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CPC Sunday School | Holy Spirit #1 (Mark Evans)
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This is a discussion about the importance of understanding and acknowledging the role of the Holy Spirit in Christianity. The speaker explains that the Holy Spirit is often overshadowed by the focus on God the Father and Jesus Christ, resulting in a neglected understanding of the Spirit's work. The speaker aims to explore the Reformed understanding of the Holy Spirit and how it impacts the believer's life. The discussion also touches on the concept of salvation and the benefits of being united with Christ. The speaker emphasizes the Trinitarian nature of effectual calling, which is the process through which sinners are called into fellowship with Christ. Effectual calling is described as always effective and never failing. Alright, we'll go ahead and let's begin with a word of prayer and we'll get started. Our gracious God and Heavenly Father, we do praise You that You have fulfilled Your great promise that You have sent forth Your Spirit. The Son has accomplished the work that You gave Him to do, that He has ascended on high, seated at Your right hand, and You have given us the Spirit that proceeds from You and from the Son, the One who would take the things that are Christ and show them to us, the One who would indwell us, the One who would conform us more and more to be under the image of the Lord Jesus. We pray that we would grow in our knowledge of the Holy Spirit, what it is to walk in the Spirit, to be full of the Spirit, take even step with the Spirit, that we would truly respond in a humble faith and reliance, knowing that we are nothing more than branches connected to the vine, that should we be cut off, that we have no life in ourselves, that we have no spiritual good in ourselves, and that would only cause us more and more to abide in You. Alright, so we're starting today, six weeks on the Holy Spirit is our topic at hand. So just a brief primer why, why the Holy Spirit in particular. Oftentimes said to be the so-called forgotten God in that God the Father, certainly Christ in evangelicalism are often given pride of place in a way that can eclipse, that can overshadow the person of the Holy Spirit, the work of the Holy Spirit. With that very much a neglected understanding, you might have just by way of osmosis, charismatic teachings tend to be the most common place among broader evangelicalism as far as the work of the Holy Spirit, which leads to not just a neglected misunderstanding, but a misunderstanding of who the Spirit is and what the Spirit's role is in our life. And so with that, want to do as best we can a recovery of the very rich, very, very rich Reformed understanding of the Spirit. So we'll touch on that more in a minute. And then certainly it is of great encouragement for the Christian life, how it impacts the way that we live. Good Primer, John Stott, says it well, there is no greater secret to holiness than the one whose very name, whose very nature is that of holiness. So this is our roadmap that we intend to cover for the next six weeks. So this is, you could call this an ordo salutis, which is just Latin for an order of salvation, the order of salvation. How does the Spirit work in the believer's life in terms of an order of salvation? And not all ordo salutis are the same. There can be some variation. Even in the Reformed world, there can be some variation, but this is the order we're going to go with. So I've got today, effectual calling and regeneration. If you don't know what those terms are, don't worry. That's the point of the class. Next adoption, Dan Juan will take. Now just to note, usually you would have justification before adoption, but just the way our schedule has worked out, this is the order we have. So mental note, usually you'd want to have justification, then adoption, sanctification, perseverance, glorification. And even this list is not exhaustive. You could go a little bit broader than this list, but these are the points that we're hitting for the next six weeks. That sea camp is Jeremy's sea camp, just to clarify amongst the sea camp tribe who is doing that. There's a lot of them, right. Got to be more specific than that. So that's the six-week course, okay. I said there's a rich understanding of this in the Reformed camp of the Holy Spirit. I mentioned this in the sermon, but I think this is just such a great quote by Calvin who says, this is from the Institutes, as long as Christ remains outside of us and we are separated from Him, and just feel the weight of this quote, everything that He's done, everything that Christ suffered, all that He's done for our salvation remains useless. It is of no value, no value whatsoever to us if Christ remains outside of us. And that's why this led, and Calvin obviously develops this idea more and more, and we'll find out, well, if He's outside of us, how does He get inside of us? B.B. Warfield said, described Calvin as the theologian of the Holy Spirit, which is not often thought of when you think of Calvin. But you read the Institutes and he's got so much great material on the work and the person of the Holy Spirit. So if Christ is outside of us, how does He get in us, so to speak? And this is just a simple way of thinking of it, that Christ came and accomplished redemption, right? He did all the work His Father gave Him to do to accomplish our salvation, but how then is that redemption applied to us? How does it existentially become a reality for me, the believer, so that what He did two thousand years ago is not useless and of no value, and that Christ is disconnected from me? So you'd want to say, okay, the Holy Spirit comes and He applies the work of Christ to the believer's life. So that's what we're talking about when we talk about ordo salutis, this order of salvation, the simple idea being that Christ and all of His