Puritans and Revival VII: Defining Regeneration
As we continue our series on the influence of the Puritans on the Great Awakening (US) and the Evangelical Revival (UK), we’re focusing on the importance of regeneration. This week, we’re looking at its definition.
We’re continuing to look closely at the doctrine of regeneration.
We are born dead in our sin and cannot make ourselves alive.
We could take a fatalistic approach and say there’s nothing we can do and we should just sit back and wait for God.
Puritan’s view of God’s observable pattern in regeneration. If we understand how God works, we can work in cooperation with the Spirit. The Puritans began with Scripture.
Whitefield talked about 5 stages of regeneration.
A man must be made to feel and bewail our sin/sense of need.
A man must be convinced of foundation of all sin (root sin/original corruption/nature). Beyond what you’ve done into what you are.
Must be convinced of sins that are entangled even in our best religious duties. My best things must be washed in the blood of Christ. Selfishness is mixed in with it all.
Must have a particular sense of the guilt of the sin of unbelief. Unbelief is a willful choice. You are willfully choosing to call God a liar while holding the gospel at arm's length.
Must lay hold of the all-sufficient righteousness of Christ.
All 4 deal with the emptying of a person of supposed righteousness before they are filled with the hope of Christ. This is generally the pattern of God in regeneration. This is not what we do to climb up to God. It is what God does in us. “There is nothing a man must do before He comes to Christ. But there is a great deal God must do in a man before He is willing to come.” --Ian Murray
Some people’s conversion may not be visible all at once or all the time.
However, they recognized that the Scriptures also emphasized that man was not,
on account of this inability,
released from his obligation to seek God’s aid.
*their logic went something like this:
-since you cannot make yourself alive to God (birth yourself)
-and you know that God alone can do this
-and you know that you cannot earn this mercy
-you must Go to God and ask Him to do this… for His glory.
*Personally I have found that those who balk at this and use God’s sov’ty as an excuse
Not to seek Him…
-are not that desperate
*after all: tell a starving man that can’t feed himself
Where he can find a man who CAN and is willing to feed him
And he won’t sit around philosophizing with you about the finer points
Come, ye sinners, poor and wretched,
Weak and wounded, sick and sore;
Jesus ready waits to save you,
Full of pity, joined with pow’r:
He is able, He is able,
He is willing, doubt no more.
Let not conscience make you linger,
Nor of fitness fondly dream;
All the fitness He requireth
Is to feel your need of Him:
This He gives you, this He gives you,
’Tis the Spirit’s rising beam.
(Joseph Hart)
All you need to be is needy! And even the sense of need, God has put there.
Daniel Rowland’s sermon 'The Voice of the Turtle Dove' dealt with this issue:
He asks,
'If I am unable to convert myself why should I be asked to open my heart to God when I cannot?' His answer was that acceptance of one's spiritual inability was a necessary step toward God, for only if men felt themselves weak would they cry out to a God of strength. However, if they felt they had some moral strength to 'open the door' to God whenever they wished, they would become careless and would not seek God. Rowland wrote, 'When I perceive my own indigence and weakness, I will turn all God's demands into petitions. When he saith, "Turn ye! Turn ye", I will earnestly and eagerly cry out, "Turn thou us, and we shall be turned."'
God commands us to repent and believe. When we feel that we are unable, we must run to the throne of God and beg him, ‘Help me believe! Help me repent!’ With the command from Christ, comes a power.
In a sermon entitled 'The Gospel Supper'
Whitefield writes to those who would use their sinfulness as an excuse for not believing Christ:
Perhaps you say, You call the halt, and maimed, and blind, and poor.
But we are halt, and maimed, how can we come? If we are blind, how can we see our way? If we are poor, how can we expect admission to so great a table? Ah! Happy are ye, if you are sensible, that you are halt and maimed. For if you feel yourselves so, and are lamenting it, who knows but whilst I am speaking, God may send his Spirit with the word, and fetch you home?
In George Whitefield's sermon 'A Penitent Heart, the Best New Year's Gift' he challenged the readers to do all that lies within their natural abilities:
Some of you... may say, You have no power, you have no strength:
but have not you been [lacking] ... in such things that were within your power?
Have you not as much power to go to hear a sermon, as to go into a playhouse,
or to a ball, or masquerade? You have as much power to read the Bible,
as to read plays, novels, and romances; and you can associate as well with the godly,
as with the wicked and profane: this is but an idle excuse, my brethren, to go on
in your sins: and if you will be found in the means of grace, Christ hath promised
he will give you strength.
In a representative example of these evangelistic appeals,
Whitefield asked his listeners whether or not they had received the Holy Spirit.
He then pointed out the right use of the means of grace as the only safe path along which to seek regeneration:
Do we constantly and conscientiously use all the means of grace required thereto?
Do we fast, watch, and pray? Do we, not lazily seek, but laboriously strive
to enter in at the strait gate? ... If so, we are in that narrow way which leads to life;
the good seed is sown in our hearts, and will, if duly watered and nourished by a
regular persevering use of all the means of grace, grow up to eternal life.
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