Our church was once a viper pit. Members gathered in Christ’s name, but little else distinguished them as Christians. They devoured one another during disagreements. Emotionalism, political preoccupation, diluted doctrinal affirmations, and lack of discipleship left the flock spiritually anemic. The congregation withered, leaving only a few faithful members.

One of the clearest causes of our church’s near-death experience was unregenerate church membership. Joining our church was as easy as walking an aisle, praying a prayer, and asking for admittance. The pastor would introduce the candidate to the congregation and call for an “amen” to welcome him or her into the fold. While easy entrance into membership appeared loving, in reality it opposed love.

Today, we practice regenerate church membership. In other words, we aim to welcome only true, born-again believers into the fold. Jesus taught that being born again — being regenerated — is essential to entering God’s kingdom (John 3:1–5). New Testament letters addressed congregations of new creations in Christ who were set apart from sin and striving to obey God (1 John 3:1–10; Ephesians 2:4–5; 2 Corinthians 5:17; Titus 3:5). Regenerate church membership, then, isn’t a VIP list of elite super-Christians. It’s a faithful list of true Christians.

“Regenerate church membership isn’t a VIP list of elite super-Christians. It’s a faithful list of true Christians.”

Though churches lack the omniscience to guard membership perfectly, we still aim for the names on the membership rolls to reflect the names in the Lamb’s book of life.

Is Church Membership Biblical?

Before considering the why and how of regenerate church membership, however, some may wonder whether our churches should practice church membership at all.

By church membership, I am referring a formal process of identifying and integrating believers who have voluntarily committed to follow Jesus together. The steps of church membership usually include examining a prospective member’s testimony, assuring his or her doctrinal orthodoxy, and making sure everyone agrees on the biblical expectations for following Jesus together.

I used to think formal church membership was unbiblical. In fact, the first church I pastored was intentionally inaugurated without membership. We viewed membership as extrabiblical, legalistic, and a threat to organic fellowship. But over time, our assumption proved to be misguided. We often struggled to know who “we” were. Leaders’ God-given authority was limited by attenders’ anemic affiliation. People were easily overlooked and neglected. Church discipline was confusing and, at times, counterproductive. In the end, we learned that biblical love required deliberate definition.

The New Testament provides a vision for the centrality of the local church in a believer’s life. Followers of Jesus are assumed to know one another, hold each other accountable, and submit to qualified local leaders who will give an account of them to God (Hebrews 13:17). Local churches keep lists of members who need care (1 Timothy 5:9–12), bear responsibility to address hypocrisy (1 Corinthians 5:1–13), and consider one another when partaking of the Lord’s Supper (1 Corinthians 11:18–34).

Churches don’t have to call their approach to these practices church membership, but it’s nearly impossible to argue that the concept itself is unbiblical. All over the New Testament, we find this intentional, committed, accountable love that affirms and encourages one another’s devotion to Jesus in a local congregation.

Why Pursue Regenerate Membership?

Sadly, many churches coddle and comfort people in their sin rather than calling them to repent and conform to Christ. This low standard for membership dims the church’s radiance and offers false advertisements about God. And Jesus takes these sins very seriously.

When Jesus walked among the seven churches in Revelation 2–3, he was moved by what was happening among them. He applauded their obedience (Revelation 2:2–3, 13, 19, 24; 3:4) and was appalled by their abominations (Revelation 2:4, 14, 20; 3:2). He encouraged good works to continue (Revelation 2:10; 3:5) and warned against allowing sin to abide (Revelation 3:3, 18–20).

Jesus still walks among churches today, calling us to obey him in everything, including how we approach church membership. In light of this, consider four motivations for pursuing regenerate church membership.

1. Regenerate membership pleases God.

Churches filled with unbelieving members will be marked by worldliness that serves selfish desires. Churches filled with believers, however, will be marked by loving obedience (John 14:15), a burden to evangelize the lost (Acts 13:1–3), concern for the spiritual welfare of fellow members (Hebrews 3:12–14; 10:24–25), a desire to restore wayward sheep (James 5:19–20), and a will to remove hypocrites who blaspheme God’s holy name (Matthew 18:15–18). All of these qualities are pleasing to God, and only regenerate members will be devoted to them.

