Regeneration and Total Transformation (Ferguson)

When we think about being “born again” or “born from above” (John 3:1-8) it’s good to remember that this new birth is extensive. When the Holy Spirit powerfully gives new life to a person the whole and entire person is affected. Here’s how Sinclair Ferguson wrote about this so well:

…The Spirit’s work in regeneration is thus total in the extent of its transforming power. It is the individual as an individual who is regenerated, the whole man. For regeneration is the fulfilment of God’s promise to give us a new heart (Ezk. 36:26; cf. Je. 31:33), indicating that the Spirit’s renewing work is both intensive and extensive: it reaches to the foundation impulses of an individual’s life and leaves no part of his or her being untouched.

Regeneration is, consequently, as all-pervasive as depravity. On the basis of such statements as ‘the heart is … beyond all cure’ (Je. 17:9), theologians have spoken of total depravity, meaning not that man is as bad as he could be, but that no part of his being remains untainted by the influence of sin. Regeneration reverses that depravity, and is universal in the sense that, while the regenerate individual is not yet as holy as he or she might be, there is no part of life which remains uninfluenced by this renewing and cleansing work. Indeed, just as total depravity leads to moral and ultimately even to physical disintegration, so total regeneration leads to moral, but also ultimately to physical renewal, in the regeneration of the whole being in the resurrection (Phil. 3:21; 1 Cor. 15:42–44). The new man is put on; he is constantly being renewed by the Spirit (Col. 3:10), and finally will be resurrected and glorified through his power.

Older theologians spoke of this radical change as ‘physical’. Although the expression now seems infelicitous, their concern was to emphasize that regeneration is not merely intellectual persuasion; it is a transformation of fallen nature (physis). It penetrates deeply. It is the gift of a new heart.

Ferguson, Sinclair B., The Holy Spirit, ed. by Gerald Bray, Contours of Christian Theology (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1996), p. 122-123.

Shane Lems
Covenant Presbyterian Church (OPC)
Hammond, WI, 54015