The Activity of the Spirit in the Lives of Church Age Believers, Part 32

The Activity of the Holy Spirit in the lives of Church Age believers, part 32.

Moving Party!
This Sunday June 30
after service

4213 N. Federal Hwy ~ Pompano Bch, FL 33064

Kingsley Emenike

TIT 3:5
He saved us, not on the basis of deeds which we have done in righteousness, but according to His mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewing by the Holy Spirit,

One is aner, which refers to a male individual, and the other is anthropos , which is the more generic racial term and emphasizes mankind.

We have anthropos.
A representative member of the human race.

The Pharisees were the ultra-religious snobs of the first century.

On the outside they looked good, but inside they were full of dead men’s bones, lawlessness, hypocrisy, uncleanness.

So Nicodemus was the representative of religious man, man striving on his own to please God by his so-called deeds of righteousness.

John, the writer, chose to emphasize the Greek side of this man’s identity, and in so doing we see him as representing the Gentile world.

His name in the Greek can be translated “one who conquers the people”.

MAT 23:4
They tie up heavy burdens and lay them on men's shoulders, but they themselves are unwilling to move them with so much as a finger.

So we have everyman, religious man, Gentile and Jew. Whosoever.

Every human being needs to be born again from above, born of the Spirit.

The verb is the aorist passive subjunctive of
genna/w
gennao; to procreate; figuratively, to regenerate:

Here in John 3:3, in the passive voice, it means “to be born”.

1CO 2:14
But a natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually appraised.

We need to be born again, from above, this time by means of God the Holy Spirit.

At physical birth, we became creatures of the flesh.
Now we need to become spiritual creatures.

At physical birth, we received Adam’s life and nature.

That was the old man.

At regeneration, we receive from the Spirit Christ’s life.

This is the new man.

MAT 1:18
Now the birth of Jesus Christ was as follows: when His mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they came together she was found to be with child by the Holy Spirit.

No matter what, we are God’s sons and daughters for eternity!

Here in verse 13 John denies emphatically, 3 times in 3 ways, that human generation has anything to do with Divine regeneration.

Those who are born of God are now under the auspices of the will of God.

Men can take advantage of the wind - sails, windmills - but they cannot direct the wind.

The Holy Spirit is God, and He is sovereign, …

…and all those who are born of the Spirit, led by the Spirit, walking according to the Spirit, are operating according to the sovereignty of the Holy Spirit.