I thought that ONLY unregenerate persons were EVER Baptized...
Titus 3:5
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;
This KJV translation would seem to say that Baptism, the Washing of Regeneration, is how Christ saves us...
οὐκ ἐξ ἔργων τῶν ἐν δικαιοσύνῃ ὧν ἐποιήσαμεν ἡμεῖς,
Not out of works of righteousness of which we ourselves have done
ἀλλὰ κατὰ τὸν αὐτοῦ ἔλεον ἔσωσεν ἡμᾶς
but instead according to his Mercy He has Saved US...
διὰ λουτροῦ παλιγγενεσίας
through the BATHING of Regeneration
καὶ ἀνακαινώσεως Πνεύματος ῾Αγίου,
and the renewal of the Holy Spirit
The word for bathing, λουτροῦ, is Strong's Number 3067: bathing, bath, the act of bathing
Hence the Bathing of Regeneration IS the way Christ saves us...
Which is why we are Baptized into Christ by Christ in the Bathing of Regeneration...
The Bathing of Regeneration is not for those already regenerated, is it?
I mean, IF you are already regenerated, you do not NEED to be Bathed again, yes?
Arsenios
How Does the New Birth Happen?
So we turn now to today’s question:*How*does God do it? How does the new birth happen? Just like we saw in the words of Jesus in John 3, Paul describes regeneration as a*cleansing*and a*renewing. At the end of*Titus 3:5, Paul says that God saved us “by the*washing*of regeneration and*renewal*of the Holy Spirit.” Regeneration is a kind of*washing. And regeneration is a kind of*renewal.
Recall that Jesus said in*John 3:5, “Unless one is born of*water*and the*Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God.” So in John 3, you have*born of water and the Spirit. And in Titus 3, you have*washing of regeneration and renewal in the Holy Spirit.
My argument in John 3*was that this language of water and Spirit came from*Ezekiel 36:25-27*where God promises his people,
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 put*my Spirit*within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes.
Jesus was saying that the time of the new covenant promises has arrived. Ezekiel’s promise is coming to pass by the Spirit in connection with me. The Spirit gives life (John 6:63). And I am the way the truth and the life (John 14:6). And when the Spirit connects you to me by faith you experience a new birth. And there are at least two ways to look at it:*cleansing*from all that is past and*renewal*for all that is future.
Both*Clean*and*New
So when Paul says here in verse 5 that God “saved us . . . by the*washing*of regeneration and*renewal*of the Holy Spirit,” he means roughly the same thing: The promises of the new covenant have arrived. The beginning of the kingdom of God is here. The final universal “regeneration” has begun. And your new birth is a cleansing from all the sin that you have ever committed; and it is the creation of a new nature by the Holy Spirit.
You are still you after the new birth. But there are two changes: You are clean, and you are new. That is what it means to be born again, regenerated.
How did God bring that about?
What Paul wants to emphasize here is that it is owing to the way God is, not owing to what we have done—even done in righteousness. Verses 4 and 5 give three descriptions of the way God is and puts this in contrast to anything we might try to do to be born again. “But when the*goodness*and*loving kindness*of God our Savior appeared, 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.”
Salvation is the big overarching idea in this text (verse 5: “he saved us”). But the specific way he does it is regeneration. And Paul traces both of them back to God’s “goodness,” his “loving kindness” (verse 4), and his “mercy” (verse 5). This is Paul’s ultimate answer to how God regenerates sinners. God is good. God is loving. God is merciful.
1) By the Kindness of God
If you are born again—if you were wakened from spiritual death, and given eyes to see, and ears to hear, and a spiritual sense to taste that Jesus is supremely satisfying, and a heart to trust him—it is owing to the kindness of God. That key first word in verse 4 (chrestotes) means*kindness*or*goodness. Paul uses it in*Ephesians 2:7: “[God made us alive] so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in*kindness*toward us in Christ Jesus.”
