Hence our election, foreordination, justification, and glorification precede the new birth.
It is true that, in the hour of love when regeneration was to be effected in us, the things ac-
complished outside of our consciousness were to be revealed to the consciousness of faith;
but so far as God was concerned all things were ready and prepared. The dead sinner whom
God regenerates is to the divine consciousness a beloved, elect, justified, and adopted child
already. God quickens only His dear children.
Of course, God justifies the ungodly and not the righteous; He calls sinners to repentance
and not just persons; but it should be remembered that this is spoken from the point of view
of our own consciousness of sin. The still unregenerate does not feel himself God’s child, nor
that he is justified; does not believe his own election, yea, often gainsays it; yet he can not
alter the things divinely wrought in his behalf, viz., that before the supreme bar of justice
307God declared him just and free, long before he was so declared before the bar of his own
conscience. Long before he believed, he was justified before God’s tribunal, by and by to be
justified by faith before his own consciousness.
But, however wonderful and unfathomable the mystery of election may be—and none
of us shall ever be able to answer the question why one was chosen to be a vessel of honor,
and another was left as a vessel of wrath—in the matter of regeneration we do not face that
mystery at all. That God regenerates one and not another is according to a fixed and unal-
terable rule. He comes with regeneration to all the elect; and the non-elect He passes by.
Hence this act of God is irresistible. No man has the power to say, “I willnot be born again,”
or to prevent God’s work or to put obstacles in His way, or to make it so difficult that it can
not be performed.
God effects this gracious work in His own way, i.e., He so royally perseveres that all
creatures together could not rob Him of one of His elect. If all men and devils should conspire
to pluck a brutal man, belonging to the elect, from His saving power, all their efforts would
be mere vanity. As we brush away a spider’s web, so would God laugh at all their commotion.
The powerful steam borer pierces the iron plate not more noiselessly and with less effort
than silently and majestically God penetrates the heart of whomsoever He will, and changes
the nature of His chosen. Isaiah’s word concerning the starry heavens—“Lift up your eyes
on high, and behold who hath created these things, that bringeth out their hosts by number;
He calleth them all by name, by the greatness of His might, for that He is strong in power;
not one faileth ”^12 may be applied to the firmament in which God’s elect shine as stars:
“Because of the greatness of His might, and that He is strong in power, not one faileth.” All
that are ordained to eternal life are quickened at the divinely appointed hour.
And this implies that the work of regeneration is not a moral work; that is, it is not ac-
complished by means of advice or exhortation. Even taken in its wider sense, including
12 [Isa. xl. 26]
XXI. Regeneration the Work of God.