62. How are we changed in regeneration?
We are made partakers of the divine nature and experience newness of life.
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Wesley’s analogy between our natural birth and spiritual rebirth merits revisiting. The unborn child has no perception of light, only the faintest perception of sound, and almost no sensation from the outside world because there is a wall of flesh that separates the child from the world beyond the womb. Just so, the natural person goes about not perceiving the light of God, hearing the voice of God as faint murmurings at best, feeling almost nothing of the Spirit’s promptings. But when he or she experiences the new birth—when he or she is delivered in multiple senses of the word—that person enters upon a much larger existence. He or she sees “the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” (2 Cor. 4:6), hears the voice of God with the ears of the spirit, feels the love of Christ and the empowering guidance of the Holy Spirit, and is empowered to discern good from evil (see Wesley, “The New Birth,” II.4).
Through this gift of new life and the gift of the Holy Spirit—the giver of new life—we enter into a new kind of existence, one in which we experience restored fellowship with God. The change is a radical one because our very identity is transformed by this relationship, a transformation foreshadowed in the renaming of Abram and Jacob in the wake of their own encounters with the living God (Gen. 17:5; 35:10). “Experiencing” newness of life, of course, requires walking in newness of life (see Rom. 6:1–23), handing ourselves over to doing what is right and holy in God’s sight and no longer handing ourselves over to the sinful and self–serving impulses of the “old person.” Coming alive to God by the Spirit means also walking in line with the Spirit (Gal. 5:16–25; Rom. 8:2–14). In this way, regeneration is the threshold through which we pass into sanctification. It is the start of the journey in which we become the people God designed us to be through intimate fellowship with his Spirit.
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So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new! (2 Cor. 5:17)
You have been born anew, not of perishable but of imperishable seed, through the living and enduring word of God. (1 Peter 1:23)
His divine power has given us everything we need for a godly life through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. Through these he has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature, having escaped the corruption in the world caused by evil desires. (2 Peter 1:3–4 NIV)
See also Gen. 15:6; 17:5; 35:10; John 3:3; Rom. 8:1; Gal. 5:22–24; Col. 3:2–3; 1 John 4:4; CoF IX
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This is an excerpt from Christian Faith and Doctrine: An Annotated Catechism for the Global Methodist Church. Seedbed is pleased to partner with The Global Methodist Church to offer this companion resource to A Catechism of Christian Faith and Doctrine for the Global Methodist Church.
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