What does it mean to have a regenerated spirit?

Unless a person has a regenerated spirit from God, they can only display their natural-born nature. Until we are truly born again, we cannot do good apart from God. You may appear to be a good person occasionally, but deep down, you cannot distinguish one act of goodness from another.

Consider this: most adults who call themselves born-again Christians do not act like they have a new, regenerated spirit. I believe this is because they do not understand the real born-again experience and are not truly born again.

To understand my perspective, let me explain briefly. Many regular churchgoers live lives indistinguishable from the world. These are people who claim they made a personal commitment to Jesus Christ, believe that when they die, they will go to Heaven because they confessed their sins and accepted Jesus Christ as their Savior.

The New Testament suggests that the new birth radically changes people, yet many professing Christians are not radically changed. It does not define the new birth by the worldliness of unregenerate, professing Christians.

1 John 5:4: “Everyone who has been born of God overcomes the world. And this is the victory that has overcome the world — our faith.” I don’t see many overcomers in this world, do you?

It's not about adopting a new religion but experiencing a new life. It's about the creation of a new human nature—a nature that is truly you, forgiven, cleansed, and formed by the indwelling Spirit of God. We can't change what is dead inside us; only God can. Those who enter the kingdom have experienced a cleansing of the old and a creation of the new.

Forgiveness and cleansing are not enough. You need to be new, transformed, alive, with a new way of seeing, thinking, and valuing. That's why Ezekiel speaks of a new heart and a new spirit in verses 26 and 27: “I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules.” In the new birth, God puts a living, supernatural, spiritual life in our hearts, and that new life—the new spirit—is the working of the Holy Spirit, giving shape and character to our new heart. By being himself within us, our hearts and minds take on his character (Ephesians 4:23).

There is no spiritual or eternal life apart from connection with Jesus and belief in Jesus. In the new birth, the Holy Spirit unites us with Christ in a living union. Christ is life; Christ is the vine where life flows, and we are the branches (John 15:1–11).

The new birth involves the supernatural creation of new spiritual life through union with Jesus Christ. The Holy Spirit brings us into vital connection with Christ, who is the way, the truth, and the life. That is the objective reality of the new birth.

From our side, faith in Jesus awakens in our hearts. Spiritual life and faith in Jesus come into being together. The new life makes faith possible, and spiritual life always awakens and expresses itself in faith. There is no life without faith in Jesus. Therefore, we should never separate the new birth from faith in Jesus. From God’s side, we are united to Christ in the new birth. That’s what the Holy Spirit does. From our side, we experience this union by faith in Jesus.

John puts it together in 1 John 5:4: “Everyone who has been born of God overcomes the world. And this is the victory that has overcome the world — our faith.” Being born of God is the key to victory, and faith is the way we experience being born of God.

John also says in 1 John 5:11–12: “This is the testimony, that God gave us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life.” Therefore, when Jesus says, “It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh is no help at all,” and “You must be born of the Spirit” to have life, he means that in the new birth, the Holy Spirit gives us new spiritual life by connecting us with Jesus Christ through faith.

Never separate these two sayings of Jesus in John 3: “Unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God” (verse 3) and “Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life” (verse 36).

In the new birth, the Holy Spirit gives us new spiritual life by connecting us with Jesus Christ through faith. The Spirit unites us to Christ, cleanses our sins, and replaces our hard, unresponsive heart with a soft heart that treasures Jesus above all things and is transformed by the presence of the Spirit into a heart that loves to do the will of God (Ezekiel 36:27).

If you have any questions or comments on this article I would love to hear from you.  Please email me at trishtiptontriedandtrue@gmail.com