“Begat” is an important word. In our discussions of regeneration, I have consistently linked regeneration to generation, and generation is what happens when people are begotten. The same is true of regeneration.
“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).
“Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God” (1 John 4:7).
Regeneration consists of a foundational change in the being of those elected to eternal life, and the necessity of this can be seen in the word “begat.” But to explain more fully how this is, I have to say something about the nature of the self.
There are two errors to avoid here. One is to assume that each individual as such is self-contained, and is provided with a hard shell casing. This gives way too much credit to the self-sufficiency of an autonomous self, and is just plain silly. The other error is to think that the self is nothing more than a ganglion of relationships, with no “hard atom” of individuals between whom such relationships are possible. As I have noted before, you can’t have a chemical reaction without the chemicals. You can’t have an electrical current without the poles.
A good illustration of selfhood is provided by a pearl. As a person grows and develops, he does so by means of relationships, and these relationships are critical in constituting who he is. As a boy grows to a man, as he marries, as children are given to him, his selfhood is being built; it is being shaped and constructed. He is now ” the brother of . . .” or “the father of . . .” this other person. This is how the pearl grows. But there had to be a grain of sand for this pearl to grow up around. A grain of sand is not a pearl, but there will be no pearl without the grain of sand. So persons are in relation, by definition, but persons are not simply those relations simpliciter.
But here is where we see the glory of regeneration. There are many relations that are accretions to the pearl. New friends, a new church body, a new daughter, and so on. But regeneration occurs when I am given a new father. What does that do to my identity? It constitutes as foundational an alteration as can be imagined. It is a new creation.
The hard atom of an individual means there is some sort of continuity, such that a regenerated person could accurately say that he used to be of his father the devil, but that now God was his father. There is a common “he” there that spans the conversion. But despite that, a new father still means that there has to be a foundational change in the being of the one who has that new father.
We sometimes say of a converted person that they “met God.” This is fine, but we have to be careful not to treat it as though God were just a new friend or acquaintance, a new layer to the pearl. No, regeneration occurs when someone receives a father transplant. Can such a thing happen without a total transformation of my identity, of my being? Not a chance.
Imagine two scenarios. One is that I go to a conference and met a new friend, a man we will call Hank Smith. We become fast friends, and remain so for the rest of our lives. What does that do to my identity (and to his)? Well, it is built up further. My friendship with this man is folded into the story of who I am.
But the second scenario is where some weird thing happens such that Hank Smith was suddenly turned into my father, and Jim Wilson was no longer my father. What does that do to my being and identity? Well, it would be totally overhauled, transformed, recreated. I couldn’t be the same person anymore. Not at all. Regeneration is therefore a total transformation of being and identity. Why? The Spirit of adoption makes us cry out “Abba, Father!” We used to be of our father, the devil, and now we have another Father entirely, the Holy One.
One more point, and I will be done. In Scripture, there is a basic dividing line between the two races, with different fathers at their respective heads. And incidentally, we must not be confused by the different names that these two lines have — on the one side we have the devil, or Cain, or Ishmael, seed of the serpent, et al., and on the other we have God, or Abraham, seed of the woman, and so on. But there are just two races — sheep and goats. This division is basic to understanding history. It is not just true at the eschaton. We find the seed of the serpent at war with the seed of the woman in the first book of the Bible, and not just the last book.
But this dividing line is entirely distinct from (although not unrelated to) the dividing line between the visible church and the world. In other words, it is possible for children of the devil to be deacons and bishops, preachers and laymen, along with being chairs of the women’s auxiliary, and depending on what denomination or era of history you are in, being a child of the devil might even be the norm.
And when you put these two truths together — the total transformation of being when someone receives a father transplant, and the fact that numerous members of the visible church have not received such a father transplant — this makes a robust form of evangelicalism a scriptural and logical necessity.
Which is, I think, a good reason for embracing it.