The Hope of Eternal life, Part 1
Sunrise on the beach
How does Jesus' work on the cross get to you? Have you ever wondered that? I mean, consider what kind of question that is. My wife and I love watching a show where they evaluate antiques, and one of the first questions they ask is "How did you come to possess this?" So I ask you, "How did you come to possess eternal hope?" Consider what you are claiming. We here in the Church claim to have adoption papers from God. We in the Church claim that our whole life's worth of sin has been paid for by Jesus dying two thousand years ago. We claim that the power of sin has been broken in our lives. We claim that we have the right to a place in heaven in the throne room of God Himself as an inheritance. How did you come to possess this? You might answer, "I asked," which isn't wrong, but it is incomplete.
How did you come to possess salvation?
The Holy Spirit delivered it to you.
While the Spirit applies this work personally, we must not forget what He is applying: The work of Christ. One commentator put it this way, "there is no work of the Spirit that goes beyond what Christ has already accomplished. It is the Spirit's task to secure that work in our hearts and to allow us to enjoy it to the full, not to add something new to it." (Bray, 554). In other words, the Spirit doesn't die on the cross, too. Jesus' work was comprehensive, able to save to the uttermost, and it is the Spirit who is connecting us to Him.
We also can't forget the Father in all of this as well. He sent the Holy Spirit through Christ to accomplish all of this.
Finally, we can't forget that this is the work of our One God. We don't serve three gods like three separate beings up there each one completely disconnected from the other. We serve one God in three persons all of whom are involved in our salvation but have different roles to play.
So while we will be focusing on the Spirit's work in this sermon, we do not forget that the whole Trinity, three persons yet one God, is at work as this passage makes clearer than almost anywhere else. Today we will look at the role of the Spirit in the Trinity's work of salvation.
The Spirit washes you clean with Christ's blood
As we begin our passage, we arrive on some very familiar ground for those of us who have read the Apostle Paul, salvation by the grace of God alone. This theme comes up here as well, because that is indeed the good news. Salvation isn't something that we could possibly earn or deserve and have it purely on the grace of God alone. The Westminster Catechism uses the phrase "mere good pleasure" in describing God's motives for saving us. He didn't do so out of need or obligation but grace and kindness.
The word that is translated "loving kindness" is the word "philanthropia" from which we get the word "philanthropy" today. It is love for us that motivates this, which is quite a statement given who we all used to be (verse 3) (Knight III, 338). Bray notes that the goodness referred to is not an abstract concept but something that has revealed itself in action. We don't serve a theoretically good God. We know He is good. (546).
From that love, we see the selfless giving of Christ who has accomplished all the work necessary. This is an essential thing to remember, and is something that I speak of very often here. But again, I want to focus on something else here, because this is one of those places that pulls this out front and center in a way few other places do.
What we see here is that this salvation is accomplished through a "washing." Now, when we see washing in a church context we think of baptism, don't we? It is certainly not wrong to see baptism in mind here, but we have to be careful to not make it more than it is. We remember what baptism is a sign of, the Spirit's work.
Baptism, in and of itself, the sprinkling of water on someone, doesn't save them. Sinclair Ferguson was talking about this in Sunday School last week. We find in John 3:8 that the Spirit blows where it wishes, and that means that we cannot force the Spirit to work on someone in baptism. So baptizing someone doesn't automatically mean they are saved, otherwise we would just go down town and spray people with water!
That said, baptism is more than just a symbol. Calvin reminds us that it is a means of grace, that together with the Word and faith of the believer, there is something mysterious that the Spirit is doing there in His time. As Westminster reminds us that the Spirit's work is not tied to the moment of baptism, but does work through it at some point in the believer's life. As Calvin cautions we don't want to exalt the symbol of the work so much we take away from the Holy Spirit. But we also don't want to despise the symbol so much we just make it an empty ritual that just wastes time (Quoted in Bray, 550).
It is a beautiful sacrament that points to sin being like dirt on the body that needs to be washed away. No amount of water can take away sin, but Christ poured out his life. His blood, as it were, washes away the sin. Christ provides the blood, but it is the Spirit, as it were, who does the washing.
Your life is new because the Holy Spirit has regenerated you.
