"...those who love the truth will come out into the Light..." John 3:20-21 (TPT)

There is always the argument which I have heard since I became a Christian some 45 years ago: “is it my works, or the Lord’s works that I do” or “Is it my faith, or the faith of Christ in me”?

Paul lays this out in Galatians 2:

“we know full well that we don’t receive God’s perfect righteousness as a reward for keeping the law, but by the faith of Jesus, the Messiah! His faithfulness, not ours, has saved us, and we have received God’s perfect righteousness. Now we know that God accepts no one by the keeping of religious laws!” Galatians 2:16 (TPT)

We do not possess the faith to even come to Christ, because we were dead in trespass and sin, we were devoid of life spiritually, for what is dead cannot have faith.  So Paul is driving the point here that none of us naturally possess the ability to even see what righteousness actually is in and of ourselves, when there was darkness which “veils” or blinds our eyes to be able to even see what righteousness actually is, so it was interpreted by the Jews as following the law of Moses and carrying out of ceremonial rituals and traditions.

Jesus Christ was faithful to His mission before the Father to restore mankind back to their spiritual awareness by quickening our spirits and making us spiritually alive by His death on the cross and His resurrection back to life from the dead.  Jesus describes this process as being “born from above” or “born again” which He described to Nicodemus in detail in John 3:2-6. 

The Greek words gennao anothen which means to be “re-born”, and the prefix palin means “again”, while the root word is genesis, meaning "beginning" or "start".  In this context, it means "spiritual rebirth" or "spiritual renovation". 

Another term that needs further thought here is "regeneration", It is used twice in the New Testament, once by Jesus in Matthew 19:28 and once by Paul in Titus 3:5. 

The Greek word is paliggenesia meaning “next beginning” or “new beginning” which is a synonym for gennao anothen. Regeneration stresses the inception of a new state of things in contrast with the old.

When Jesus uses the term, the setting is when He "sits on the throne of His glory." In Paul's usage, the occasion is the beginning of a person's salvation. Both settings indicate new beginnings. The American Heritage College Dictionary states the English meaning of regeneration as "to reform spiritually or morally; to form, construct, or create anew, especially in an improved state; to give new life or energy to; revitalize"—which is almost perfectly synonymous with paliggenesia. It describes a new beginning, a new birth.

This new birth opens our spirit to receive the awareness that God is much more than just outward observances of ritualistic acts, God becomes personal, relational, and intimate.  We become justified by the faith of Jesus Christ and we stand in His righteousness, nothing that we do will count as having any merit or significance before God as compared with what Jesus has already provided for us. 

Paul also states that this isn’t a reward for anything that we have done by us being observant of the Law, but this was totally offered to us by the faith of Jesus Christ, it is His faithfulness that saved us, not our own faith.  We have now received God’s perfect righteousness in Jesus Christ, we have nothing to add to it for it is complete, we just receive it in its fullness.

“For it was only through this wonderful grace that we believed in him. Nothing we did could ever earn this salvation, for it was the gracious gift from God that brought us to Christ!” Ephesians 2:8 (TPT)

Jesus makes it clear in today’s passage at the top of this post that those who love the truth love the light for it reveals that their fruitful works were produced by God Himself.  It literally takes God to reveal Himself so that someone may know Him, we can’t just know God out of our own effort, it takes the Holy Spirit to reveal Him.

It was the grace of Jesus Christ that provided the faith for us to access the Father, and in that access we stand whole (healed) and complete (justified) because Jesus did it all for us.  He has saved us to the uttermost because He did the work to make it so.

In a few verses previous in John 3, Jesus reveals the heart of the Father for this world:

“For this is how much God loved the world—he gave his one and only, unique Son as a gift. So now everyone who believes in him will never perish but experience everlasting life.

God did not send his Son into the world to judge and condemn the world, but to be its Savior and rescue it!” John 3:16-17 (TPT)

In the Aramaic language the last phrase of the above text reads “…so that they shall live by his hand” (of power).  God literally wants us to live by His power, not our own.  This is established by His love for us by demonstrating it through the life and acts of Jesus.

May we grow in further alignment with Jesus as His power grows in us to transform our minds into thinking like He thinks, and loving others as He loves.  And may we be His hands and feet in this world to rescue others who need saving.

Be Blessed;

Stephen Barnett