The first question that confronts us is, _What is the New Birth?_
Many speak of the New Birth or of Regeneration without any definite
conception of just what the New Birth is, and so are never sure
whether they themselves have been born again or not.
As plain and clear a definition of the New Birth as we can find in
the Word of God is given in 2 Pet. 1:4, +"Whereby he hath granted
unto us his precious and exceeding great promises; that through these
ye may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped from the
corruption that is in the world by lust."+ From these words of
Peter it is evident that the New Birth is the impartation to the one
who is born again, of a new nature, God's own nature. By being born
again we become actual partakers of the Divine nature. We are all born
into this world with a corrupted intellectual and moral nature. The
natural man, or unregenerate man, is intellectually blind, blind to
the truth of God, "the things of the Spirit" he cannot see or receive.
+"They are foolishness unto him, and he cannot know them"+ (1 Cor.
2:14). His affections are corrupt, he loves the things he ought to
hate and hates the things he ought to love. A definite description of
the affections and tastes and desires of the unregenerate man is found
in Gal. 5:19, 20, 21. He is also perverse in his will, as Paul puts
it in Rom. 8:7, +"The mind of the flesh is enmity against God; for
it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be."+ This
state of intellectual spiritual blindness and moral corruption is the
condition of every unregenerate man. No matter how cultured or refined
or moral he may be outwardly, his inner life is radically wrong. In
the New Birth God imparts to the one who is born again His own wise and
holy nature, a nature that thinks as God thinks (+"He is renewed in
knowledge after the image of him that created him"+—Col. 3:10); he
feels as God feels, loves the things that God loves, hates the things
that God hates, wills as God wills (1 John 3:14; 4:7, 8). It is evident
then that regeneration is a deep thorough-going change in the deepest
springs of thought, feeling and action. A change so thorough-going that
Paul says in 2 Cor. 5:17, +"If any man is in Christ, he is a new
creature+ (more exactly, Creation): +the old things are passed
away; behold they are become new."+ To use the inspired language of
the Apostle John, regeneration is a passing "out of death into life."
John says in 1 John 3:14, +"We know that we have passed out of death
into life."+ _Until we are thus born again we are in a condition of
moral and spiritual death._ When we are born again we are "quickened"
(or made alive), we who "were dead through our trespasses and sins."
(Eph. 2:1). There is a profound contrast between regeneration and mere
conversion. Conversion is an outward thing, a turning around. One is
faced the wrong way, faced away from God; he turns around and faces
toward God. That is conversion. But regeneration is not a mere outward
change, but a thorough-going change in the deepest depths of one's
being, that leads to a genuine conversion or genuine outward change.
Many an apparently thorough conversion is a temporary thing because
it did not go deep enough, but regeneration is a permanent thing. When
God imparts His nature to a man, that nature abides in the man. When he
is born again he cannot be unborn, or as John puts it in 1 John 3:9,
+"Whosoever is begotten of God doth no sin, because his (God's) seed
abideth in him."+ A man may be converted a thousand times, he can be
regenerated but once.