Reading Time: 9 minutesQuestion 09014. Baptismal regeneration is the teaching that the new birth is conveyed through the water of baptism, so that a person is regenerated in and by the act itself rather than by faith in Jesus prior to it. It is held in various forms by Roman Catholics, the Orthodox, many Lutherans and Anglicans, and…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 7089. Born again has become one of the most misused phrases in religious English. In the press it functions as a label for a certain kind of enthusiastic Christian, usually American and usually presented with a raised eyebrow. In some churches it has become shorthand for having made a decision at a particular meeting….
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 07055 There is always a moment of salvation, even when nobody can identify it. That is the short answer, and it holds two things together that people often set against each other: the instantaneous nature of what God does, and the very gradual experience many believers have of coming to realise it. This question…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 07035. Effectual calling is the Reformed teaching that alongside the outward call of the gospel, which goes to everybody who hears a sermon, there is an inward call which God issues only to the elect and which always achieves what it was sent to do. On this understanding the outward call can be refused…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 07032. The ordo salutis is Latin for order of salvation, and it refers to the logical sequence in which the various parts of salvation relate to one another. It is a theologian’s framework rather than a phrase you will find in Scripture, and I want to be honest about that from the outset. No…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 07017. Regeneration is the theological word for the new birth, the act by which God gives spiritual life to someone who was spiritually dead. Jesus introduced the idea to a highly religious man in the dark, and Nicodemus found it completely baffling, which should encourage the rest of us. What makes the new birth…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 5031. The human spirit is the dimension of you that was made for God Himself, and it is the least understood part of human nature. We hear plenty about the body from the gym and the doctor, plenty about the soul from the therapist and the poet, but the spirit rarely gets a mention,…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 4100. The Spirit in salvation does far more work than most believers realise, and most of it happens before we are even aware anything is happening at all. Salvation is the work of the whole Trinity: the Father who planned it, the Son who accomplished it at the cross, and the Holy Spirit who…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 4131. The new heart and new spirit in Ezekiel 36 stand at the very heart of what the new covenant promises and the Spirit accomplishes. “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…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 4151. The Spirit symbolised by water is a picture that would have spoken instantly to people who knew what it was to be thirsty. We turn a tap and water appears, so the force of the image can pass us by. In a dry land, water was the difference between life and death, and…