In our previous section: “Part 1: The Born-Again Experience Begins with a Response”, we examined the four essential factors that take place in the process leading up to the Born-Again Experience. Let’s review those elements:
DIVINE INITIATIVE – God reaches out in love
AWARENESS OF NEED – God shows us that we need help
AWARENESS OF CHOICE – We are responsible to choose a better way
YOUR RESPONSE – Reject or Repent
Now, let’s turn our attention to Part 2: The Born-Again Experience Delivers Divine Results:
We will be considering what happens in this miraculous process, as the Results take place in your life through the Holy Spirit, as God responds to your response of repentance.
Let’s look at these Results more closely:
FORGIVENESS – pardon from the penalty
JUSTIFICATION – fulfillment of the demands of the Law
REGENERATION – new life through Christ
ADOPTION – reception into the Family of God
FORGIVENESS:
Forgiveness is the release from your deserved punishment. The consequence of your committed sins is death, but the forgiveness of God brings eternal life.
If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. (I John 1:9 NIV)
God’s forgiveness is the pardon which is given to you to free you from the penalty of your past sinful acts:
All the prophets testify about him that everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name. (Acts 10:43 NIV)
. . . And let him return to the Lord, and He will have compassion on him; and to our God for He will abundantly pardon (Isa. 55:7 NASB)
JUSTIFICATION:
Justification is the legal act of God, wherein He satisfies the demands of the Law. The Law had required a blood sacrifice for committed sins. Jesus Christ, having been put to death on the cross, became that Blood Sacrifice or the Atonement (Leviticus 5:10) allowing you to be fully justified.
But now, a righteousness from God, apart from law, has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify. This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. God presented him as a sacrifice of atonement, through faith in his blood. He did this to demonstrate his justice. (Rom. 3:21-25 NIV)
But now he has reconciled you by Christ’s physical body through death to present holy in his sight, without blemish and free from accusation. (Col. 1:22 NIV)
An easy way to remember “justification” is . . . you are made just as if you had never sinned. One person has said that, “Justification is when you say to God, ‘I’m wrong’ and He says, ‘You’re right’.”
Brothers! Listen! In this man Jesus there is forgiveness for your sins! Everyone who trusts in Him is freed from all guilt and declared righteous. . . (Acts 13:38 TLB)
Your forgiveness is justified by God’s having met all of His own requirements by providing the sinless Son of God as the Atoning Sacrifice for human sins. In the New Testament, justification is the act of God which declares the new relationship, while forgiveness establishes that relationship. Now, you are accepted and restored to God’s favor.
REGENERATION:
Regeneration is the work of the Holy Spirit which gives new life through Christ. Sin is death. Death means separation. You were dead in your sins and trespasses, but now, you are given the opportunity to be “born-again” in the sight of God and start over anew.
Regeneration literally means “To be again”. Regeneration is a restoration to the Image of God in your heart as a penitent believer.
Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! (II Cor. 5:17 NIV)
ADOPTION:
Adoption is the act of God declaring that the individual believer, who has now been forgiven, justified, and regenerated through faith in Jesus Christ, is now received into the Family of God and reinstated in the privileged position of being a child of the King. In the Experience of the Born-Again Life, the divine results of forgiveness, justification, regeneration and adoption, take place in rapid sequential succession. It may almost seem like they all happen at once. But there is a logical and orderly sequence to the divine results of the Born-Again experience.
. . . to redeem those under the law, that we might receive the full rights of sons. Because you are sons, God sent the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, the Spirit who calls out, “Abba, Father.” So, you are no longer a slave, but a son: and since you are a son, God made you also an heir. (Gal. 4: 5-7 NIV)
For you did not receive a spirit that makes you a slave again to fear, but you received the Spirit who makes you sons. And by him we cry, “Abba Father.” The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children. Now if we are children, then we are heirs of God and co-heirs with Jesus. . . (Rom. 8:15-17 NIV)
In the born-again experience (which includes forgiveness, justification, regeneration, and adoption), two choices are involved: God’s Choice, and Your Choice.
This born-again relationship does not, in any way, destroy your power to choose. If you consciously decide to turn your back on God and to sever that new relationship with Him by choosing to commit a willful transgression against a known law of God -- you may. Your sin separates you from God, (Isa. 59:2). By your own choice, you may separate yourself from the pardoned and redeemed family of God. Restoration, fortunately, is achieved through the simple way you got into the family to begin with – Repent and ask!
. . . And let him return to the Lord, and He will have compassion on him; and to our God, for He will abundantly pardon. (Isa. 55:7 NASB)
Recall our previous discussion in the section on “Magnificent Miracle of Humans;” all the divine reasons that you were given free moral agency in the first place, are still valid and in place. God does not forgive you of your past sins, and then, at that point, make you into a robot that no longer has the ability to make choices. God still desires that you love and worship Him because you continually choose to and want to – more than anything else in this old world:
Those who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. (Rom. 8:14 NIV)
If you choose to walk in the light as God is in the light, then you have fellowship with God and your condition is secure – and nothing else can move you from that position forever:
For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither height not depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Rom. 8: 38-39 NIV)
Next Week: The Continuation of the Born-Again Life