Hence without regeneration the sinner is utterly unprofitable. What is the use of an ear
except it hear, or of an eye except it see? Therefore the Holy Ghost testifies: “The hearing
ear and the seeing eye, the Lord has made even both of them.”^11 And since in the world of
spiritual things deaf ears and blind eyes do not avail anything, the Church of Christ confesses
that every operation of saving grace must be preceded by a quickening of the sinner, by an
opening of blind eyes, an unstopping of deaf ears—in short, by the implanting of the faculty
of faith.
And as the man that sat in darkness can see as soon as his eyes are opened, so we, without
moving a hair’s breadth, are translated from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of
light. “Translated” does not denote here an actual going, nor does “to be translated” denote
an actual change of place, but simply life entering into the dead, so that he that was blind
can now see.
This wonderful act of regeneration may be examined in two classes of persons: in the
infant and in the adult.
It is the safest way to examine it in the infant: not because this work of grace is different
in an infant from what it is in an adult, for it is the same in all persons thus favored; but to
the conscious observation of an adult the workings of regeneration are so mingled with
those of conversion that it is difficult to distinguish the two.
306But this difficulty does not exist in the case of an unconscious child, as, e.g., in John the
son of Zacharias and Elizabeth. Such infant has no consciousness to create confusion. The
matter appears in a pure and unmixed form. And thus we are enabled to distinguish between
regeneration and conversion in an adult. It is evident that in the case of an infant which,
like John, is still unborn, there can be nothing but mere passivity—i.e.,the child underwent
something, but himself did nothing; something was done tohim, and inhim, but not by
him; and every idea of cooperation is absolutely excluded.
Hence, in regeneration, man is neither workernor coworker; he is merely wrought upon;
and the only Worker in this matter is God. And, for this very reason, because God is the
sole Worker in regeneration, it must be thoroughly understood that His work does not begin
only with regeneration.
No; while the sinner is still dead in trespasses and sins, before the work of God has begun
in him, he is already chosen and ordained, justified and sanctified, adopted as God’s child
and glorified. This is what filled St. Paul with such ecstasy of joy when he said: “For whom
He did foreknow, He also did predestinate; and whom He did predestinate, them He also
called; and whom He called, them He also justified; and whom He justified, them He also
glorified” (Rom. viii. 29, 30). And this is not the recital of what took place in the regenerate,
but the glad summing up of the things which God accomplished for us before we existed.
11 [Prov. xx. 12]
XXI. Regeneration the Work of God.