All Sermons

The Application of Redemption By Douglas MacMillan

 Now, the application of redemption, and in particular, these two terms with which we
are so familiar, or should be, regeneration and conversion.
These are terms that point us directly to the subjective change wrought in the sinner
by the grace of God, and they bespeak a change so radical and far-reaching in its effects
that it's in fact very variously designated in Scripture.
For example, it's called a new birth, in that portion which we read.
It is spoken of sometimes as a resurrection, sometimes as a new life, sometimes the fruit
of it is spoken of as a new creature or a new creation, sometimes it is spoken of as
a renewing of the mind, or as a dying to sin and a living to righteousness, sometimes
as a translation from darkness to light, and so one could go on.
The New Testament alone uses a very wide variety of descriptive terms to speak of this renewing
work of the Holy Spirit.
When we come to theological doctrinal writing and the development of doctrine in history,
we see that the systematic development of the doctrine of the application of redemption
often uses both these terms, regeneration and conversion.
And sometimes they have been used interchangeably, and that of course has caused some confusion.
They're used also at times for the whole process of renovation or restoration, the renewal
of man into the image of God.
And sometimes they're used for a particular stage in that process.
For example, John Calvin gives regeneration a very wide meaning.
To quote him where he's been writing about and talking of repentance and using repentance
not in a particular but a general way as the change that a conversion and regeneration
brings, writing like that he says, in one word then, by repentance, I understand regeneration,
the only aim of which is to form in us anew the image of God which was sullied and all
but effaced by the transgression of Adam.
And he goes on, this renewal indeed is not accomplished in a moment.
Now that should trigger our minds to the way Calvin is using regeneration.
This renewal indeed is not accomplished in a moment, a day or a year, but by uninterrupted,
sometimes even by slow progress.
God abolishes the remains of carnal corruption in his elect.
That's Book 3, Chapter 3 of the Institute.
Now here, of course, Calvin is not being heretical, and he is not being untheological or careless.
He is simply using the term regeneration to denote not just the action of the Spirit in
imparting life to the spiritually dead, but also the wider process of conversion and of
the sanctification which flow from regeneration.
And he's using the one term to cover the whole wide process.
Now this wider use of the term regeneration passed from Calvin directly into English theology.
The Puritan writers of the 17th century use it in such a way that they hardly ever make
any distinction at all between regeneration and conversion.
And we find such men as Owen and Charnock and others of their contemporaries, we find
that they use the two terms synonymously.
And even James Buchanan, writing last century on the work of the Spirit in renewing the
heart in his book on the Holy Spirit, he uses the phrase saving conversion to cover
the actual implanting of life by the Holy Spirit.
Now interestingly, but not surprisingly in its historical context, the Westminster Confession
doesn't use the term regeneration at all.
Instead it uses that of vocation, the idea or term of vocation or effectual calling.
And it's under this heading that the Confession and the catechisms of Westminster treat the
entire work of the Holy Spirit in the application of redemption, from the first step of conviction
of sin right through to the exercise of saving faith in Jesus Christ.
But this wide usage of the word gradually came to be recognized as leading ultimately
to confusion in our thinking.
For regeneration and conversion both denote, in the biblical sense and biblical usage,
I think, quite distinctive and separable ideas.
So there gradually developed a clearer and stricter use of the term regeneration.
And its usage began to discriminate between regeneration and conversion much more clearly
and carefully.
As far as I can trace, it's Francis Teryton who first makes a distinction between the
work of God and the action of man that we can trace in conversion.
The one he says is a cause, the other is a result.
That is in conversion, Teryton on conversion.
There's an action of God which is a cause, there is an action of man which is a result.
And then he went on to remark that the first is better denominated regeneration because
it refers to the new birth by which man is renewed into the image of his maker.
And the second is better denominated conversion, Teryton says, because it includes the operation
and agency of man himself.
It is God who regenerates, it is man who converts.
And can I just say that it's a great pity, I think, that Teryton is as badly neglected
in the foreign theological circles as he is today.
He's the man from whom Dabney and one or two other strong-minded theologians drew the strength
in many ways.
However, that's a by the way.
I'm always giving by the ways and that's the first one.
Now, from the time of Francis Teryton on, the distinction becomes more and more frequently
used until in fact it became fairly commonplace in the later systematic treatment of our doctrine.