benefits become mine. And this class is delving into what are those benefits? Christ and all of His benefits become mine. And one reason, there's many reasons I think this is helpful, one reason would be this. I want to key off the point Ben made in his sermon last week, because I think he said it so well, is that we can often unconsciously elevate justification in our thinking. Ben made the great point, right, that being forgiven, forgiveness of sins, is sometimes said to be the sum and substance of what it is to be a Christian. I'm a Christian, equaling, I'm forgiven of my sin. And of course, as wonderful as that is, as true as that is, as great as that is, you would not want to elevate it to the exclusion of all the other benefits of salvation. You would not want to reduce Christianity to simply saying, oh, it's being forgiven of my sins. And then when I come before God as judge, I am declared righteous in His eyes. Again, wonderful, Calvin said justification is the hinge on which all religion turns. So it is very important, but you would not want to flatten it out and reduce all the other great benefits of what it means to belong to Jesus Christ and put it in this kind of pride of place position. So maybe a better way to think of it would be in terms of union with Christ. I am united to Jesus Christ. That is what it is to be a Christian. I'm in Him. I know I've said this over and over and over again in Ephesians, that when Paul describes us, he thinks of the Christian as being in Jesus Christ, united to Him. And then from that come all these benefits, what it is to be regenerated and justified and adopted and sanctified and glorified. Christ and all His benefits become mine, belong to me, because I'm in Him. He is mine and I am His. Does that make sense? Any questions on this part so far? Union with Christ. Okay, John Murray says it well, union with Christ is not simply a step in the application of redemption, it underlies every step of the application of redemption, every part of it. My adoption, my glorification, my perseverance, my justification, everything can all be summed up in what it is to belong to Jesus Christ. When we think about the role of the Spirit, St. Clair Ferguson says it well, the central role is to reveal Christ and to unite us to Him, and this third part is the part that's often overlooked, as well as one another, the body of Christ, all those who participate in His body. So of course, we've got a problem though. How do we get into Christ, right, if Christ is outside of us? How do we get into Jesus Christ if man is spiritually unable, spiritually incapable? We've seen this in Ephesians, man is dead in his trespasses, he's dead in his sins, he has as much ability as a corpse does to get into Jesus Christ. That is our spiritual problem, and so that brings us to today, part one, we're covering today, effectual calling and regeneration. What does it mean to be effectually called and regenerated? I'll read John Murray's definition, this is very wordy, so I'll just read it, and then don't worry, we'll simplify it, we'll pull out the parts that we want to pull out. Effectual calling is God's call, which is the efficacious summons on the part of God, the Father, in accordance with His eternal purpose in Christ Jesus. Who is the call going to? It's going to sinners who are dead in their trespasses and sins. It ushers them into fellowship with Christ and into the possession of salvation, of which Christ, of course, is the embodiment. It's an immutable call, an unchangeable call, by reason of the purpose from which it proceeds in the bond it affects. Okay, there's a lot there, let's just pull out a few parts. One, we're simply saying, effectual calling, first of all, is Trinitarian, it's a fully Trinitarian work. God the Father is the one who does the calling. Where is God the Father calling us? He's calling us into Jesus Christ, into fellowship with Jesus Christ, belonging to Jesus Christ. And how does that become actualized? Who is the agent that does that? It is the Holy Spirit who makes good on the effectual calling of God. So effectual calling is a fully Trinitarian work, although we're going to be focusing on the Spirit's role in particular when it comes to effectual calling. The other thing to notice is that effectual calling is effectual, meaning always. The goal is always, always, always effective. It always brings about the desired result. It is always accomplished, it never fails. When God calls someone, He always, always succeeds in calling that person. God never attempts to call someone and it falls flat. That does not ever, ever, ever happen. It is always, always, always effective. And so one clarifier, because maybe you're saying, well, wait a minute, I've seen, witnessed lots of people called and they don't respond, right? It does fall flat. One clarifier, effectual calling, don't confuse this with the general call of the gospel. You know that from the pulpit we say, hey, come and believe in Jesus Christ, turn from your sin, repent and believe, and some respond to that and some people don't respond to that. Well, that's man giving a general call of the gospel freely offered to all people indiscriminately. That's not what we're talking about when we're talking about effectual calling. We're talking about God the Father in His secret, mysterious providence and decrees Him calling someone through the instrument of the Word. So that's one clarifier to bear in mind. Okay, verse on, the Father as the caller, very famous chain from Romans 8, all those, I'm sorry, and those whom He predestined, He also called. And then you see that chain continue to the other benefits, things like justification, things like glorification. But you see there, God the Father is the one who is calling sinners, right? We do not call ourselves, hopefully that's self-evident, but we do not call ourselves, it is the act of God alone who calls us. Where does God call us? The