New Birth - July, 2008

Over the next several months, we will be publishing in Sightings some sections from Glad Hearts: the Joys of Believing and Challenges of Belonging (Covenant Publications, 2003), an anthology of Voices from the Literature of the Covenant Church with over 700 readings from the mid-19th century to the present. We are doing so for the sake of increasing numbers among us who are largely unaware of their inheritance as Covenanters in both life and thought. The complete Glad Hearts volume is available for purchase under the Resources Link on the Home Page of the rootedwings.com website. Comments or questions regarding any of the readings here are always welcome.

Biblical Moorings

▪ When the Covenant Church affirms that it is evangelical, it proclaims that the new birth in Christ is necessary for a right relationship with God. Jesus said to Nicodemus, “Unless a man be born anew, he cannot see the kingdom of God” (John 3:3). We teach our confirmands, “Justification is that act of God in Christ by which he forgives us our sins and accepts us as righteous.” But the new birth is more than the experience of forgiveness and acceptance. It is regeneration and the gift of everlasting life. This life has the qualities of love and righteousness as well as joy and peace.
The question may well be asked, “When is this gift of life bestowed?” As an evangelical church we affirm that it is bestowed in conversion. Our catechism declares, “Conversion is that act wherein a person turns in faith and repentance from sin to God.” It involves a conscious rejection of the life of sin. No converted person takes an indifferent attitude toward sin in their life. But conversion also involves a commitment of faith. Eternal life is not given through assent to creeds alone, but in the moment of personal commitment to Jesus Christ.
Such a high doctrine of conversion does not mean that all believers have dramatic conversions. No person remembers the moment of their physical birth; their present life is evidence of its occurrence. So a person may be truly converted even though he or she has no memory of the moment of new birth. The vitality of life is the proof of birth, not its memory of recollection.
...It is only through Christ that we can be saved. Our Savior declared, “I am the way, the truth, and the life; no [one] comes to the Father but by me” (John 14:16). The apostles concurred: “And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12). The Covenant Church shares God’s concern for the salvation of all people, but accepts God’s Word that only those converted by Christ shall be saved.

Covenant Doctrine Committee, Covenant Affirmations (Booklet, 1976), pp. 13,14.

Historical Insights

▪ The Pietists, particularly [Philipp Jakob] Spener [1635-1705], stressed rebirth or conversion as the sole path to salvation. The rites of the Church were of no avail if the individual did not affirm them in his or her own life through a conscious, willful commitment of self in repentance of sin, acceptance of Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord (Lord being a concept more easily comprehended in absolutist Germany than today), and the subsequent striving to live a godly life that is pleasing to God and beneficial to all. Contrary to popular opinion, the early Pietists did not demand a particular manner of conversion experience. Nor did they, as later happened, require a precise knowledge of the time, date, and circum­stances of the conversion experience. To be sure, the Pietists encour­aged emotionalism to a degree, but they did not demand that and even rejected it when the display of emotions became a charade and/or harmful to the community.

Gary R. Sattler, God’s Glory, Neighbor’s Good (1982), p. 101.

▪ Many of Spener's sixty-six sermons concluded with an appeal to his congregation to be sure they were in a state of rebirth. This, not baptismal regeneration in their infancy, was the actual requirement for their salvation. He urged his parishioners to examine themselves in this regard. Then, if they found themselves wanting, they were not to rest until they by the grace of God had arrived again at the new birth.
It must be acknowledged that Spener [1635-1705] rarely, if ever, spoke of a datable conversion experience. He claimed no such event for himself, although he was not averse to using the word conversion.... This active term was employed much more by Francke; while Spener preferred the more passive term, new birth.... Thus, Spener's appeal to his contemporaries was not necessarily that they undergo a dramatic and emotional conversion experience similar to those produced later in American revivalism, but that they understand themselves to be in a state or condition of new birth. It was the possession of...”living faith” with its accompanying piety that would give these persons the assur­ance that, despite their continuing sin and weakness, they were in a right relationship with God.

K. James Stein (1929- ), Philipp Jakob Spener: Pietist Patriarch (1986), p. 197.

▪ A fellowship may be tested by the generating impulses which flow from its faith and life to each member and to those with whom they come in contact. It was impossible to remain unaware of the personal and collective will of the Mission Friends–you must be born again. This meant a personal faith in Jesus Christ mediated by the Word of God and the Holy Spirit. At first it was a rather gentle expression to the community and its children. After 1876, under influences from Sweden through D. L. Moody, and, among us, through E. August Skogsbergh, the will became more aggressive though not always appreciated by the older ministers and people. Even so this focused and generating impulse lived on powerfully into the next century in both its gentle and aggressive forms. A person who was not a confessing Christian had a clear deposit in his mind, by day and night, seeing himself as a prey for the Inexorable Hunter. [I was one of them.]