And it's the one that will follow in our development of our study of the subject in
the time available to us now.
Now when we think of the application of redemption, Scripture would have us relate it not merely
to the Trinity, God the Father and God the Son, but the application of redemption specifically
is to be related to the agency of the Holy Spirit.
That the work of the Spirit in us is just as necessary for our actual salvation as the
work of Christ for us is made clear by many Scriptures.
And I want to repeat that because I think it's a very important distinction and it's
one which many people fail to make and it's vital that we do make it.
The work of the Spirit in us is just as necessary, just as vital for our actual salvation as
the work of Christ for us.
But Hugh Martin would tell us that the second has priority.
Everything depends upon the priestly achievement of Jesus Christ and our shorter catechism
does say, in answer to the question who is the Redeemer of God's elect, it does say the
only Redeemer of God's elect is the Lord Jesus Christ.
And you'll finish the question, the answer for yourself there.
But we must distinguish, in a day when the Holy Spirit is held out almost in the place
of the Redeemer, we must make it quite clear that the Holy Spirit is not the Redeemer of
God's people, he is the sanctifier of God's people.
He is the quickener of God's people and over against any reaction in us to a wrong emphasis
on the doctrine of the Spirit in our day, we must carefully guard the biblical emphasis
that the work of the Spirit in us is as necessary for salvation as the work of Christ for us.
Not get the two out of order, but the two must be there.
Paul says, 1 Corinthians 6-11, but you are washed, you are sanctified, you are justified
in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God.
And the words of the Lord Jesus himself that we have read to us, except a man be born of
water under the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.
These words make it abundantly plain, but no man is put into possession of any of the
blessings of salvation, saving blessings per se, until he is renewed by the Holy Spirit.
And his words make it plain also that every man, every man is made a partaker of all those
blessings, as soon as by the Spirit's agency he is united to Christ and enabled to believe
on his name.
I think that a great deal of the confusion about the work of the Spirit in the believing
soul would have been avoided.
The kind of confusion which is prevailing in the present age could have been avoided
if only men had carefully discriminated in the teaching about regeneration.
Regeneration unites to Christ, and to be united to Christ is to be made a partaker of all
that Christ died to purchase for his people.
To think otherwise is nonsense, it's to have a half-union and a half-way relationship to
Christ.
Through Christ, blessing comes.
Now, it should be clear that we can't think of the application of redemption as one simple,
divisible, indivisible act.
In fact, it comprises a series of acts and processes, or acts and works of God.
To mention some of these, we have calling, we have regeneration, we have faith, justification,
adoption, sanctification, and glorification, and all these, including glorification, come
into the sphere of the application of redemption.
Now, these are all so distinct and clear, the one from the other, that each has its
own meaning, and each its own function and purpose in the action of God's grace.
Not one of them can be satisfactorily defined in terms of any one of the others, nor should
they be confused, the one with the other.
Furthermore, on closer examination, there are, I believe, conclusive reasons for thinking
that not only must these various actions in the application of redemption be distinguished,
but we can learn that they take place in a certain order of logical sequence.
That is why theologians speak of the order salutis.
Now, most theologians of the present day would put effectual calling at the very beginning
of this sequence.
Effectual calling is that which, from God's side, initiates the whole process of subjective
salvation, leading into justification, sanctification, and all the other things that belong to real
Christian experience.
And if the call of God is defined in terms of a divine activity, rather than in terms
of a human response, then this is the correct order, I believe.
It's only those who define the call out of or from its effect as a human response who
can place it after, rather than before, regeneration.
To me it would seem that when the call is effectual, it carries with it that pleniture
of renewing power which ensures its response.
That is, it comes in and with the quickening power of the Holy Spirit, and in a sense it's
very hard to separate.
You cannot separate in any sense of time at all between effectual calling and regeneration,
but there is a logical order between them.
Now I want to go on to think now basically of three things.
First of all, just a little on the necessity.
The Bible's teaching on the necessity of regeneration, and then a little on the nature of regeneration,
and then a quick look at the relationship between regeneration and conversion.
So the necessity of regeneration.
Here at the point we've arrived, we must begin to ask the question, how can one who is dead
in trespasses and sins, and whose mind is enmity against God, answer a call, respond
to a call into the friendship and fellowship of Christ?
And the answer is simple, he cannot.
