Justification, Regeneration and Adoption

Justification means that God forgives us when we repent of our sins and decide to follow Jesus as our Lord and Savior. 

This means that we first recognize our failure to be righteous by our own strength (Romans 3:23), and that we need and accept Jesus' help and guidance in our life. To be righteous means that we don’t sin anymore, which implies that we maintain a living and healthy relationship with God that involves a constant connexion and frequent two-way communication, as it was described in the previous texts on sin and on atonement. To be righteous also implies that we not only have communication with God, but that we do what He tells us - we obey (read Mt 7:21), for instance putting into practice the Ten Commandments (see Ex 20).

The picture of the gavel, this judge’s small wooden hammer, reminds us of God who chooses not to condemn us but rather forgives us - justification, because he now sees hope in us through our repentance and decision to trust Jesus as our Lord and savior, as our guide to stop harming others and learning to love, because Jesus has paid the penalty for our sins on the cross and shows us the way of the life with God.

Justification starts by recognizing our failure to do God’s will (to be righteous), the recognition of our need of God’s grace, continues by repentance and trusting God to guide us through Jesus' Christ. Jesus' atonement - his life and his death on the cross for our sins - are the foundation of this reconciliation, of God’s forgiveness. When welcome Jesus as the one who saves us from this broken relationship with God (which leads to eternal death), we also have to welcome him as our guide and Lord, so that we learn to maintain this relationship of life. This means that we welcome God’s teachings as communicated in the Bible, specially the biblical teachings of Jesus in the New Testament, that we enter into a personal relationship with Jesus as our Lord and master. Jesus saves us through his sacrifice, and wants to lead us in all things through the Holy Spirit. For this to happen, Jesus uses his church as a key part of his work, to remind us of his teachings, to show to us how to live with him and the Father, to help us to live together as a community, to come in communion with him and remain in this living relationship.

The picture of a little baby reminds us of the regeneration, the new birth, that God gives to those who are justified through Jesus death for us and through his guidance. 

As we die to our lethal independence from God, as we welcome Jesus as our guide and Lord to maintain a listening and obedient relationship with him and the Father, God regenerates us - we become born again, and God is no more limited to a set of stories written on the pages of a Bible or shown in a movie, but becomes for us a living God who wants to communicate with us on a daily basis. Our spiritual life fully begins. In the past, we perhaps followed some principles on what is right, because of Biblical teachings or ethical teachings given to us, but now we follow the guidance of a living God. It is the difference between obeying a code of law and responding to the love of a living God who interacts with us.

The picture of a dad with his son reminds us of our adoption as children of God. 

Another way to describe this regeneration or new birth, is the fact that God adopts us as his child. As a father with his child, God wants to care for us by guiding us, to help us avoid unnecessary suffering and to provide for all we really need. This means that as we welcome God’s gracious justification through Jesus' death on the cross for our sins, we become children of God. Since we don’t see God in the same way we see physical human beings, we have to learn to relate to God through impressions in our hearts, through images and words coming in us. This is what this new birth and adoption is all about, learning to be and live as a child of God. The Bible contains the key teachings on how to remain in fellowship with God as our Father. The Holy Spirit enables us to experience and live this reconciliation with God, this two-way communication, following Jesus' teachings. The Church is the community of believers in Jesus where we can learn to live with God and with each other in love and truth. 

In all this, Jesus is really the way, he is our guide and will teach us. Not as a dead prophet who has only teachings written long ago for us, but as the living Son of God who can guide us to the Father in our everyday life. As he promised, he is with us up to the end of the age (Matthew 28:20), and wants to shepherd us with his love: my sheep hear my voice, I know them and they follow me (John 10:28). He wants to speak to our hearts and teach us His love in all we do, as we discover His creation, as we interact with His church, in all we do and live in this world. 

Justification, regeneration and adoption is really this full entry in the living relationship with a living God. How to maintain this relationship of life, how to be stable in this intimacy with God, how to gain victory over sin in all the areas of our life and fully reach the goal of our creation, will be the heart of the next teaching on Christian holiness and entire sanctification.