Eric G. Hawkinson (1896-1984), Images in Covenant Beginnings (1968), pp. 72,73.

▪ The Mission Friends who founded the Evangelical Covenant Church were children of ...revival. They were born at a time when the Church of Christ was shaken and to some extent dis­ordered by a visitation of the Spirit. The web of habit was broken and the church was freed to act once more in the full novelty and freedom of the Holy Ghost.
For the Mission Friends and their forebears this Spirit-filled event was the conversion of souls. They would not have denied that the Holy Spirit can manifest himself in other ways in the life of the church, but for them the primal event was conversion. By conversion was meant the sudden, dramatic, easily identifiable event whereby a man was regenerated. The “penance” of the medieval church whereby a man repented of his sins and made temporal satisfaction for them would not have satisfied the fathers. Neither would the secret act of justification whereby in Luther's thinking God in Christ proclaimed himself gracious toward men. They accepted Luther's doctrine of justification, but they insisted upon its expression in the act of conversion.

Karl A. Olsson (1913-1996), By One Spirit (1962), p. 6.

Theological Perspectives

▪ Not to stress conversion is to run the risk of making the Christian faith something less than a vital and personal relationship to Jesus Christ. It is to fail to distinguish between acceptance of doctrines and acceptance of Christ himself, between nominal adherence to the church and life-transforming communion with God. As our modern world rapidly becomes less and less religiously oriented, and increasingly secularized, the relevance of conversion becomes more apparent.....
In the past, lively discussion centered about the relative value of nurture and evangelism in leading youth to salvation. A realistic survey of the work of the church should make it clear that these activities complement one another; they are by no means rivals. Christian education has been indispensable in bringing men, women, and children to Christ. Why not then rely on Christian education to achieve this goal without further emphasis on conversion?
The reason is simple. The church cannot take for granted the Christian commitment of young people who grow up in the church school or Sunday school. Many will, of course, come to living faith through the educational process, but in our complex and rapidly changing world young people are subject to manifold influences, all of which lay claim on their loyalties, and we cannot afford to assume that knowledge of the Christian way always results in entrance upon it.
The church must find ways of reminding all people, those inside as well as those outside the church, that the Christian faith implies a radical reorientation of one’s whole life through a decisive, and repeated, turning to God in repentance and faith. If the church ceases to be concerned about conversion in this sense, it settles into the smug complacency of a religious club, doomed to futility and ultimate irrelevancy in our modern world. The dialogue it carries on with the world will be idle talk unless it is driven by the conviction that new life is possible in Jesus Christ.
To be converted is to know personally and from inside the meaning of the Gospel. It is to know the love of God in one’s own life. It is to participate with one’s fellow Christians in the mind of Christ and to care about people and their needs as Jesus did. The consequence will be that the whole of one’s life will be the arena in which the implications of a new relationship to God are worked out.

Donald C. Frisk (1911- ), The New Life in Christ (1969), pp. 18,19,20.

▪ No one ever becomes so good but that they need help in becoming better. God helps us to become better as we exercise our wills for good, and this exercising is oftenest done through the influence and contacts we have with good people. The will is like a rudder. Some ships are hard to steer, others easy. So it is with men and women, boys and girls. There is a great difference between one man and another in the power of carrying out a resolution. Some people never execute anything they resolve; others never resolve anything they do not execute. “I do not dare to pray,” said a boy. Feebleness of will-power. Nevertheless, that boy needed salvation from his feeble will. Henry Ward Beecher once said: “They must go to heaven with the sailing apparatus God has given them.” The weak-willed and the strong-willed must both be saved.

Olga Lindborg (1889-1945), “Our Conscious Selves”
Manuscript, Covenant Archives, Record Series 2-1-14, Box 1.

