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Regeneration and Conversion

Tuesday, 31 May, 2005

The third difference between regeneration and conversion is that the former is an instantaneous and complete work of God, whereas the turn of repentance and faith which we call “conversion” is more a process than an event. There can be no doubt of her suddenness of the new birth. The very imagery of birth makes this clear. For though months of gestation precede it and years of growth follow it, birth itself is a crisis event. We are either born or unborn, just as we are either alive or dead. Further, birth is a complete experience. Once born we can never be more born that at the first moment of emergence from the womb. So with the new birth. To quote John Owen again, regeneration is “not ... capable of degrees, so that one should be more regenerate than another. Every one that is born of God is equally so, though one may be more beautiful than another, as having the image of his Heavenly Father more evidently impressed on him, though not more truly. Men may be more or less holy; more or less sanctified; but they cannot be more or less regenerate.“

There is an evident gradualness about many conversions, however. People begin to become troubled in their conscience and to see the need for repentance. The Holy Spirit begins to open their eyes and they begin to see in Jesus Christ the Saviour they need. They may then enter a period of struggle, half resisting, half yielding. They may become like Agrippa “almost persuaded” or like the epileptic boy's father simultaneously believing and unbelieving. Even Saul of Tarsus, who is supposed to have been history's most conspicuous example of sudden conversion, was really nothing of the kind. We are not to imagine that he had his first contact with Jesus Christ on the Damascus Road, for he had apparently been “kicking against the goads” of Jesus for some time. Somerset Maugham used a different metaphor to emphasize the variety of “shapes” under which conversion comes: “with some men it needs a cataclysm, as a stone may be broken to fragments by the fury of a torrent; but with some it comes gradually, as a stone may be worn away by the ceaseless fall of a drop of water” (The Moon and Sixpence, 1919).

John Stott, Christian Mission in the Modern World, Church Pastoral Aid Society, London. 2nd ed 1977, pp. 114-115. First published 1975.

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