The response that the call requires is a spiritual, moral impossibility on the part of one dead
in trespasses and sins.
Dedemption doesn't, you see, find man where creation left him.
Instead it finds them where sin has deposited him, destitute, not just of holiness of character,
but separated from God and deprived of the Spirit and of all saving divine light, totally
indisposed to the demands of God's law upon him.
It's John Howe who comments who, when he comments on the radical difference between what man
once was and what man now is, makes this remark.
It's quoted by Jim, by Smeaton, George Smeaton.
Howe says the stately ruins are visible to every eye, but bare in their front, yet extant,
the doleful inscription, Here God once dwelt.
That's what we write over man.
But you see, Howe goes on to say, Here God no longer dwells.
The gospel finds man deprived of the Spirit of God.
Now it's this deprivation of the Spirit which the fall of man involves that constitute,
I believe, man's real spiritual inability.
Scripture teaches us that in regard to the understanding, the unconverted man cannot
know the things of the Spirit of God.
1 Corinthians 2.14, and again, Scripture tells us that as regards the will, man is
not subject to the law of God and he cannot be, Romans 8 and 7.
With regard to worship, Scripture says that man cannot, without the Spirit of God, call
Jesus Lord, 1 Corinthians 12.3.
With regard to practice, man cannot please God, Romans 8 and 8.
With regard to fruit, he cannot bear fruit, apart from the Spirit, John 15.4, and apart
from union to Christ.
With regard to faith, he cannot receive the Spirit of truth, and so one could go on and
on and on.
I don't need to force the issue.
Natural man's familiarity with sacred truths, which he does not and cannot love, just leaves
him seared in conscience, and if I can use the phrase, twice dead.
To overcome all this impotence, the regenerating power of the Holy Spirit is absolutely indispensable.
There were two great evils in our natural condition, says James Buchanan, writing on
justification.
There were two great evils in our natural condition, each of which must be redressed
and removed by means appropriate to itself.
If we were to be thoroughly reconciled to God, the first was the guilt of sin, the second
the dominion of sin.
So these two things have to be removed, the guilt of sin, the second the dominion of sin.
And Buchanan goes on, by the one we were exposed to the wrath of God, by the other
we were slaves to the carnal mind, which is enmity to God.
And then he says, God's displeasure on account of sin must be turned aside, and man's enmity
must be subdued.
And he goes on like this, the objective work of Christ does one, the subjective work of
the Spirit does the other, the work of Christ's fathers, the work of the Spirit in us.
By the former, says Buchanan, all the blessings of salvation were procured.
By the latter, all these blessings are effectually applied.
So we see the work of the Spirit is not the cause, but the consequence of our redemption
by Christ.
We owe the Spirit's work in us, which we need, we owe it directly to the atonement of Christ.
Now while we can distinguish in this way between the work of Christ and the work of the Spirit
on the twofold ground of guilt and impotence, we must not, as I was saying earlier, ever
sever the two completely.
We should carry with us the thought that the whole work of the Spirit in us rests on the
ground of the Savior's finished work.
He purchased that.
On the day of Pentecost, when the Spirit was shed forth, we read that it was Christ who
sent him forth.
And it's based, his sending forth is based there in us on the atonement of Christ.
George Smeaton says, the loss of the Spirit and the restoration of the Spirit, the former
the result of the fall, and the latter the result of the atonement, are the two most
momentous facts in history.
That's the man that William Cunningham called the most astute theological, the man he said
who had the most astute theological mind in Christendom.
And Cunningham was a good judge of theologians.
This is what George Smeaton says, the loss of the Spirit and the restoration of the Spirit,
the former the result of the fall, the latter the result of the atonement, are the two most
momentous facts in history.
The fall left the human heart, once the temple of God, a nut of ruin, because the great inhabitant
who dwelt in it was under the necessity of leaving the polluted Spirit.
With the Spirit's return to the human heart, on the ground of that everlasting righteousness,
this is still George Smeaton, on the ground of that everlasting righteousness which Christ
ushered in, a new creation began to dawn and a new kingdom entered which will be dissolved
no more.
Now we're left still with one further thought that we must look at, and that is the necessity
of regeneration as our work of God's Spirit is taught us by man's moral and spiritual
impotence and it means that regeneration cannot come from any work of man's own, nor can it
come by the power, any power of man's own will.