▪ We live in a time when the terms “being saved,” “born again,” and “converted” have become trivialized through the media. With the rise of the new evangelicalism to the forefront of religious America, we are seeing what church historian Martin Marty has called the “Baptistification of America.” The great realities of the Classical Christian faith often suffer from reductionism and distortion in the popular mind....
Within the Church itself, the Christian life has too often been reduced to a simple decision and the matters of Christian nurture and teaching neglected. Worship and teaching have too often become simply repetitive evangelistic appeals. Discipleship, churchmanship, and stewardship seem lost. Free grace has become cheap grace which, in Bonhoeffer’s terms, “justifies sin rather than the sinner.” Christian concerns for justice in the social and economic order are ridiculed as unspiritual.
But let us beware of any theology by reaction. The Covenant was born of a concern for a Christendom that had so immersed itself in churchliness and sacramentalism that the new birth and conversion were strange terms. Let no distortion of the doctrine of conversion cause anyone to neglect or place it anywhere but at the heart of the Christian faith. Our Lord himself said it, “Unless a man is born from above, he cannot see the kingdom of God” (John 3:3, JB).
Paul E. Larsen (1933- ), The Mission of a Covenant (1985), p. 44.

Promise and Peril

▪ There is nothing that moves the hearts of people quite like the testimony of a young convert. Churches who fail to use them are making a double mistake. First of all, the one who witnesses is strengthened in his or her own soul by relating their experiences to others. Second, avenues to human hearts can be opened when they hear of the miracle of salvation that has been experienced in their own midst. Paul’s witnessing in the synagogues amazed all who heard him. The new victories that were brought to the church in Damascus through the early preaching of this convert are not recorded but we can well imagine that there were many.

Glenn L. Lindell (1920- ), The Church and Its Mission (1959), p. 90.

▪ The church is unwilling to experience birth pangs, and for that reason the church bears few children. This makes it necessary for the preacher to dash about and wage combat with others as he seeks children to adopt from other communions.

Gustaf F. Johnson (1873-1959), “Hearts Aflame”
From Gustaf F. Johnson, Hearts Aflame, trans. Paul R. Johnson (1970), p. 14.

Only a Beginning

▪ When conversion occurs a person experiences the new birth of the Spirit (see 2 Corinthians 5:17). But Paul implies that it is also a continuing and progressive transformation “by the renewal” of one's mind. One is not to be satisfied with the spiritual mentality that was present at conversion, but there must be progression and growth. This is essential not only for strength to overcome tempta­tions triumphantly, but in order that service may be rendered cir­cumspectly for the glory of the Gospel and for the edification of others. We are to seek the grace of God in prayer and in appropriat­ing the means of grace (see Philippians 2:12,13; 1 Peter 5).
Progressive transformation must continue in the power of the Spirit with the believer “holding fast to the Head, from whom the whole body, nourished and knit together through its joints and liga­ments, grows with a growth that is from God” (Colossians 2:19. See also John 15:4; Colossians 2:6). Strengthened through the Spirit in temptation and trial, one is prepared to “prove what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect” (Romans 12:2). Only the mind of a person who is in Christ is qualified to “prove” and differentiate or examine what is God's will. But should this person at times be mis­taken concerning the will of God, this is not an evidence of unbelief (See chapter 14:2,6). It appears that what Paul desired to convey is that the more we become changed by the renewal of our minds in Christ, the more we will “make it our aim to please him” (2 Corinthi­ans 5:9).
God's will is “good and acceptable and perfect.” His will is al­ways good and beneficent. Nothing in this world is perfect but the will of God. If we love what is perfect we will seek in vain to find it except in the will of God. What he commands and does are the only entities that are perfect. When one loves what is perfect, therefore, one is loving God's will. This becomes a stimulus for us to “think about these things” (Philippians 4:8), and to seek the “good and ac­ceptable and perfect” will of God.

C. O. Rosenius (1816-1868), Romans: A Devotional Commentary, J. Elmer Dahlgren and Royal F. Peterson, translators (1978), p.167.

▪ The new birth is never an end in itself. Rather, like human birth, it means being ushered into a new environment. We can no longer live the warm, sheltered, constricted life of the womb. Nor can we live in some kind of spiritual incubator. We are born to live in the world, to serve God’s purpose there. Isn’t that exciting? Think of your own life. Your birthright as God’s child is that you have come to this moment in history with something only you can give and do, with something that can make a difference in the world. Whatever that is, you can never live a settled life since your feet have been placed on the road that leads to the coming of God’s kingdom for all men.

Glen V. Wiberg (1925- ), Called to Be His People (1970), pp. 40,41.