Son is the destination, right? God is faithful, by whom you were called into the fellowship of His Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. Again, here is the problem though, if this call is going to sinners, dead in their trespasses, right, how do dead people answer the call? So it's important to see, right, God is the one who calls us, but you don't want to fall into a kind of hyper-Calvinism, right? God is not the one who answers the call. I mean, it is sinners who answer the call, it is sinners who respond to God's call. And negatively, the natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit. Why? Because they are spiritually discerned. He cannot discern the things because they are spiritually discerned, and he is a natural, carnal, fleshly person. So that poses the question, and that brings us to today's topic, how would anyone answer the call by the work of the Holy Spirit? It is the Holy Spirit's unique, particular, amazing work that would enable this dead person to respond. John 3 is probably one of the best sections, I mean, we could spend all morning just on John 3. You have Jesus, what's Jesus doing in John 3? Who's He talking with? Nicodemus, right? Yeah, Nicodemus, Nicodemus comes at night, got that great dog. You're, you know, you're the teacher of Israel, and you don't understand these things, that you must be born from above, you must be born again. And so you could, again, you could spend, we could spend all class on John 3, but we'll just highlight this verse, that which is, you've got this like produces like, that which is born of flesh is flesh, that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. And we'll get to more of this, but I, just as far as the use for the Christian life, this fact alone, as in the fact that we do not call ourselves, we are completely dependent upon the Spirit's work, should make us keenly aware just how dependent we are upon the sovereign grace of God for our salvation. All right, let's look at what the Confession says on effectual calling. So just read, read a few portions and we'll talk about it. All those, so that's an important part, all those, right? Not one missing, everyone, everyone of those that God has predestined unto life and those only, so there is the tight circle, those and those only, God's elect, He is pleased in His appointed and accepted time, so it becomes a reality in the sinner's life at a given point in time, effectually to call by His, and we'll talk about these two elements, by word and spirit, that that is how God calls people, by word and spirit. So you can think of the word as the instrument that the Spirit uses, that the Spirit calls people through the word, and the Confession generally has in mind the preached word, or you could say in everyday Christian life, the sharing of the gospel, but either way, the word being the instrument and the spirit being the efficient cause, right? Spilling the word into the sinner's heart, penetrating the word into the sinner's heart, such that the sinner, the scales drops from the sinner's eyes, so to speak. What the Spirit does, we'll pull out four things, enlightening their minds, they come to a saving understanding of the things of God, taking away the heart of stone, giving a heart of flesh, renewing their wills, and effectually drawing them to Jesus Christ, so that they come most freely, and that's an important part we'll talk about in a minute, being made willing by His grace. So look at these four things, right? This is what the Spirit does upon the whole man, removes the heart of stone, gives them a heart of flesh, renews the mind, renews the will, whereas before the will was entirely resistant, right, unwilling, incapable, not wanting to come, and then fourthly, there's this conscious drawing to Christ, coming to Christ, done by the work of the Spirit upon the whole man. That's why you see in Ezekiel, a very famous verse foretelling of the Spirit to come, I will cleanse you, I will give you a new heart and a new spirit I will put within you, I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And then shortly thereafter, this is that great scene of Ezekiel prophesying to the bones, behold I will cause breath, in that Hebrew word ruach, often the word translated as spirit, I will cause breath to enter you and you shall live. I will put, once again, I will put breath, ruach, into you and you shall live and you shall know that I am the Lord. Again, he's speaking to not somewhat alive men, partially alive men, but to dead bones, foretelling of the time of the outpoured spirit. We saw also a new mind, that's an important part. Here's John Owen, it's a special work of the Spirit in the illumination of our minds to make us understand the mind of God and how. How do we understand the mind of God? I mean, think of what an amazing thing that is, that as finite creatures we would come to know the mind of God. Now how that is, as revealed in the Scriptures, right, not through some other fantastic way, but as God has revealed Himself in the Scriptures, so the revelation that's already here and full and complete, right, there's not new revelation, but it is illuminating the revelation that is already here. So the analogy is often said is if you walk in this room and all the lights are off, right, and you see all the stuff that's in this room, once the lights are turned on, right, so there's not new stuff that was put into this room, all the stuff is already there, but once the lights come on, you can start to see that which was already present. And that's the special work of the Holy Spirit, to illuminate to our minds what God has revealed to us in the Scriptures. Here's an important thing to keep in mind, the confession does say, sinners come most freely. Sometimes Calvinism is misconstrued that man doesn't have free will, right? You might have heard that, Calvinists think men don't have free will. Confession absolutely holds to free