So what is the result of this washing, this work of the Spirit? Paul tells us that it is regeneration and renewal (Towner, 781).
"Regeneration" is meaning being born again. This is not reincarnation. You are not born the same person with knowledge of the past. It is not like a video game where you die and come back to play the same level again, but at least you know this time there is an enemy on the other end of the door, so you do better this time. Being regenerated, or being born again, is not getting your same life back but with different knowledge. It is being born a whole new person. 2 Corinthians 5:17 "Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come." It is an inner transformation (Knight III, 344) that sees everything in a new way.
There is overlap with the concept of "renewal." (Bray, 550) This is something "qualitatively new." (Verbrugge, 280-1).
This is a phenomenon that was anticipated back in the Old Testament in Ezekiel 36:25-27 "I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleannesses, and from all your idols I will cleanse you. And 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." One commentator sees this as a pattern of cleansing from the old, remaking of a new person, and then setting that person in the right direction (Knight III, 343,4).
This isn't a repair job. It's not like you are a clunky car that if God hits the right way it starts up. This is a complete rebuild. Everything is made new. When Ezekiel speaks of a new heart, he isn't just talking about a new pump for blood. He is talking about the central part of who you are, the fountainhead of your personhood is being changed out, fundamentally changed from a rock to flesh! It couldn't be more different!
Is that true of you? I'm not asking whether or not you cried a lot when you said a prayer one time to ask Jesus in your heart. We all can be emotionally moved, some more easily than others. I'm asking you if you are different now. Are you a new person?
It can be hard for those who grew up in the church to answer this question because it is harder to see the difference sometimes. I was homeschooled, and raised in the church, and as a result I couldn't get into a lot of visible trouble. So maybe you don't have the story of finding God in the street gutter after a bad substance trip, but do you have any story of God revealing to you your sin and seeing progress, renewal, away from that sin? Do you see your love for Christ growing, maybe not day by day, but at least year by year.
But again, note the source. The regeneration, the renewal is of the Holy Spirit. He is the one that speaks faith into your heart so you believe, and he is the one who regenerates your life.
Let's sit with that for a moment. How might knowing that make a difference to you? Having heard this challenge about your spiritual life do you just get discouraged? You're just not where you want to be and attempts to get there just feel pointless, like trying to climb a mountain without arms or legs. It almost feels an insult to your own time to keep trying. How many more times do you need to fall on your face before you realize maybe this just isn't for you?
This is the verse you reach for. The process is slow, but who is renewing you? It is the Holy Spirit. The same one who spoke reality into existence in Genesis 1 is the same One speaking new life into you. In fact, "regeneration" could be rendered in English "re-genesis," new beginning. HE is working on you. Are you counting on that? Are you praying for that? Are you resting in that? It's not prop your feet up, let go and let God, but the work of reading your Bible, praying, and attending church is not a wasted effort.
What's more is that this Holy Spirit is not some impersonal force. The Holy Spirit is a person I can relate to. God didn't send me something like spiritual uranium that changes me just by being close to it. He didn't send me a concept for me to use, He sent me a companion.
So what has this passage taught us so far? Well, it tells us, emphatically (Zerwick and Grosvenor, 650), that we are not the ones who saved ourselves. That was Christ who died. God's grace appeared in Christ. And now we have seen how that grace has gotten to be applied to us. The Spirit transformed our hearts to receive Christ's work. That's how you came to possess an eternal hope. It has been God every step of the way.
He sought you, found you, changed you not in some drag the net through the water and see who we catch kind of way, this is God who has sought and found a dirty, bloodied child (Ez. 16:6-7), scooped you up in his arms, cleansed you, and made you His! Don't you see how much you have to praise Him for?
One last word: poured.
One commentator, Towner, points out that Paul is obviously pulling from Ezekiel's vision of a washing, changing, and entrance of the Spirit into our lives. When Ezekiel mentions the word "pouring" the word usually following that is "God's wrath." Yet the prophet Joel doesn't replace Ezekiel but supplements him. Paul picks up both themes and sees that God would have needed to pour out his wrath, but given the work of Christ, He now pours out His Spirit to us. It is the greatest reversal of all time (785-786).
You are no longer destined for wrath if you are in Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit today. It wasn't your works. It was faith that the Holy Spirit gave to you.