Wednesday, July 18, 2012

Redemption or Regeneration?

Oswald Chambers is one of my teachers. In his book, Conformed to His Image; The Servant As His Lord, (not a quick read) on pages 9-10, brother Oswald challenges our self-centered Christian culture. He moves us out into deeper water than we feel safe in.

“We must distinguish between the revelation of Redemption and the experience of regeneration. We don’t experience life; we are alive. We don’t experience Redemption; we experience regeneration, that is, we experience the life of God coming into our human nature, and immediately the life of God comes in it produces a surface of consciousness. But redemption means a great deal more than man is conscious of. The Redemption is not only for mankind, it is for the universe, for the material earth; everything that sin and the devil have touched and marred has been completely redeemed by Jesus Christ.

There is a day coming when the Redemption will be actually manifested, when there will be a new heaven and a new earth, with a new humanity upon it…What the Redemption deals with is the sin of the whole human race, not primarily with the sins of individuals, but something far more fundamental, viz., the heredity of sin.

Pseudo-evangelism singles out the individual, it prostitutes the terrific meaning of the Redemption into an individual possession, the salvation my soul.” Oswald Chambers

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