▪ When is a conversion a conversion? Many persons have made a profession of faith and there has been no apparent change in their lifestyle. They have not become a part of any Christian fellow­ship and do not participate in Christian activities. While we do not judge their relationship to God neither do we have any assurance that there has been a work of grace in their lives. We cannot always ascer­tain what has gone wrong, but we must seek to do all we can to avoid this kind of abortive confession of faith.
A personal confession of faith in Christ is not the final step in introducing a person to Christ. The church is like a body, of which individuals are the parts. Christ is the head, and the church is de­scribed as his body (See 1 Corinthians 12:12-27).
A person must be introduced to the body of Christ as well as to the head. The Book of Acts gives us a picture of people being added to the church as the body of Christ (Acts 2:41; 2:47; 5:14). Only when an individual begins to draw...resources from the body can we have assurance of [their] conversion. The actual conversion may, in some cases, take place after a person has been introduced to the Christian fellowship. Reasons for this may be many. He may not have been as inwardly con­vinced as he appeared to be. [She] may have been saying words that she did not understand [or] may not have realized what she was actually doing. These are matters we cannot know. However, our work of introducing a person to Christ is not complete until the person we are visiting has become an active participant in a Christian fellowship.

Wesley W. Nelson (1910- ), Learning to Love People (1973), p. 29.

▪ The word conversion means to turn about. It means to turn away from something toward something else. In the Christian experience it means to turn from a life centered in self and sin to a life centered in Christ. This was Paul's experience. Three truths stand out in this lesson. First, every true conversion experience has been preceded by influences that have led us to Christ. It may be the influence and example of a godly life, the in­struction we have received from parents, teachers, and pastors, experiences of' loss, sickness, or sorrow, and often the direct work of the Holy Spirit. Then there must be a personal meeting with Christ. We may not all meet him in just the same manner as Paul did, but every true conversion experience must be the result of a meeting with Christ. Third, the proof of our conversion ex­perience is a desire to make Christ known to all human beings even as Paul did.

Alfred J. Johnson (1898-1985), William Freeman (1901-1972), and Carl Charn (1894-1967), Youth and the Way of Life (1944), p. 237.

▪ According to the women writers in Kvinnan och Hemmet [“Women at Home”], the Christian experienced conversion and was saved and purified from sin. This idea fit well with the beliefs of other evangelicals who emphasized the necessity of experiencing conversion. However, beyond the imperative of American evangelicals to convert others, these Christians retained an old strain of pietism that emphasized the idea that believers continually needed to work on their spiritual lives--recognizing sin and seeking forgiveness. As one worked toward one's own spiritual development, God demanded that others be shown God's love through acts of self-sacrifice and love. These acts curbed the individualism effected by a focus on personal spiritual development. The believer entered into a mutual and just relationship with God. God promised that all the work done by the believer would bear fruit. They, in return, agreed to work for God throughout their lives. God then recognized their work in heaven, even though all workers received the same “pay.” These Swedish-­American women like other immigrants...saw their personal suffering in the context of their religion. They emphasized that suffering was to be endured, that it could be worse, and that praising God throughout one's suffering instead of blaming God showed Christian maturity. They looked forward to a time in heaven when separation and the pain it caused would be over.

Cynthia Nelson Meyer (1962- ), Creating a Swedish-American Woman: the Views of Women in the Swedish Evangelical Mission Covenant Church, 1915-1920, (Unpublished Ph.D. Thesis, Indiana University,1998), pp. 114,115.

Wrestling with the Mystery

▪ The meaning of the term “born again” has been cheapened. The new birth has come to mean something less than responding to Jesus’ call to discipleship, “Follow me.” Apparently we can be born again without dying first; we can have Jesus in our hearts without having Jesus in our hearts. One is not born again into never-never-land; one is born again into discipleship–and often by discipleship.
...The new birth is preceded by a hard time of counting the cost of discipleship, of evaluating, sifting, and painful decision-making. If this term is shortened or bypassed, we have premature birth into the family of God. Because the process of counting the cost is cut short, many are born weak, shrinking from even minimal kingdom requirements. Often this natural process of cost-counting is cut short by listening to the relaxants of religious platitudes and consuming a fiberless diet of God’s promises without his requirements.

Brad Hill (1950- ), Soul Graft (1988), p. 114.

