” Nicodemus said to Him, “How can a man be born when he is old? He cannot enter a second time into his mother’s womb and be born, can he?” Jesus answered, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. “That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. “Do not be amazed that I said to you, ‘You must be born again.’ “The wind blows where it wishes and you hear the sound of it, but do not know where it comes from and where it is going; so is everyone who is born of the Spirit.”

The same way the Spirit conceived our Lord naturally in the womb of Mary, so also the Spirit must conceive us spiritually in the womb of salvation for us to enter the kingdom of heaven, for us to be saved.

Let’s consider the words of Paul: Ephesians 2:1-7

Ephesians 2:1–7 NASB95

And you were dead in your trespasses and sins, in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience. Among them we too all formerly lived in the lusts of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest. But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the ages to come He might show the surpassing riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.

We were dead. We were lifeless, lying on the ground of our spirit, unable to do anything other than indulge the desires of the flesh and of the mind.

But God! God made us alive. That is the first and greatest act of salvation that God works in our lives, after he predestines and calls us, he regenerates us, makes us alive together with Christ, by the power of His Holy Spirit.

Finally, and I think most powerfully, from the pen of Ezekiel:

Ezekiel 36:25–27 NASB95

“Then I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean; I will cleanse you from all your filthiness and from all your idols. “Moreover, I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. “I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you will be careful to observe My ordinances.

God removes our old dead heart, our old dead spirit, and replaces it with something so vital, so vibrant, so vigorous that the only way Ezekiel can fully understand it is to have God show him, so the Lord whisks Ezekiel down to a valley, and this happens:

Ezekiel 37:1–14 NASB95

The hand of the Lord was upon me, and He brought me out by the Spirit of the Lord and set me down in the middle of the valley; and it was full of bones. He caused me to pass among them round about, and behold, there were very many on the surface of the valley; and lo, they were very dry. He said to me, “Son of man, can these bones live?” And I answered, “O Lord God, You know.” Again He said to me, “Prophesy over these bones and say to them, ‘O dry bones, hear the word of the Lord.’ “Thus says the Lord God to these bones, ‘Behold, I will cause breath to enter you that you may come to life. ‘I will put sinews on you, make flesh grow back on you, cover you with skin and put breath in you that you may come alive; and you will know that I am the Lord.’ ” So I prophesied as I was commanded; and as I prophesied, there was a noise, and behold, a rattling; and the bones came together, bone to its bone. And I looked, and behold, sinews were on them, and flesh grew and skin covered them; but there was no breath in them. Then He said to me, “Prophesy to the breath, prophesy, son of man, and say to the breath, ‘Thus says the Lord God, “Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe on these slain, that they come to life.” ’ ” So I prophesied as He commanded me, and the breath came into them, and they came to life and stood on their feet, an exceedingly great army. Then He said to me, “Son of man, these bones are the whole house of Israel; behold, they say, ‘Our bones are dried up and our hope has perished. We are completely cut off.’ “Therefore prophesy and say to them, ‘Thus says the Lord God, “Behold, I will open your graves and cause you to come up out of your graves, My people; and I will bring you into the land of Israel. “Then you will know that I am the Lord, when I have opened your graves and caused you to come up out of your graves, My people. “I will put My Spirit within you and you will come to life, and I will place you on your own land. Then you will know that I, the Lord, have spoken and done it,” declares the Lord.’ ”

This is one of the most striking and iconic pictures in all of Scripture, an army of the walking dead, raised up by the word of the prophet, made truly alive by the power of the Spirit. And what Paul is telling you today in Romans 8, what he’s telling the whole Roman church and everyone who would ever crack open this magnificent epistle, is this: you are part of that army in Ezekiel 37. If Christ is in you, and you in Him, you’ve got a living, breathing, divine nephesh inside you that’s powerful enough to raise the dead, and not just one or two, but raise so many dead that they form an exceedingly great army, and in the Hebrew Ezekiel is having a tough time finding the right word to describe this army. That’s how glorious, how mighty, how powerful the working of the Holy Spirit is in His work of regeneration.

We can conclude then, in the words of our dear friend Joel Beeke, that regeneration, is “supernatural rebirth by which God begins salvation,” and in the words of another dear friend, John MacArthur, that it speaks of a cleansing of sin and a creation of spiritual life, and we may call it a purifying renovation.

And this is what is in view for Paul in Romans 8. He is intent upon impressing on our hearts and our minds that the Spirit, as it facilitates our union with Christ, makes our inner person alive, regenerates our spirits, causes us to be born again inside. As CityAlight, the de facto hymnists of West Hills Church say, what once was dead is now alive, you gave to me the breath of life, you brought me up out from the grave, I’m bursting out with songs of praise.

