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About the Believers – Regenerated

1 Peter 1:3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to His great mercy has regenerated us unto a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.

1 Peter 1:23 Having been regenerated not of corruptible seed but of incorruptible, through the living and abiding word of God.

1 John 5:1a Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been begotten of God

Fellowship to help us know Christ and pursue Him

From these verses, we can see that regeneration is to receive Christ, who is the life-giving Spirit, into us as our life. To receive this life, we need to repent to God and believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. 

To say that Christ is our life now is not a figurative statement. Christ being our life does not merely mean that we are now completely focused on Him. Rather, this means that we have literally another life, a new life, which we didn’t have before. Humans have the human life, dogs have the dog life, cats have the cat life, and believers have God’s life! The following short quotation emphasizes that by regeneration, we obtain God’s life.

Regeneration is having God enter into us as life—having the life of God in addition to our human life. This is the second life, the second birth; hence, it is called regeneration. In man’s first birth he is born of his parents, thereby receiving Adam’s life. In his second birth he is born of the Spirit and of God, thereby obtaining God’s life. Regeneration is to be born of God. (Lessons for New Believers, Lesson 1, published by Living Stream Ministry)

With this in mind, enjoy reading afresh the following passage from the gospel of John.

John 3:1-8 But there was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews. 2 This one came to Him 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. 3 Jesus answered and said to him, Truly, truly, I say to you, Unless one is born anew, he cannot see the kingdom of God. 4 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?

5 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. 6 That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. 7 Do not marvel that I said to you, You must be born anew. 8 The wind blows where it wills, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from and where it goes; so is everyone who is born of the Spirit.

With the human life, if you take away the life from the person, you take away that person. In other words, you cannot separate the life from the person. We also then realize, that just as one cannot be unborn of their human life, a believer cannot be unborn of their new life from God. We cannot be un-regenerated. This is good news! You believed in the Lord Jesus Christ; you have a new life, the life of God, and this life can never be taken away from you. This is what John 3:16 means when it says, “have eternal life”.  

Again, when we believe in Jesus Christ, we receive Him who is the very life of God into us, to be our new life. We are regenerated! The realization of such a fact led the author of hymn 1174 to praise unceasingly.

How mysterious! Yet how real!
Such a man now lives in me.
Into all my heart He’s spreading—
He, my human life, to be.
Hallelujah! Hallelujah!
I will praise unceasingly.

(see the whole hymn here: https://www.hymnal.net/en/hymn/nt/1174)

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About the Believers – Predestinated

Eph-1-5-Predestinating-us-unto-sonship-through-Jesus-Christ

Ephesians 1:5 Predestinating us unto sonship through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will,

Romans 8:29 Because those whom He foreknew, He also predestinated to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the Firstborn among many brothers;

Fellowship to help us know Christ and pursue Him

God knows all things, the past, the present, and the future. He is the source and initiator. Therefore, before you and I were born, He knew us. Not only so, but He looked at all those whom He would create and marked them for a certain destiny. This was His predestinating us as is mentioned in Ephesians 1:5. In his translation of the Bible, John Nelson Darby used the words “having marked out”. In fact, God marked us out for something really special, to be His many sons (Ephesians 1:5) and to be conformed to the image of His Son Jesus Christ (Romans 8:29). You might ask yourself, “why did He do such a thing, and why did He choose Me?” The same verse tells us that He did it according to the good pleasure of His will. This just says that God likes you.
The verse prior, Ephesians 1:4 says, “Even as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world to be holy and without blemish before Him in love”. Therefore, we’ve been chosen and predestinated. No one knows why He chooses one over another, but we can say that there is something in His heart for you.

The following story about D.L. Moody really helps to make this point clear.

D. L. Moody encouraged his seminary students to preach the gospel. A student, who heard Moody’s teaching on predestination in class, was impressed and did not dare to preach the gospel, because he had a problem. He said to Moody, “I dare not preach the gospel now.” Moody asked him why, and he said, “When I am preaching, I look at a person and consider whether he is predestinated; I look at another and consider whether he is chosen. If God has not chosen and predestinated these ones, and they are eventually persuaded by me to believe in the Lord, will I not be making a big mistake?” Moody then replied, “Brother, just do your best to persuade him. As long as you can persuade someone to believe in the Lord, he has been chosen and predestinated by God.” Then Moody went on to say, “At the entrance of heaven, the words whoever will may come are written on the outside; this means that whoever believes can be saved. But once a person passes through the entrance and looks back, he will see written on the inside, ‘You have been predestinated.’ Outside of the entrance is whoever, but inside of the gate is predestinated.” Thus, when leading those who have passed through the entrance and have been baptized, we should say, “You have been predestinated by God. You believed in the Lord and were saved because God picked you out and marked you out a long time ago.” (Lessons for New Believers, Lesson 1, published by Living Stream Ministry)

Isn’t that a helpful story? Now we can only worship God and thank Him, and tell Him that -we like Him, too.

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