God loves to lavish kindness on us. The bigger your conception of God, the more amazing this is. God is the creator of the universe. He holds the galaxies in being. He governs everything that happens in the world, down to the fall of a bird and the change in your hair color. He is infinitely strong and wise and holy and just. And Paul says, he is kind. And because of this kindness we were born again. Let your very existence as a Christian tell you every hour of every day: God is kind to you.
2) By the Philanthropy of God
The second way Paul describes what God is like is translated in the ESV “loving kindness.” The word is*philanthropia*from which we get our word*philanthropy. Love of humanity. This is not a common word for the love of God. In fact, it only occurs here in the New Testament. Paul says that God’s heart inclines to do humanity’s good. He is in the highest sense a philanthropist. So Paul is saying, if you are born again, it happened because of God’s inclination to bless humanity.
Then he says something absolutely essential and Christ-exalting. He says in verse 4 that this kindness and this humanity-blessing inclination “appeared.” “But when the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior*appeared, he saved us . . . through the washing of regeneration.” What does that mean? The kindness and love of God*appeared. It means that if they simply stay there in the being of God and don’t come down and take human form among us, they would save nobody.
Jesus: The Appearing of God’s Kindness and Philanthropy
How did they appear? How did the kindness and love of God appear? The answer is found in noticing the fact that God is called “our Savior” in verse 4 (“the kindness of God*our Savior*appeared”). And Jesus is called “our Savior” in verse 6: “Whom [that is, the Spirit] he [God] poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ*our Savior.” In other words, God “our Savior” appeared in the person of Christ “our Savior.” Jesus is the appearing of the goodness and love of God.
This means that our regeneration is owing to the historical work of Christ. We have seen this over and over. New birth is not a vague spiritual change disconnected from history. It is an objective historical act of the Spirit of God connecting us by faith to the historical, incarnate—the appearing—Lord Jesus so that the life he now has as the crucified and risen Savior has become our life because we are united to him. New birth happens because Jesus came into the world as the kindness and love of God and died for sins and rose again.
3) By the Mercy of God, Not Our Deeds
We close by mentioning the third aspect of God’s nature that explains our new birth, and by mentioning the opposite, which would be to explain it by our own deeds. Verse 5: “He saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but*according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration.”
Mercy. If you are born again, you owe it to the mercy of God. God is merciful. We didn’t deserve to be born again. We were hard and resistant and spiritually dead. God would have been just to pass us by. “But God, being rich in mercy . . . even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ” (Ephesians 2:4-5). We owe our new life—our new birth—to mercy.
Not Our Best Works and Best Motives
God is kind. God is loving toward humanity. God is merciful. That is how we were born again. God did it. Paul could have left it like that. Only positive statements. But he didn’t. He said in verse 5, “He saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness.” He knows our tendencies. We tend to think that if something good happens to us, it must be because we did something good. Paul knows this about us. And he warns.
When it comes to salvation through the new birth, don’t think that way. Notice carefully, he does not say: This salvation was not owing to works done in legalism. He says: This salvation—this new birth—is not owing to*works done in righteousness. Not only your worst works and worst motives, but even your best works and best motives are excluded. They didn’t make you regenerate; they don’t cause you to stay regenerate. Staying regenerate causes them.
Not Baptism
This is one reason why I do not think the “washing of regeneration” in verse 5 refers to baptism. Whether circumcision in the old covenant or baptism in the new covenant—it is not good things we do that causes us to be born again. The kindness of God. The love of God. The absolutely free mercy of God explains our new birth. Not circumcision. Not baptism. Not any works done by us in righteousness. New birth comes and brings righteous deeds with it, not the other way around.
Gladly Submit to God’s Mercy
May God give you eyes to see that nothing could make you humbler and nothing could make you happier than the truth that you have born again, not because of anything you did, but because of the mercy of God. Submit to that, and be glad.
https://www.desiringgod.org/messages/through-the-washing-of-regeneration
