One of the reasons the doctrine of regeneration is so important is because the doctrine of generation is so important. God fashioned man out of the dust of the ground in the first place, but it was the breath of God that established us after His image.
“And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul” (Gen. 2:7).
There were two steps here. First God formed, and then God breathed. When God breathed the breath of life into our first father, it was then that he became a living soul, created in the image of God.
“So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them” (Gen. 1:27).
But this scriptural language of “image” is closely connected to the reality of begetting, or, as we would say it, generation.
“And Adam lived an hundred and thirty years, and begat a son in his own likeness, after his image; and called his name Seth” (Gen. 5:3).
When Adam had a son, it was a son in his own image, in his own likeness. This is language that plainly echoes what God had done intially with Adam. Adam had a son after his own image just as God had a son after His own image. This means Adam was the son of God by some species of generation. Please note an emphasis on some species–this is not said in any way that would call into question the unique status of Jesus, the only-begotten Son of God. But in some sense, Adam was son of God by generation.
“Which was the son of Enos, which was the son of Seth, which was the son of Adam, which was the son of God” (Luke 3:38).
The way it was with Adam downstream was also the way it was with Adam one generation upstream. And keep in mind that Adam means man, or mankind. We may therefore read it as “mankind, the son of God.”
He was a created and begotten son, but he was the kind of son concerning which Arianism would have been just fine — there was a time when Adam was not. Because of this, he was vulnerable to sin. When Adam sinned, what he was sinned. He was a son of God who sinned. This meant that a new form of generation was established. In some sense, the sons of God became sons of the devil. The mechanism that accomplished this was the mechanism of separating us, as a race, from the life of God.
“Having the understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart” (Eph. 4:18).
We have lived ever since in the ruins of our original sonship.
But because God did not surrender us to the devil entirely, but rather reserved a seed for Himself, this resulted in two lines. There was first generation, then degeneration, and then, for the elect, regeneration. But all who are regenerate are so as a result of a gracious salvage operation conducted on the wreckage of the once glorious human race.
“Of his own will begat he us with the word of truth, that we should be a kind of firstfruits of his creatures” (Jas. 1:18).
The difference between the two lines is stark. The seed of the woman are characterized by a love of righteousness, and the seed of the serpent are not.
“In this the children of God are manifest, and the children of the devil: whosoever doeth not righteousness is not of God, neither he that loveth not his brother” (1 John 3:9-10; 1 Jn. 2:29; Jn. 8:44).
A denial of the need for a foundational heart change is therefore messing with the narratival arc of the whole story. Because we live in a fallen world, we have a constant tendency to ask the wrong question. In the pro-life debates, for example, we ask “when does human life begin?” which immediately lands us in the ontological categories so beloved by Hellenists everywhere. We should ask a simpler question, as one of our deacons recently did on a survey at a local university campus — that question being “when does fatherhood begin?” This is a potent question because it does not seek to define human lives apart from their relationships.
When did we become sons of God? We were generated in His image when He breathed the breath of life into our first father. When did we become objects of wrath, children of the devil? When our first father took the fruit that had been forbidden to him. When were we born again, when were we regenerated? When we believed on the Lord Jesus Christ in truth, moved by the Spirit to do so, and God the Father became our Father once again.