Because of righteousness

Paul is also careful here in Romans 8 to make clear where this regeneration comes from. What causes regeneration? What causes life? Simply, righteousness brings about life. If you want to live, you must obey.

This was the mandate for Adam - simply do not eat of this one tree, and you will live.

Again for the nation of Israel, in Leviticus 26 and Deuteronomy 11 and 28, if you obey, you will live long and prosper before God.

The key for Paul here is that first phrase, however, if Christ is in you. Our spirits are alive because Christ, and by extension His righteousness, dwells within us. We are holy because he is holy, and we are holy because we are in him, and we are holy because he is in us, and our union is by faith. Do you believe? You are in him. Are you in him? You are righteous. Are you righteous? Your spirit is alive.

Though the body is dead

2 Corinthians 4:16–18 NASB95

Therefore we do not lose heart, but though our outer man is decaying, yet our inner man is being renewed day by day. For momentary, light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison, while we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen; for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal.

And we feel that today, don’t we? Just in our own bodies. I’m only 25 but if I sleep on my stomach, I can’t walk in the morning. Once I had this thing called the norovirus and it was the most awful stomach sickness I’ve ever had in my life. We break bones, we get sick, our body breaks down, we can’t do the things we used to be able to do.

But the hope that Paul puts forth for us in this passage is that because Christ lives in us through the Spirit, our body can waste away down to the very grave, and our hope remains because of the vitality we have in our souls.

This soul-vitality-grounded hope is picture nowhere, I think, more clearly than in the story of the death of Charles Wesley. You may not know his name, but you certainly know his songs. Hark the Herald Angels Sing, Rejoice, the Lord is King, O For A Thousand Tongues to Sing, Come Thou Long Expected Jesus, Christ the Lord is Risen Today, Come Thou Almighty King, and hundreds of other well-known hymns. Listen to the story of his death as Fred Sanders recounts it:

Charles Wesley lived a long and fruitful life, died peacefully at home, and was buried in the yard of his parish church. His family was gathered around him and some of them wrote descriptions of how he died. His death was not really remarkable except that it was such a remarkably Christian way of dying. His attending physician said “He possessed that state of mind which he had been always pleased to see in others– unaffected humility and holy resignation to the will of God. He had no transports of joy, but solid hope and unshaken confidence in Christ, which kept his mind in perfect peace…” He was extremely weak in his final days, but whenever his wife and daughter would ask him if he needed anything, he would reply, “Nothing but Christ.”

Charles Wesley embodied the inner spirit-life that Paul speaks of in verse 10. Even as his health waned and his body failed, his spirit was alive, vigorous, vital, vibrant.

Because of sin

What does Paul mean here? I will defer to RC Sproul:

The Gospel of God: Romans (1) Delivered from the Power of Sin

now Paul is talking about the physical body when he writes ‘your body is dead’. Even if Christ is in you, your body will still go through death. Why? Because of sin. We have to pay the temporal punishment for our sin. We must die. That is the last enemy to be destroyed.

There is still that final threshold, that final dark and stormy river to be crossed, even for the Christian, before we enter into our final glory.

Conclusion

We are alive. By the work of Christ as he lives in us through His Spirit, we have been regenerated. We have been made alive in our souls. But this new life inside us is, as we saw two weeks ago, only the seal and pledge. This is not the full inheritance. This is merely the down payment. Listen to Geerhardus Vos, the eminent Dutch theologian and scholar, usher us into our text for next week, verse 11:

The Collected Articles of Geerhardus Vos (The Pauline Doctrine of the Resurrection)

Paul derives the proof for God’s having prepared him for the eternal state in a new heavenly body from the fact of God’s having given him the ἀρραβὼν τοῦ πνεύματος. Now the Spirit possesses this significance of “pledge” for no other reason than that it constitutes a provisional installment of what in its fulness will be received hereafter. The quite analogous conception of the ἀπαρχὴ τοῦ πνεύματος (Rom. 8:23) proves this. Ἀρραβών means money given in purchases as a pledge that the full amount will be subsequently paid. In this instance, therefore, the Spirit is viewed as pertaining specifically to the future life, nay as constituting the substantial make-up of this life, and the present possession of the Spirit is regarded in the light of an anticipation. The spirit’s proper sphere is the future aeon; from thence He projects Himself into the present, and becomes a prophecy of Himself in his eschatological operations.

In other words, the living spirit of regeneration in you right now, is simply the first prophecy of the living spirit of resurrection which will be in you in the final day. And it is to that spirit of resurrection that we will turn our attention to next week.