will. We have free will. God has created us to have free will, simply meaning that man acts out of his will. He freely acts out of his will. Whatever he wills, that is what he does. Of course, the problem is if you're dead, you're going to will things in a deadful way. You can only will things in a deadful way. But the confession absolutely holds to free will such that when man is called, he consciously, desirously, sincerely comes to Jesus Christ. He freely comes to Jesus Christ. That's a very important thing. So in other words, confession is saying, there's not someone out there going, man, I'd love to come to Jesus Christ. I want to come to Jesus Christ, but I'm not effectually called, so I'm not going to. But I really want to. No, it's saying, no, the sinner does not want to come to Christ freely, freely does not want to come to Christ. That is his or her desire. The Spirit comes and effectually calls that person and changes their desire and then they freely, most freely, come to Christ. That's a very important point. Any questions on free will? Because that's an important misconception you want to have in your mind. We absolutely do hold to free will. That is how God made us. God created us with a free will. Okay. Okay, in terms of man's credit, so to speak, the effectual call is of God's free and special grace. This is an important distinction. It is not from anything at all foreseen in man. God is not looking down the hallway of time and seeing, oh, there's Paul Morris. I know that Paul is going to respond to me in October 1990, therefore, I call him on that basis. Confession is saying, no, it is not from anything at all foreseen in man whatsoever. It is simply and solely God's free and special grace. So man is altogether passive, altogether passive in terms of his effectual calling. Again, we do not call ourselves. God is the one who calls us. And again, the work of the Spirit, this great language, these are two great verbs, I think, of what nicely encapsulates it. We're quickened and we are renewed by the Holy Spirit. And then you see that distinction. Man is then enabled. So he went from disabled to enabled, dead to alive. He is now enabled to answer the call of God. I won't get into this too much because this is Dan's topic, but it's, again, great to see how interconnected the order salutis is. This is that great passage from John 1. Notice the connection of being born again to being adopted. Those who believe in Christ's name, he gives the right to become children of God, which people specifically? Those who were born. And just listen to this catalog of how man has no merit in his being born again. Born not of blood, not of the will of flesh, not of the will of man, born solely of God. Being born of God. Okay, another important nuance. This is just good to bear in mind, that there are those who are not elected and they may be called by the ministry of the Word. So again, that general call, come to Jesus Christ, and may even have some common operations of the Spirit. So in other words, the Spirit in some way operating, working on the sinner's life, the unelected sinner. And that person never coming to saving faith, but they tasted something of the Spirit's work. And you can think of Hebrews as a great passage that would be a good cross-reference. And just to note, the confession does not finely distinguish between effectual calling and regeneration. So there is no chapter on regeneration. It's all lumped in under effectual calling. If you wanted to parse it finely, you could maybe think of effectual calling as the outward work, regeneration being the inward work, but again, the confession lumps everything under effectual calling, which is a totally fine way to do it. Okay, so summary, let's just summarize the doctrine real quick. It's effectual. It always accomplishes its goal. God never fails to call a sinner and that call falls flat. The Word always goes forth, doesn't return void, always accomplishes its goal. Man is wholly passive in this work. Man is not doing, contributing, meriting anything. The Father, it's a Trinitarian call, the Father is the author, He issues the call. He's calling a sinner into Jesus Christ and the Spirit is the enabler, the actualizer, the agent, the one who is doing the work, making man willing and consciously coming to Jesus Christ. And God does this through Word and Spirit, through Word and Spirit as the dual operations. Any questions on this? Okay, so closely related, let's just talk regeneration, regeneration, also known as what would be another common phrase for regeneration? A simple, a layman's term, conversion, okay, or salvation, or being born again, being born again. Yep, being born again. All right, so regeneration. The Word is actually only found two times in the entire New Testament and only one of those times is it referring to, well, maybe even referring to individual believers. But here's one of those instances, and this is Jesus talking, Jesus says, truly I say to you, in the new world, and that is actually the word for regeneration, palingenesia, which just means born again. And so Jesus is saying there will come a time when the world itself will be regenerated. The world will be born again. When the Son of Man sits on His glorious throne, so on and so on and so forth. So you see regeneration being applied in a cosmic sense, all right, new heavens, new earth kind of sense. Here's the other time, this is the second time that word appears, when the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared, He saved us not by our works, but by His mercy, by the washing of, and it would be the same word, palingenesia, by regeneration and renewal, and of course there you have the person who is doing the renewing, the person who is doing the regenerating of the Holy Spirit, whom He poured out on us richly through Christ our Savior. Again, just a great, man, another great just Trinitarian example. God our Savior regenerating