2. Regenerate membership protects doctrine.

Unregenerate members will endeavor to lower the dimmer switch on doctrinal clarity to keep the light of conviction from exposing their evil. Or, on the other side, some unregenerate members may emphasize tertiary doctrines in quarrelsome, divisive ways. Regenerate members, however, have the Spirit of God, who empowers godly conviction, doctrinal clarity, and the resolve to remain faithful to Jesus. They will aim to uphold sound teaching with wisdom, charity, humility, and courage.

3. Regenerate membership promotes the gospel.

Unregenerate people have disregarded the call of the gospel. Though they may affirm it with their mouths, they deny it with their lives (2 Timothy 3:5; Titus 1:16). Those who resist the gospel will certainly not be committed to relaying the gospel. They will keep silent — and perhaps try to redirect the mission of the church solely toward social projects. Regenerate members, however, love the gospel that set them free and ensure that the church’s time, talents, and treasures remain devoted to obeying Jesus’s Great Commission (Matthew 28:18–20).

4. Regenerate membership produces joy.

Sorrow accompanies those who abide in sin. Unbelieving church members will be forced to find happiness in the fleeting experiences of friendship, accomplishments, sentimentality, or other empty wells. But believing members draw from a well of joy that never runs dry. A holy congregation will be a happy congregation. The Spirit who indwells her will produce joy (Galatians 5:22) that empowers joy-giving obedience (John 15:11), enlivens heavenly celebration in conversion (Luke 15:7, 10), and longs for the day when her joy will be complete in glory (Matthew 25:21).

How Can We Pursue Regenerate Membership?

Well-intentioned churches that minimize requirements for membership work against the very aim they seek to accomplish. Desiring to show Christ’s love, they often end up distorting it by affirming unbelievers in their rebellion. Healthy churches creatively cultivate an evangelistic culture that invites unbelievers to observe the love of Christ while taking care not to blur the lines about who is and is not right with God.

“Church membership is not for perfect people, but it is for repentant people.”

So how might we wisely pursue regenerate church membership? Consider seven ways to create clear distinctions that magnify the love of Christ, lead unbelievers to salvation, and grow believers into spiritual maturity.

1. Receive members carefully.

Develop a process that welcomes all people to engage with the gospel, yet carefully guards entrance into membership. Membership classes provide opportunities to instruct potential members in what the church believes (doctrine) and how it intends to live together (community). Classes that highlight the gospel, biblical expectations for the Christian life, accountability, and discipline will point unbelievers to Christ while encouraging believers to join your church.

2. Require clear testimonies.

Meeting with a pastor is the next crucial step. This meeting provides pastors an opportunity to discuss any questions about the church’s beliefs, hear the applicant’s testimony, and ensure he or she can articulate the gospel clearly, thus helping the pastor discern whether this person is indeed a believer who affirms biblical doctrine and is eager to submit to the accountability of the church body.

3. Require holy living.

Church membership is not for perfect people, but it is for repentant people. If someone professes to know Christ yet does not display contrition over sin, continual repentance, peaceful departures from former churches, charitable representations of other Christians, and growing delight in Jesus, questions may be raised about his or her conversion. Careful membership processes will be slow enough to ensure someone is walking in holiness. True biblical love takes time to see if professing Christians are honoring Jesus with their lives.

4. Baptize true believers.

Christians publicly profess faith in Christ through baptism. This ordinance is one of the first and most basic acts of obedience to Jesus (Matthew 28:19–20). Historically, many Christians have also treated baptism as the entrance into the life of the local church. Churches ought to be eager to baptize believers, but prudent churches will baptize only those with a credible profession of Christian faith.

5. Honor the Lord’s Supper.

Jesus is clear that not everyone will partake in the marriage supper of the Lamb. Neither should everyone be invited to partake in the Lord’s Supper. Over the years, our church has had several people come to Christ because of our instruction that unbelievers and unrepentant professors refrain from partaking with us. The warning can feel inhospitable, but then we remember that this is the Lord’s Supper, not ours. He supplies the guest list. Those who are unbelieving and unrepentant are excluded, though he desires them to repent and dine with him (Isaiah 25:6–9).

6. Practice church discipline.

At times, even the most careful churches will admit into membership professing believers who prove to be unbelievers in the long haul. This typically becomes evident when those people live in unrepentant sin. Few things grieve God like religious hypocrisy, so faithful churches follow Jesus’s instructions to remove unrepentant sinners from the church’s fellowship if they refuse to be reconciled to God and fellow believers (Matthew 18:15–18). This process requires much wisdom and courage. If we are unwilling to remove hypocrites, Jesus threatens to remove himself from the church (Revelation 2:5).