▪ When glorious revivals sweep over a people, it is a beautiful time of flowering. But the flowering time is not the same as the harvest time. When one sees the flowering of trees in the springtime, one hopes that after a beautiful and glorious spring there will be a good harvest. But he who has any experience knows well that there will not be ripe fruit from all the lovely flowers seen in the spring.
After revival times come trials and sifting. Torrential showers and strong winds prove if the house, the spiritual building, has a good foundation. If the house is built on firm rock, it will not fall; if it is built upon sand, it will fall.
Oh, the many sad experiences one has had when a revival ends and the time of trial comes. Then it will be revealed how many flowers will fall without the hope of any fruit....
He who does not wish to give himself wholly to the Lord cannot, for the coming days, keep the impression which he had of God’s Word during the visitation. There comes a relapse into the bondage of sin although the relapse can take a different form in those who are not converted in their hearts. The one can return to open sin and become its slave while the other takes on the appearance of spirituality but lacks the mind of the Spirit and the life in Christ Jesus.

Svenning Johansson (1827-1898), “Herrens Verk,” 1887
From Eric G. Hawkinson, Images in Covenant Beginnings (1968), p. 68.

▪ No one can tell at exactly what age a child is ready for a conversion experience. However, this ceases to be a critical problem when the emphasis is on the lordship of the risen Christ. There is no point when a child is too young to turn [their] life over to Jesus Christ. That Jesus desires to take over the life of the child and that he is able to give guidance and order to that life can be put in terms which can be understood by even the very young. This does not mean that these children do not need to be converted. Although a child may from...earliest memories have recognized Christ as...Lord, there comes a time when the Holy Spirit brings [that child] to the place where he [or she] under­stands more fully that Christ is Lord of all and where [the child] also understands more fully the meaning of [their] own sinfulness and the availability of forgiveness. At this time [a child] is able to respond in a deeper sense. This moment may come so naturally that he [or she] may not remember just when it happened, or it may come as an unforgettable climax of release. We must be careful not to fashion any molds to which conversion must conform. Whatever form it may take, however, the conversion experience is necessary to keep...childhood commitment from disintegrating into a religion of self-achievement. The Holy Spirit desires to bring [children] to an awareness that it was not [their] own good sense or good upbringing that caused [them][to commit [their] life to Christ but an act of God's mercy. Among the most difficult people to reach with the gospel are those who began with ideal conditions of childhood trust but who never allowed themselves to be confronted by the Holy Spirit with the awesome reality that salvation is by God's grace.

Wesley W. Nelson (1910- ), Salvation and Secularity (1968), p.134.

▪ Inasmuch as this matter is so important, God has arranged that we should see the character and nature of faith illustrated by physical birth. “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation.” This is a settled matter in God’s Word. It is at the same time obscure for us in order that we not be masters but disciples.

J. M. Sanngren (1837-1878), Missions-Vännen, 1874
Quoted in Eric G. Hawkinson, Images in Covenant Beginnings (1968), p. 81.

▪ That beautiful phrase “born again” is in vogue now.... People on the street ask, “What does it mean?” Many a church-goer who has grown up in the faith also asks that question. Those of us whose lives have been changed by the power of Christ in more or less visible, dramatic ways have an opportunity to convert a term from its negative stereotype into the sound of the music of God’s winds.
Put yourselves in the shoes of Nicodemus when Jesus said, “You must be born again.” ...It was shocking language. Nicodemus didn’t understand.... He took it literally, and Jesus obviously meant something else altogether.
Rebirth is indeed a gift from above which awakens the real person we are on the inside. Here faith and self-discovery come together. This birth comes from above; it comes from within. There is a process that is very paradoxical here. New life whistles in as the wind from the outside, but the act of breathing occurs spontaneously within us.
...We have to speak in paradoxes, of course. God is “out there” as well as within. When we think of salvation we focus on the cross, an historical event. Blood flowed. There was suffering and death. We can’t escape the fact that atonement was made for our sins. Yet neither can I escape what a young skeptic confessed to me after reflecting on why Christ died. He said, “Suddenly I saw all of my naked depths exposed.” That made sense, too. So in one side of the paradox I don’t step outside of my own skin to be saved; I step back into it.
...Countless others know the music of the new birth but are terrified at the words. They could give you an insider’s view of the process but feel put down as soon as someone else uses the labels. I feel with them because tags depress me, too. I know they are necessary so that we can be quickly understood. But they are like suits on the store rack; none of them are my size.
I yield to no one in my joy of seeing a “newborn person” inside, but I shall resist the attempt of anyone to give him a suit that doesn’t fit. Especially a hand-me-down.
“Are you saved, brother?”
“Am I ever!” If only you could know the joy of all that means to me!

Arthur W. Anderson (1920- ), Wild Beasts and Angels (1979), pp.83,84,85,87.