us, how? Through the Holy Spirit, through Jesus Christ our Savior. Okay, so even though the word only appears two times, so again the word regeneration only appears twice in the New Testament, the concept is everywhere. Again, we saw it in Ezekiel, would be a fine example, very famous verses like this, if anyone is in Christ, He is a new creation. And we could multiply examples, but good instance of even though the word is only there twice, the concept is everywhere. So you'll notice there are similar areas here between this and effectual calling for good reason. That's why the confession lumps it under one chapter. But again, man is passive, it's a thoroughly monergistic work, just meaning all God, right? It's not man and God cooperating, it's not a synergy between man and God, it is God's work as man has made a new creation. An important point that's often overlooked is that man is sharing in the resurrection life of Christ. He's participating in the age to come, so that's very much what it means to be regenerated. And again, for the Christian life, it is such a humbling thing to think about. We are as dependent upon the Spirit for spiritual birth as you were on your parents, right? What did you contribute to your natural birth? Did you go to your mom and dad and say, mom and dad, right? Time to give me birth. Of course not, right? That is how dependent we are on the Spirit. So we can contrast this with modern day, it's just good to be aware of modern day examples of regeneration. So here's Billy Graham, the great Billy Graham, and he poses this question. Jesus Christ says that we must be born again. How do we become born again? So this is just a good reminder that everybody has an order of salutis, right? Everybody has a kind of order of salvation, whether it's well thought out or not thought out or well trained or not well trained, everyone has some kind of order of salvation that seeps into our minds. And so here's Billy Graham on regeneration, and he's answering his own question. So here's how we do it. We become born again by repenting of sins. This means we're willing to change our way of living. We say to God, I'm a sinner, I'm sorry, it's simple and childlike, and by faith we receive Christ as our Lord, Master, Savior. We are willing to follow in a new life of obedience in which the Holy Spirit helps us. So kind of a rough outline to these steps that you so often do see in modern evangelicalism on how to be born again. Here are the things you need to do to be born again. You need to repent, and step two, you need to believe, and then step three, you kind of dedicate your life to Christ, and then coming at the end there, rounding it out, then you cross that finish line, the Holy Spirit will help you. This is nothing new. I mean, this is just an old thing revisited. So you could go all the way back to, this is 4th century, who has heard of Pelagius? Many people have heard of Pelagius, right, so I mean this is an old debate that goes back well into the ancient church. You have Pelagius arguing, no, man can be born again, here's what man can do, Augustine comes and combats him and says, no, I think you are mistaken. So here's someone Pelagius is teaching on regeneration, again, this is circa 4th century. He would say this, no, regeneration doesn't, being born again does not consist in the renewal of the will and by the operation of the Holy Spirit, but it's by our intellect, a stimulation of our will, the remission of sin through divine indulgence, and here's kind of the key point. God's grace, yes, it kind of goes out, it's kind of, you know, diffused for everybody, it's kind of out there in the world, but here's man's job. Man must make himself worthy of it by an honest striving after virtue. So you can see the difference. Pelagius is saying, no, man's got the ability. If man would just put forward a little bit of effort and make an honest, sincere attempt towards virtue, now we've got a good cooperative effort between man and God. And that teaching is just recycled over and over and over in all kinds of different ways throughout church history. So you can call that, or many in our understanding, Billy Grahamism, whatever you want to call it. The important distinction is you see they're all having in common that faith precedes regeneration, right? I believe, then I'm born again. I believe, then I get my new heart. I believe, then I get my new mind. I believe, then I'm a new creation, okay? That's a very common, very recycled understanding of regeneration throughout church history. But of course, some problems with this order. Just think about it this way. If you just ask this simple question, let's name some things man can do apart from the Holy Spirit's monergistic work, right? Which of these can man do apart from the Holy Spirit? Not one thing, right? Could man repent on his own? Could man believe on his own? Could man follow and obey on his own? And so that's why the Reformed understanding has always held to this, that man is first regenerated. He is first born again. God by His divine grace, as the Father, calls a man into His Son by the immediate operation of the Spirit, gives him a new heart, then man believes, right? Then man comes to Jesus Christ, sincerely, freely, right? He's sincerely, freely coming to Jesus Christ. This is not a mind game, right? This is not a trick. Man consciously, willingly wants to come to Jesus Christ because he's been regenerated. Does that make sense on this order? Any questions on this order? Right. Right. Yeah, right. Right. Right. Yeah. Yeah, as far as it can tend to, yeah, very much wreak havoc on assurance of salvation where you're just repeating, okay, now I'm really dedicating my life to Christ this time. This time it's really going to stick. Okay. Murray sums it up well. We're not born again by faith or repentance or conversion, right? We repent and, that's my comment, freely believe because we have been