This impossibility is already implied in the terms Jesus used, born again.
No more can a man be the efficient cause of his own natural birth than he can be the cause
of his spiritual rebirth.
And none of us really had any point hand in our own birth, nor do we have in our own spiritual
rebirth.
Man cannot renew himself, and even if he could, he would not.
He has no desire to renew himself until our desire is implanted by the Holy Spirit of
God.
Man, Jesus said, loves darkness rather than light because his deeds are evil, and loving
darkness rather than light he will certainly not make much attempt to come to the light
he'll avoid, he'll even despise, he will hate the light.
So we should not be surprised at the reaction of men to the gospel when we bring it to them.
Now it's along these lines of scripture teaching we find, I think, the absolute necessity of
a regenerating, renewing work of the Holy Spirit.
John Murray points out that for us, very sharply and vividly, when he says this, the fact is
that there is a complete incongruity, Murray could use fearful words sometimes but they
mean a lot, the fact is that there is a complete incongruity between the glory and virtue to
which sinners are called on the one hand and the moral and spiritual condition of the called
on the other.
How is this incongruity to be resolved and the impossibility to be overcome?
Not a bad question.
Let me quote another theologian that I hold in high esteem, he's still alive, he was the
professor of systematic theology in the Free Church College for many years, R.A. Finlayson.
Man's condition, says Finlayson, is such that a new nature must be given to him.
God can never be reconciled to the old nature, nor can the old nature as such ever be taught
to give obedience to God.
The old nature is such that it cannot be made whole.
In this sense, regeneration is not to be thought of as a renovating of the old nature, but
rather as the imparting of a new one.
Now let's go back to Murray's question and go on to the second part of our study.
How is the incongruity to be resolved and the impossibility overcome?
Well that leads us directly to a brief study of the nature of regeneration.
Now it's one of the glories of the Gospel that it provides very amply for what Murray
calls this incongruity.
That is, the incompatibility of the demands of God's call and the state of the sinner
who is called.
The Gospel is designed to meet man and to meet man exactly where he is, lost, impotent,
dark, dead.
And you see, that is one of the glories of the Gospel.
When the call of God is made effectual to man, man lives.
When the call comes with power, it comes in all the plenitude of special grace, saving
grace, and that grace is the grace of regeneration.
It is when we take into account God's re-creative power, says John Murray, that the contradiction
between the call of God and the condition of the call is resolved.
There's a solution which takes away this barrier, this contradiction.
It is the work of God's Spirit.
Now the language of Paul, in many places, undergirds the point that John Murray is making.
Let me quote to you from just one place.
Paul writes this, God who commanded the light to shine out of darkness has shined in our
hearts, and note not into but in, God who commanded the light to shine out of darkness
has shined in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the
face of Jesus Christ.
And here we have a clear analogy drawn by Paul between the original activity of God,
who by his Spirit, the Bible tells us, formed the earth and garnished the heavens, comparison
between that action and the action which, through the same Spirit by which he brings
the sinner from spiritual darkness into the marvellous light of the Gospel.
The language employed indicates that regeneration is something radical, all-pervasive.
If any man be in Christ, he is a new creation.
And Paul can go on to say, old things have passed away, behold all things have become
new and all things are of God.
Finlayson used to stress that last phrase there, all things are of God, all the new
things are of God.
Now the words with which Scripture describes the work of regeneration also indicate the
presence and immediate action of the Holy Spirit himself.
The Greek word for regeneration is found, in fact, only in two places in Scripture,
in Matthew 19, 28 and Titus 3 and 5.
And only in the latter passage, I think, does it refer to the beginning of new life in the
individual Christian.
In Matthew, Jesus said this, Verily I say unto you, that ye which have followed me in
the regeneration, when the Son of man shall sit in the throne of his glory, ye also shall
sit upon the twelve thrones judging the twelve tithes of Israel.
So Jesus is using the term to speak of the restoration or the renewal of all things,
a renewed universe.
He's teaching that redemption leads on to a regeneration of creation itself, a regeneration
which will issue in a new heaven and a new earth.
And Paul, of course, gives us that same idea in Romans 8, and it's picked up in Revelation.
In the Titus passage, Paul is quite definitely speaking of the subjective change wrought
in man at the point of application of redemption.
Let me quote, Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy
he saved us by the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Ghost.
