When it pleased God . . . to reveal His Son in me . . . —Galatians 1:15-16
If
Jesus Christ is going to regenerate me, what is the problem He faces? It is
simply this— I have a heredity in which I had no say or decision; I am not
holy, nor am I likely to be; and if all Jesus Christ can do is tell me that I
must be holy, His teaching only causes me to despair. But if Jesus Christ is
truly a regenerator, someone who can put His own heredity of holiness into me,
then I can begin to see what He means when He says that I have to be holy.
Redemption means that Jesus Christ can put into anyone the hereditary nature
that was in Himself, and all the standards He gives us
are based on that nature— His
teaching is meant to be applied to the life which He puts within us.
The proper action on my part is simply to agree with God’s verdict on sin as
judged on the Cross of Christ.
The
New Testament teaching about regeneration is that when a person is hit by his
own sense of need, God will put the Holy Spirit into his spirit, and his
personal spirit will be energized by the Spirit of the Son of God— “. . . until
Christ is formed in you” (Galatians
4:19). The moral miracle of redemption is that God can put a new
nature into me through which I can live a totally new life. When I finally
reach the edge of my need and know my own limitations, then Jesus says,
“Blessed are you . . .” (Matthew 5:11).
But I must get to that point. God cannot put into me, the responsible moral
person that I am, the nature that was in Jesus Christ
unless I am aware of my need for it.
Just
as the nature of sin entered into the human race through one man, the Holy
Spirit entered into the human race through another Man (see Romans
5:12-19). And redemption means that I can be delivered from the
heredity of sin, and that through Jesus Christ I can receive a pure and
spotless heredity, namely, the Holy Spirit.
(Taken from Oswald Chambers – “My Utmost
for His Highest” October 6)