regenerated. Okay, and again, how? The Holy Spirit, by the Holy Spirit's work, it's direct, it's efficacious, just meaning it accomplishes its goal. It's irresistible, right? That is one of our traits, upon man's heart and mind and it creates a maneuver after the image of Christ in holiness and righteousness. We saw that in Ephesians 4, right? That is who man is. He's to be renewed in original holiness and righteousness. You see, the sovereignty of the Spirit, this is again Jesus talking with Nicodemus, just as the wind blows wherever the wind wants to. We can't discern where the wind comes from, where the wind is going. The wind is completely sovereign in its movements. So it is with the work of the Spirit and everyone who is worked upon the Spirit to be born again. So that's why we say the work of the Spirit is mysterious, mysterious in the sense just it's not up to man's discernment. Supernatural, of course, it's sovereign and it precedes any and all human activity. That's why I would say regeneration precedes faith. We saw this in Ephesians, but just to review it, even when we were dead in our trespasses, God, and I love this Greek word. This is all one word in the Greek, sunezo poesin, which just means made alive together with. That when we were dead, God made us alive together with Christ by grace that we have been saved. Another very famous verse that very clearly says regeneration precedes faith, that even our faith is not our own doing. It is the gift of God. It is not a result of our works. All right, so let's spend a little time on just, or any questions on the doctrine itself, effectual calling and regeneration. Just curious, these are the other critiques to this work, what is this? Thank God, you know, gifts, the gifts, and then it's up to man to obviously take that. Right. And then also the other part of it is that why would God cause glory? That how does he get glory for us? How does he get glory for us? How does he get glory for us? How does he get glory for us? How does he get glory for us? How does he get glory for us? How does he get glory for us? How does he get glory for us? How does he get glory for us? How does he get glory for us? How does he get glory for us? How does he get glory for us? How does he get glory for us? How does he get glory for us? How does he get glory for us? How does he get glory for us? How does he get glory for us? How does he get glory for us? How does he get glory for us? How does he get glory for us? How does he get glory for us? How does he get glory for us? How does he get glory for us? How does he get glory for us? How does he get glory for us? How does he get glory for us? How does he get glory for us? How does he get glory for us? How does he get glory for us? How does he get glory for us? How does he get glory for us? How does he get glory for us? How does he get glory for us? And that's what gives him this, you know, the union between those two parties being glorifying to God. Yeah, right, right. Rather than more of a coercive, yeah. Yeah, yeah, good question. Yeah, and two comments on that. One thing to remember in terms of effectual call, another way to think of it is that when that general call goes out, that also is always effective in the sense that when the general call of the gospel goes out, God is glorified in both cases, meaning God is glorified when sinners respond and they are redeemed and they will be glorified one day, and God is glorified in judgment, right? So at no point is that general call going out and it falling flat. God is glorified in salvation of sinners. God is glorified in the judgment of sinners. So in both cases is God glorified. Secondly, I think I would just push back and say it's not coercive in terms of the sinner because coercion, at least in my mind, to most people has the implication of coercing me to do something I don't want to do, that I had to be forced into doing something that I don't want to do. But, of course, the biblical picture of salvation is that sinners, when their will is changed, they are doing the thing they most want to do, which is believing in Jesus Christ. So in that regard, I would just push back and challenge the word coercion. But at the end of the day, you've got sovereign God standing over sinful man. Yeah, I mean, absolutely. But that's a great question. That's worth pondering on more. Any more questions? Mr. Bain. You used the term divine efficiency. Can you expand a little bit on the definition of that? I'm guessing it doesn't mean a minimum of effort. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I mean, that would usually just mean work. The work. Yeah, the work, the effectual work of the spirit, working upon the sinner's heart, mind, illuminating his will, illuminating his consciousness. Yeah. Helpful? Okay. Uses for the Christian life. So what does it mean to be a born-again Christian? I remember growing up, I guess this would have been like 90s, I kept hearing this phrase, like, I'm a born-again Christian. So what you'd want to say, like, right, there is no other kind of Christian. I'm a Christian Christian, right? But it's unfortunate because that phrase, at least as I understood it, kind of took on a life of its own, meaning, well, like, I had a dramatic conversion. I was really bad. Now I'm really good. I'm a born-again Christian. So again, you'd want to say, like, no, there is no other kind of Christian. The only kind of Christian there is, is a born-again, regenerated Christian. And that to me is one of the tragedies of our modern understanding is that being born-again sometimes is thought of as to only apply to the dramatic, fantastic, you know, conversions. The other great tragedy, and this is kind of your point too, Paul, that regeneration can be thought of as like frozen in the moment of time. You know, I was, I was converted, I was born again back in 99, and it's this very static thing that happened in the past. But as we'll see, regeneration