Now, the Greek word palangenesia, a palangenesis, is really a compound from palim, the word
again, and from genesia, a birth, and we should not how closely parallel to the language
of Christ in John 3 and 5 this Titus passage really is.
Both texts refer to two elements, one, the washing and purification of a rebirth, and
two, the renewing power of the Spirit who effects that birth and brings it about.
John Murray gives a very full, extended exegesis and exposition of the Johannine passage, both
in volume two of his collected writings and in Redemption Accomplished and Applied.
So I'll refrain from doing that with you today.
I just want to suggest on the basis of both these passages that the twofold emphasis of
purification and renewal point very strongly to union with Christ and to vivification in
Christ, new life in Christ.
It is by union to Christ that his righteousness can be imputed to the sinner and regarded
as belonging to the sinner, and the sinner is made a partaker of Christ's holiness, or
to put it in another way, apart from union to Christ, there can be no washing of purification.
Now equally, it seems to me, quite impossible that the Spirit should create or renew, recreate
the soul while it is still separated, in any sense, from Christ himself.
It is in Christ that the soul is vivified and brought into new life, and for this reason
it seems to me that Scripture gives a logical priority to union with Christ over regeneration
itself, yet we can't separate them time-wise.
It's not that you have a non-regenerate soul unified to Christ, but in regeneration there
must be a union there.
Now although the word regeneration as individual, personal renewal is used only in this one
place in the New Testament, the idea is very broad spread in Scripture.
You get it in the Old Testament again and again and again.
Hugh Martin has a very fascinating sermon, at least for me I found it fascinating sermon,
and three texts from the Old Testament.
The first one from Ezekiel chapter 18, make you a new heart and a new spirit.
The second one from Ezekiel 36, I will give you a new heart, I will put a new spirit within
you.
The second one from Psalm 51, create in me a clean heart and renew a right spirit within
me.
Hugh Martin takes these three texts, all of which deal with regeneration, and he points
out that the first one brings us God's command, it's a precept.
The second one brings God's promise, and the third one is man's prayer, and the sermon
is concerned to point out that this is a sort of a three-fold direction in which the
broad principles of Scripture teaching always work and gather together.
God lays his demand upon men, it's a demand which is impossible to meet.
We cannot obey the precept, renew your heart, renew your spirit, but the precept makes us
conscious of our need, it makes us look to God, and as soon as we do, there's a promise,
I will give you, and the promise encourages the prayer, O God, create in me, give me that
which you command.
That's the kind of sermons that Hugh Martin went about preaching, they're very informative
and very illuminative.
I'm getting tongue-tied.
Now, right through the New Testament as well, the words bef, begetting, begotten, begotten
again, to bear, to bring forth, they're all implied in the sense of personal individual
renewal by the Apostle Paul, by John, by Peter, and the other writers.
The production of new life is also expressed by the word for create, Ephesians 2.10, or
the word a new man, Ephesians 4.24, as well as the word to quicken.
In the Old Testament, the same thought is expressed again and again and again, a new
creation, a new heart, circumcision of the heart, the clean heart, and so on.
Somebody was asking me this morning, did the Apostles preach regeneration?
He seemed to be divided between what Jesus preached and what the Apostles preached.
No, he wasn't, he said.
But it's a good question, and of course, I believe that the Apostles did preach and taught
very strongly the necessity of regeneration, and that it was all implied in the word repentance
toward God, faith toward the Lord Jesus Christ.
The whole teaching of Paul is symptomatic of the fact that man, unaided, cannot repent
and cannot believe.
Now, lastly and briefly, the relationship between regeneration and conversion.
Two things, of course, are closely related, like a man and a wife.
They're closely related, but they're very different.
Let me just tabulate now, because time is going.
A, regeneration is instantaneous, and it's completed in a moment.
Working out of a new principle may, and does, Professor Finlayson used to say, take a lifetime.
But it is imparted in a moment, so regeneration is an instantaneous act.
B, there is no intermediate state between that of the regenerate and the unregenerate.
There is no such thing as a half-regenerate sinner, despite Lloyd-Jones and Romans 7,
where he sees a man who is neither regenerate nor unregenerate.
The terminology on what it's positing, I think, makes theological nonsense.
There is no such thing as a half-regenerate person, in the sense that we are using it,
the imparting of life, the soul, is either alive or dead.
