What is the way for us to be regenerated? How can we receive regeneration? In verses 15, 16, 18, and 36, the Lord said, “That everyone who believes in Him may have eternal life”; “that everyone who believes in Him should not perish, but have eternal life”; “he who believes in Him is not judged”; “he who believes in the Son has eternal life.” These emphatic words spoken repeatedly by the Lord tell us clearly and definitely that the way for us to be saved and regenerated is simply to believe in the Lord. To believe is the only way for us to receive salvation and regeneration. It is absolutely a matter of faith. Regardless of how much we can work or how good our work may be, we cannot be saved and regenerated by our work. Our work does not count in this matter. Only faith counts. Salvation and regeneration must be by faith. It is by faith in the Lord, by believing in the Lord, that we receive the forgiveness, the release from God’s condemnation negatively. It is also by faith, by believing in the Lord, that we receive eternal life, the divine life of God, positively for our regeneration. The Lord has accomplished the redemptive work for us. By His redemptive death on the cross, He has met all of God’s righteous demands on us and has fulfilled all the requirements of God’s righteousness, holiness, and glory for us. By His death on the cross in the form of the serpent, the Lord has even destroyed Satan, the devil that usurps us and enslaves us, that we might be delivered from the evil one’s slavery and power of death (Heb. 2:14). All negative things have been solved by His all-inclusive death on the cross. We do not need to do anything except believe in what the Lord has accomplished. He has dealt with and solved all of our problems. He has left no room for our doing or work. So, there is no need of our work, only of faith in His finished, completed, and all-inclusive redemptive work.
After passing through death, by and in resurrection, the Lord has released His life and has become a life-giving Spirit (1 Cor. 15:45). Now, in resurrection, He is the Spirit of life (2 Cor. 3:17), with all the virtue of His redemptive work, waiting for us to believe in Him. Once we believe in Him, we not only receive the forgiveness of sins and the deliverance from Satan’s evil power of darkness, but we also receive the Spirit of life, that is, the Lord Himself, with the eternal life of God. In this way we are saved and regenerated. It is by the way of believing in the Lord with His all-inclusive redemptive work that we receive God’s life and are born of Him to be His sons.
