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.
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
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