REGENERATION AND ETERNAL SECURITY (Part 1)

There are denominations within Christendom that teach that one can somehow become "saved", and subsequently loose his or her eternal life.  Some teach that eternal life can be lost through sin.  Others plainly recognize that such teaching is salvation by works pure and simple, and reject this as heresy.

Nevertheless, some of these will still conclude that, if a man is saved by faith, should he lose that faith, he will lose his salvation.  Certainly such logic is not teaching salvation by works, nor denying the doctrine of grace.  It is predicated on the belief that salvation is a gift by faith alone.  These are saved men and women!

The essence of this error is not a failure to appreciate the doctrine of grace, it is a failure to appreciate the significance of the miracle of regeneration, and the implications of this doctrine.  And this is because the concept of being "born" has been substituted for the concept of "begetting" in most modern translations.

Some years ago I begot my first child.  The seed which went forth into my wife's' womb was not me.  It was not an Electrical Engineer nor a theologian nor an avid runner, nor did it possess my sense of humor or other "personality" traits.  It did not have personality because it was not a person.  It was only a seed.  It did however carry forth the life that was in me.  The only life which Tiffany, my daughter, possesses, has came from either me or her mother.  And yet, I could not extract my life from her one cell at a time after I had begotten her.  Though her life came in part from me, my life was irreversibly fused together with that of my wife to form a new life.  My "life" can no longer be identified as a distinct entity within Tiffany separate from her mothers' life.  Not on a cellular level, not on a sub-cellular level!  My life could not be extracted from Tiffany because, although my life is indeed in her and gives her life, my life no longer exists as an identifiable component distinct from the life which is now hers.  Nor is the life of her mother distinguishable apart from Tiffany.  Two lives were not simply fused together, they were intertwined to form a completely new person!

Regeneration and Eternal Security, Part 1