The regeneration of the human spirit
In our back-to-basics bible studies we have seen so far that two of the six stones in the barrier between God and man have been removed.
The first two stones were 1. sin which was removed by redemption and atonement and 2. the penalty of sin was removed by Jesus, dying on behalf of all men. This is called expiation. It is useful for us to bear in mind that any one of the six stones would be enough to block man’s way through the barrier to God.
Each and every stone has got to be removed by Jesus.
Today we are going to consider the third stone in the barrier which is called physical birth.
All people are born spiritually dead (we covered this in the study of the ‘Virgin birth.’ In Adam all die, Watchman Nee gives a good way of understanding this.
If your father, or grandfather, or great grandfather had died as a child then you would never have been born.
In a sense you would have died in your forebears who died as a child.
In the same way we were all in Adam when he died spiritually and in the same way we were born
spiritually dead. Adam doomed all humankind to spiritual death at birth. In our dead spiritual state, we cannot communicate with God.
1 Corinthians 2:9 But as it is written: “Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, Nor have entered into the heart of man The things which God has prepared for those who love Him.” 10 But God has revealed them to us through His Spirit. For the Spirit searches all things, yes, the deep things of God. 11 For what man knows the things of a man except the spirit of the man which is in him? Even so no one knows the things of God except the Spirit of God. 12 Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might know the things that have been freely given to us by God. 13 These things we also speak, not in words which man’s wisdom teaches but which the Holy Spirit teaches, comparing spiritual things with spiritual. 14 But the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; nor can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.
One of the main purposes of the Holy Spirit is to reveal to us all that God has prepared for the believers.
Such things can only be discerned by our spirit not by the soul nor by the flesh.
The natural (soulish) man (sometimes the soulish believer who wants to analyse be his mind) cannot receive the things of the Spirit.
Speaking of the Holy Spirit in John 16:8 And when He has come, He will convict the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment:
As you know, His convicting work is to bring a sinner to a realisation that sin separates them from God, and that only through Christ can they receive forgiveness of sins and life-everlasting, for only by faith in Christ can an unrighteous sinner be declared righteous in the eyes of God.
So we can conclude that the Holy Spirit has successfully preached the gospel to all believers.
The Word of God and the Holy Spirit usually work together to bring people to salvation (we remind our outreach team (the John 3:7 ministry) of this. Asking them to always start the conversation with a passerby by quoting the scripture.
Titus 3:5 not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to His mercy He saved us, through the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Spirit,
The Holy Spirit regenerates our dead spirit and makes it alive to God. This allows communication between God and the believer. We need to be born again to be able to hear what God is saying through his written and spoken word.
A surprising number of people have been saved by reading God’s word especially John’s gospel. This shows the Holy Spirit and the Word of God working together to bring salvation.
Amen
Personal Prayer
In Part 2 we discuss the famous conversation between Jesus and Nicodemus.
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