Still the new nature must draw its saps through the oldnature; apart from the graft, the
trunk remains wild.
Hence before as well as after regeneration we lie in the midst of death, as soon as we
consider ourselves outside of the divine seed. Wherefore, trying to avoid one false position,
we must be careful not to run into another; trying to escape, the Siamese twinship of the
old and the new man, and maintaining the unity of the ego before and after regeneration,
313we should not begin to teach that regeneration leaves our person unchanged, that it does
not affect the sinner himself, but merely translates him into the sphere of an extraneous
righteousness. No: the Scripture speaks of a new creature, another birth, a being changed
and renewed. And this can not be reconciled with the notion that the sinner should remain
unchanged.
Regarding the question, what it is in the bud that has the potency to regenerate the wild
trunk, the best-informed botanist can not discover the fiber or liquid that might have this
power. He only knows that every bud has its own nature, and possesses the potency to
produce another branch or tree of the same nature by its own formative power.
And this applies to the work of regeneration. In the center of our being, ego, personality
rules our nature, disposition, form of being, and existence, imparting its impress, form,
character, and spiritual quality to what we are and work and speak. That all-controlling
center is by nature sinful and wicked. Under its fairest forms it is but unrighteous. Hence,
willingly or unwillingly, we press upon our being, working, and speaking the stamp of un-
righteousness. According to age and development this nature of the ego chisels out of the
marble of our being an eviland sinfulman, corresponding to the image contained in our
nature from which it proceeds. In regeneration God performs in this controlling center of
our being a wonderful act, converting this nature, this formative force into something entirely
different. Consequently our being, working, and speaking are henceforth controlled by an-
other commandment, law of life, and government; and this new formative force chisels an-
other man in us, new and holy, a child of God, created in righteousness.
But this change is not completed at once. The tree grafted in March may remain inactive
during that entire month, because, there is as yet no working in its nature. But this is sure:
as soon as there is any action it will be according to the new, ingrafted nature.
And so it is here. The new, ingrafted life may lie dormant for a season, like a grain of
wheat in the earth; but when it begins to work it will be according to the nature of the new
life. Hence regeneration implants the life-germ of the new man, whom it contains in all his
completeness, and from which it will proceed as surely as the wheat contained in the seed
proceeds from it.
314In order to assist us in our representation of this mystery, the greatest theologian of the
Reformed churches has presented the divine plan in regeneration in the following stages:
XXII. The Work of Regeneration.