is not, it is that, but it is in no way frozen in the moment of time in the past. Of course, the other great tragedy is in terms of the spirit, is that the spirit's work is evidenced, or I would argue we limit it, we constrain it to the fantastical, right? Tongues or prophecies, or I had a funny dream, or I had something, something wild and something crazy. And now we've taken the spirit's great work that we're only scratching the surface of, and we've pared it down to this very, very small, small thing in the believer's life. Instead, the, the, so many of the Reformed understanding was the spirit's work is, is implanting a seed, a principle of life in you that will forever grow. I mean, it is doing a work in you that has begun, that will continue on and persist on and issue forth in glorification, your glorification, in God's glorification. And that's an incredibly potent, beautiful thing, and that gets very muted if you just think of, oh yeah, I was born again in 94, and that, you know, kind of that, that, that's that. So let's explore just a, here's just a few instances of what it would be to be born again, okay? A few, the fruit, you could say, of being born again. One, the sinner stops sinning. This is 1 John. No one born of God, that is the Greek, and I'm just, I'm just going to have that Greek word up there so you can see every time it's repeated, and it's just the Greek verb for born. No one born of God makes a practice of sinning because God's seed abides in him. He cannot keep sinning. So in other words, the reason the Christian cannot keep sinning is because he has been born of God. Again, very same idea, why the sinner stops sinning. Everyone who has been born, same verb, does not keep on sinning. So you could put it this way. Being born again is the source, it's the explanation of the Christian's radical breach with sin, and that is characteristic of every born-again Christian. Every single born-again Christian has this radical departure from the life of sin because the life of God has been implanted in him. Positively, so we talk about stop sinning. Now positively, doing righteousness. If you know that he is righteous, you may be sure that everyone who practices or does righteousness has been, exact same verb, born of God. So you could put it this way. The reason the person of you does righteousness is that he is born of God. He is a born-again Christian. Another great one. How about being delivered from evil? He who is born, same verb, of God, protects him, and the evil one does not touch him. Just a euphemism for that Satan is not going to sift him. Satan is not going to destroy him. Satan cannot ultimately eliminate him. And why? Because he has been born again. Another example. How does the Christian relate to the world? Everyone who has been born, same verb, of God, overcomes the world. So just scratching the surface, but you could go through, obviously a lot of those are from 1 John, but you could go through and start pulling out. These are all the fruits of what it means to say, I'm a born-again Christian. Not, hey, this happened to me in 1992. That's true. That is true. But here's the principle of life that has been implanted in me. And all these are the fruits, and there's probably more, of what it is to be born again. That we no longer sin. We have self-control. We have an incapacity to sin. Satan cannot destroy us. We're going to be practicers of righteousness. We, of course, have love to God and love to our neighbor. And above all, belief to Christ. So that's why the Puritans, when they described being born again, they would often talk about it like an implanted seed. Or there's this new habit of holiness. Or there's a principle of life that is put into me. And a seed that will always grow and a seed that will never die and never be destroyed. So it's of great use for the Christian life. Or as Tronick put it, that being born again meant you have this expulsive power of new affections. Right? Before you loved sin, you loved lust, you practiced sin. Now you have these spirit-wrought affections. Spirit-wrought affections for the Word, for practicing righteousness, for love to God, for love to neighbor. All right, one criticism we should anticipate. Well, all this stuff on born again, doesn't that encourage passivity? I guess you're saying man's not supposed to do anything, right? Man just sits there like a stone and does nothing. No, absolutely not. The more we are convinced of our dependence upon the Spirit and His efficacious working in our lives, that should cause us to be all the more diligent for all the means of grace God has given us for exercising those graces of which the Spirit is the agent. The Puritans, when they came across this, they would say, you know, are you saying man should do nothing? No, absolutely not. This calls for just the reverse. Man should be all the more diligent to walk in the Spirit, keep in step with the Spirit. Exercise the means of grace to live the Christian life. I just like this quote from Gaffin. The Spirit is the sole source and communicator of life in the soteric, or that would just mean the salvific, sense. So why would we work? This is a good verse that always sums it up, right? Work out your salvation. Why? The only reason you can do it, because God is the one who works in you both to will and to do for His good pleasure. So I wanted to, I think this is just important, when we talk about being born again, I would want to just counsel you to avoid thinking of being born, or any attribute of the Order of Salute as abstracted from Jesus Christ, as kind of this thing apart from Jesus Christ. You don't ever want to fall into that kind of thinking. You want to think of my justification, my adoption, my glorification, my being born again. Above all means I'm joined to the risen Christ through the work of the Spirit. That's who I am. That's what it means to be born again. I'm joined to Him. Because our regeneration