And C, regeneration takes place in the depths of the soul.
It is therefore a work of God which takes place under the level of human consciousness.
No man is aware of its precise moment of occurrence.
What men feel, and therefore what men talk about, is the manifestation of the new life
which has been implanted, and that life coming up into their consciousness.
The presence of new life secures its own exercise, and that means that what men become conscious
of is the stirrings of the life that God has wrought in the soul.
Now these stirrings, these feelings, are related to regeneration as causes to effect.
And D, the soul is passive in regeneration.
Man does not, because man cannot, cooperate in this work.
This follows from the fact that his relation to the activity of God in his soul
is purely that of reception.
In the instant when the divine and holy life is implanted by the spirit,
the soul of man contributes no energy or efficiency of any kind.
A dead man cannot assist in his own resurrection.
Enmity will not cooperate with love.
The activity involved in regeneration is purely that of God the Holy Spirit.
And E, I would say, although this may be quarreled with a little bit,
I would say that regeneration is effected without means.
It is immediate rather than media,
although some theologians have taught that it is media through the word.
I believe that regeneration itself is without means
and that the word is an instrument which leads into it,
but it directly is the action of the Holy Spirit.
And then if, oh dear me, we're going to use the whole alphabet here,
faith is not a means of regeneration, but a consequent of it.
It is not the fact that we believe and then are regenerated.
That is the wrong way around.
Faith is not a means of regeneration, but a consequent of it.
We are not born again by faith or repentance or conversion.
We repent, we believe, and we convert because we have been regenerated.
Let's be quite sure of that.
Only the soul that has been quickened out of death into life can exercise faith.
Now all these points lead to the position that conversion is the result, the fruit of regeneration.
Regeneration is the act of God, conversion is the action of man.
Conversion is the natural expression of the new life given by God.
But even here God is not absent.
His Spirit it is that nurtures and sustains the life he has given
and enables it to come into exercise.
Here God causes the regenerate in the conscious life to turn to himself in faith and repentance.
And that turning is what scripture speaks of as conversion.
That turning is undertaken in actual personal experience.
That turning takes place in the sphere of experimental religious exercise of the human soul.
Now conversion affects the condition of men, the condition rather than the state.
It's not a legal act but a moral spiritual change.
And it's the emergence into the conscious life of a person of that grace which has its roots
in regeneration and so in the subconscious life.
I want to finish with a quotation from George Smeaton.
The scripture he says emphatically describes the divine action of the Spirit
as working in us to will and to do.
Philippians 2 and 13 he's quoting there.
But whether he works in us to will or subsequently works with us
when we are enabled to will, the entire glory of regeneration and of conversion
belongs to the Spirit of God.
And James MacCunn says this,
by the agency of the Holy Spirit who works faith in us,
enabling and persuading us to receive and rest upon Christ alone for salvation,
we are united to Christ and by our union with him we are made partakers of all the blessings
which he died to purchase and is exalted to bestow.
The two elements I think are important.
They should not be confused in our thinking, they should not be confused in our preaching.
They are in a sense inseparable, they may well be simultaneous although some have taught
that regeneration can by a long way precede conversion, I wouldn't be too sure of that,
but the two are there and we should distinguish them.
And when we distinguish them then I think we can be clearer in our preaching
of the necessity of the new birth and that necessity must be preached.
We should be clearer in our demands upon all our hearers for a converted life.
No matter who these hearers are, covenant children, there is only one thing which will satisfy us
that they are in Christ by regeneration and that is the marks of a converted life.
And you and I as preachers of the gospel not only have the right,
we have the duty to demand insistently and urgently again and again, Sabbath by Sabbath
and weekday, that we see the fruits of a converted life in our membership, in our churches.
The fruits of a converted life are the only guarantee that you have, that I have as preachers
of the gospel or that these people themselves can have, that they truly regenerate men and women
and we don't want anything less than truly regenerate men and women in the visible
church of God. So preach for conversion or let me say preach for regeneration
and then preach with all your might for the fruits of a converted life. Let's insist
a truth that the apostles propounded again and again, let's insist upon it,
without holiness no man shall see God. And the truth of Jesus, except a man be born again,
even if he's been born into a covenant family, except a man be born again,
he cannot and will not enter the kingdom of God. Thank you for your patient listening.