Talk with Clayton about Regeneration/Second Birth

REGENERATION

Regeneration- an act of God in which He imparts spiritual life to us; it is being “born again.” It cannot be undone

1 John 5:1 “Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God, and everyone who loves the Father loves whoever has been born of Him:

John 1:13 “who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God”

It is God’s will; just as we did not choose to be physically born, we did not choose to be “born again”- it is something that “happens” to us


Questions from last week
(1) Have faith and repentance continued to be a part of your life?
(2) How does God save us? From his perspective, how do we become Christians? Is there anything we could do screw it up?
-Ephesians 2:1-10… we were dead in our sins, but God, because of His great love for us and not because of anything good that we had done, made us alive in Him. It is solely by grace that we have been saved through faith; we are saved by a gift of God.

-2 Timothy 2:11-12 “The saying is trustworthy, for: If we have died with him, we will also live with him; if we endure, we will also reign with him; if we deny him, he also will deny us”

-Mark 13:13 “Any you will be hated by all for my name’s sake. But the one who endures to the end will be saved”

-John 10:26-30 “But you do not believe because you are not part of my flock. My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father’s hand. I and the Father are one”

-It is not that God demands perfection or any “good works” for us to get into heaven, but if we move towards doing these things, it is a sign that we have been “reborn”, since “every one who does what is right has been born of Him” (1 John 4:7). Once He has saved us, there is nothing that can separate us from Him. How sweet is that?

2 Corinthians 5:14-19; John 3:1-8; 1 John 5:1-5; Romans 6:1-14; Ezekiel 36:26-27

-What does it mean to be a new creation? What are some of the differences between a person who is a “new creation” and a person who has reformed their life to be a better person? Between a Christian and Gandhi? Romans 8:8 “Those controlled by the sinful nature cannot please God.” No matter how “good” a non-Christian seems, the Bible says that all their righteousness, every good thing they’ve ever done, is as filthy rags before God (Isaiah 64:6). Non-Christians can do seemingly “good” acts because they were created in the image of God, but they do not give honor to God in their actions, so, even what seems to be “good” is sin before God. We, as Christians, however, are “new creations” in that we stand before God and He sees Christ’s righteousness in place of our own. We can give glory and honor to God because we have been made clean by Christ’s blood.

-What did Jesus mean in John 3 when He said that you couldn’t see the kingdom of God unless you were born again? What is the significance of this?

2 Corinthians 4:4-6 “The god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so that they cannot see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. For we do not preach ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, and ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake/ For Gods, who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ.”

1 Corinthians 2:14 “The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned”

-What does it mean to be dead to sin and alive to God? How does this change occur and how does it affect our daily life?

2 Corinthians 5:17 “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone , the new has come”