is the fruit of Christ's resurrection. This is that great opening of Peter. According to God's great mercy, notice who is the one who causes us. God causes us to be born again to a living hope, and how? Through the resurrection of Jesus Christ. As Christ says, because I live, you live. Since I'm alive, you're alive. So if you're united to me, you are alive. That is how Christocentric our being born again is. So just some things I think regeneration should encourage us in. For sure, fully dependent upon the Spirit. To keep in step with the Spirit, to walk in the Spirit, to exercise all the means of grace God has given us. Confidence in the Spirit's ongoing work. Again, it's not this moment frozen in time. Confidence in the ongoing work in the believer's life. That we do have a breach with the world. We now belong to the Spirit. Certainly, I hope this one is just self-evident, keying off our apologetics class, that you share the gospel when you're articulating the faith. In no way is it dependent upon how well you articulated it, or what good of a job you did, or even their response. It is thoroughly the work of God through word and spirit to bring someone to a saving faith. And that should give the believer a ton of confidence to go forward, to evangelize, and to do apologetics. And then, of course, the hope of all things being reborn. All things being regenerated. This great hope that we have. Okay, so just lastly, a parting encouragement. I love this quote from John Owen. John Owen puts it this way, The Spirit not only enables our minds to apprehend the truth, but He shines in our hearts to give the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. And this is the part I love the most. The meanest believer. Now, meanest doesn't mean like you're mean-spirited or angry. That's just a 17th-century way of saying just the lowliest believer, the most ordinary believer. The most ordinary believer has from this teaching a greater rest, greater satisfaction, greater assurance in the knowledge of the mind of God than you could ever have by the most raised notions of profound disputation. So he's just saying the ordinary believer, just by virtue of this, has a greater rest, greater satisfaction, and just think what he's saying, knowing the mind of God, knowing the mind of the Almighty God, because of the particular work that the Spirit does to shine this light into our hearts so that we can know that which we could never know on our own and never would know on our own. Okay, any final questions, comments, thoughts? Yeah. All right. I'm probably not going to articulate this right, but what about the old man? How's the old man's claim to this? Because it implies that like when you were born again, like you're completely new. But then it's for regeneration, like it doesn't start back up, and there's like a new man going up this way, but the old man's going to be the same but not dead. Yeah. Yeah, I mean that would probably get into more of our sanctification talk, but yeah, for sure there's that call of always be putting off the old man so that in this life that will always be the work of the believer, that the old man will always long to come back to life, to assert himself, to align us to our old desires and old lust, and the believer's call is to put it off, and that's usually located under sanctification. That's an important point. On these steps, you know, these are like when we talk about, okay, I'm born again, and then I'm adopted, then I'm justified, then I'm sanctified, then glorified. There's a sense in which some of that is a way to in a temporal fashion align things, but a lot of this is we're just trying to logically put things in order so that we can understand it. And so you want to kind of try and avoid like to give it like you're sitting in chairs, like, all right, I'm in the justification chair. Now I'm in the sanctification chair. Now I'm in the – again, that's why I'm trying to say, you know, you want to think of it just like I'm joined to Christ. That's who I am, and all those benefits of Christ. And I don't want the benefits without Christ. I don't want Christ without the benefits. Christ and all his benefits are mine. And so existentially it plays out in the believer's life and just, yeah, you're putting off the old man and you're putting on the new man, and you'll be doing that to the day that we're glorified. And in terms of ordo salutis, that tends to be located under sanctification. Yeah. Oh, okay. Okay. Man, a two-for-one. All right. Any other questions, thoughts, comments? All right. All right, so next week Dan's up on adoption, and then after that justification is – is it you, Jeremy? No? Oh, yeah, you, Paul. Yeah, okay. All right, very good. All right, let's pray. Heavenly Father, we do praise you, Lord. And why do we praise you? Because we who were once dead in our trespasses and our sins, that you would call us out of darkness, that you would call us into your marvelous light. We praise you for the way this is done, You called us unto your Son and is by the work of your Holy Spirit, the promised Holy Spirit, the one whom Christ has won for us, the one whom he has poured out into our hearts so that we could cry out, Abba, Father. We pray, Father, that we would see what it means to be born of you. This is to cease from sin. This is to practice righteousness. This is this great promise that even the evil one will not touch us, that even all things will be reborn one day, that we have this great hope that you have already given us in what it is to be born from above. And so we pray, rather than being passive, it would only encourage us to live more in light of who we truly are, that we really, truly do belong to Jesus Christ. We really have been made new creations in him. And so we pray we would live as such, not by might nor by strength, but by the power of your Spirit. In Jesus' name, amen.
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