REVIVAL OR REGENERATION?

Tuesday 29 April

Will You not revive us again, that Your people may rejoice in You? Show us Your mercy and loving-kindness, O Lord, and grant us Your salvation. Psalm 85:6-7 (AMPC)

Titus 3:5 (ESV): "he saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit, Titus 3:5 (ESV)

‘There’s a revival coming to this city and this nation and the nations of the world.’ These are sayings that have been bandied about by many self proclaimed ‘revivalists.’ Did you know the interesting part about all this is that the word REVIVAL cannot be found anywhere in the entirety of the Bible? So where did all of this rhetoric come from? Apparently not from God.

The context of our first passage is David praying to God to revive Israel again. The idea of reviving something means that it is dead and needs to be brought back to life. Clearly this was not literal but metaphorical language. David recognised the need for God to breathe life back into the nation in a figurative sense.

You can’t use this scripture to describe the state of the believer or the Body of Christ for that matter because of one important thing we are about to discover. Also, the concept of dragging the Old Testament into the New Testament to fit your narrative is fraught with theological perils.

When we look at Psalm 85:6 David makes a vital point ‘grant us your salvation’. Now, we can take it as a natural salvation as there would be no spiritual salvation until Christ. It’s important to remember that from a spiritual standpoint the Old Testament, saints including David were dead spiritually in trespasses and sins because of Adam’s transgression.

Now if our opening passage was talking about some ‘spiritual revival’ for Israel, how could God revive or bring something back to life that was never alive in the first place i.e. the old creation?

Fast forward to the believer in Christ. We have something far greater than REVIVAL, it’s called REGENERATION. Christians are made alive in Christ and from that point we never die. If revival were for the Christian it would presuppose that somewhere along the line the Christian died somehow spiritually and therefore needed to be revived or brought back from the dead. Can you see how this doesn’t make any sense?

Some confuse the words of Paul when he says ‘Awake O sleeper rise from the dead and Christ will give you light’ as Christians needing revival; however the phrase ‘rise from the dead’, tells you that it is not the Christian that Paul is referring to here. It is those who are still dead in sin and are in need of salvation.

This is where REGENERATION comes in. We were all dead and spiritually separated from God before Christ. Then in salvation we are given eternal life. The Greek word is ‘paliggenesia’ which means ‘new birth, reproduction, renewal, recreation and regeneration.’ So all those in Christ are now regenerated by the Holy Spirit through the blood of Jesus. We have the eternal life of God. It is impossible for us to be revived again because we are now made alive forever in Him!

There is no need to try to revive the believer. He is already as alive as he ever will be! Consequently, the unbeliever doesn’t need revival either because they are in spiritual death. What they need is eternal salvation in Christ.

A good rule of thumb is if you can’t find it in the early church or in the practices of Jesus in the gospels, or the Apostles in the New Testament, it’s not worth making a doctrine out of it. As always, let the Bible interpret the Bible. Let God be true and every man a liar.

APPLICATION

Do your own personal word study on our opening two passages and see which one is for you: REVIVAL or REGENERATION.