7. Keep honest membership lists.

As a church matures in its thinking about regenerate church membership, its pastors will labor to keep an honest list of members. Our church’s membership roll used to include hundreds of people who had moved away, walked away from the faith, or died. The numbers were impressive, but they blurred the truth about our truly regenerate members.

Meaningful membership is more than a mere administrative task. It is an act of love that calls sinners to be born again and the church to protect its witness to a lost and dying world so that all peoples can experience the everlasting joy of delighting in God.

The longer you fight against your sin, the more temptations you may face to no longer fight so hard. Once, perhaps, your zeal burned; your spiritual blood boiled. But as months passed and years rolled by, desires for a more comfortable Christianity somehow wedged beneath your armor.

Paul talks of killing sin, starving sin (Romans 8:13; 13:14), but you have begun to wonder whether a less decisive, more long-term approach may work just as well. Jesus speaks of tearing out an eye and cutting off a hand (Matthew 5:29) — you theoretically agree but, if honest, can hardly imagine self-denial so extreme.

You may have once found relish in the righteous ferocity of a man like John Owen, who wrote of walking “over the bellies of his lusts” (Works, 6:14). But some time has passed since your boots have trampled any lusts. And as another Puritan once put it, you may feel tempted to speak of your sins as Lot did of Zoar: “Is it not a little one?” (Genesis 19:20). Time makes way for many little sins — and little sins, in time, make way for larger ones.

The softening happens slowly, by degrees, as I can attest. And often, what we need most in such seasons is a righteous trumpet blast, a rousing note that shakes the bones and awakens us back to reality. Such the apostle John gives to us in his first letter:

No one born of God makes a practice of sinning, for God’s seed abides in him; and he cannot keep on sinning, because he has been born of God. (1 John 3:9)

“Time makes way for many little sins — and little sins, in time, make way for larger ones.”

To the question, “Can the born again make a practice of sinning?” John responds simply, clearly, unequivocally: impossible.

Let No One Deceive You

Recent events had cast a shadow over the community that received John’s letter. We catch a glimpse in 1 John 2:19: “They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would have continued with us. But they went out.” Once, a group of seeming brothers and sisters belonged to us; now, John can speak of them only as they.

And they did not leave quietly. No, they left speaking strange new ideas about Jesus — that he didn’t really come in the flesh (1 John 4:2–3), that he wasn’t really the Christ (1 John 2:22). And with this new theology came a new and twisted spirituality. Many, it seems, professed to know God while walking in darkness (1 John 1:6), as if somehow one could be righteous without doing righteousness (1 John 3:7). They claimed new life; they kept old sins.

Some scholars call them “proto-gnostics,” forerunners of the heresy that would bedevil the church in the next century. John himself speaks with a sharper edge: they are liars, antichrists, children of the devil (1 John 1:6; 2:18; 3:10). Tough words from the beloved apostle. But the church desperately needed to hear them.

No One Born of God Keeps on Sinning

John knew the church was standing firm for the moment. In fact, he wrote his letter in large part to assure them that eternal life was theirs (1 John 5:13). Their faith in Christ was steady, their love for the brothers deep, their righteousness evident. Though not perfect (1 John 1:8–9), they belonged to God.

Yet John knew the power of flesh-pleasing lies, especially when given time to work. He knew too how demoralizing it could be to watch a brother-in-arms lay down his weapons and cross enemy lines. Perhaps the church wouldn’t embrace the heresy, but their hands might grow slack around the sword hilt. They might wonder if the Christian life really requires such ruthlessness against sin. Some might wander into a “practice of sinning,” less afraid of what such a practice might mean.

So, John writes, “Little children, let no one deceive you” (1 John 3:7). Remember, little children, that sin is lawless. Remember that Christ is sinless. Remember that you are new.

Sin Is Lawless

When a professing Christian begins to make “a practice of sinning” (1 John 3:9), a deep yet subtle change has already taken place. Somewhere along the line, sin has become less serious in his eyes: no longer black, but gray; no longer damnable, but understandable. A slow hardening has crept over his conscience. Where he once blushed, he shrugs.

John will have none of it. He had stood on Calvary. He had watched God’s wrath against sin swallow the sun — had seen the wages of sin stain the dirt red. And so he writes, “Everyone who makes a practice of sin also practices lawlessness; sin is lawlessness” (1 John 3:4).

Woven into the DNA of sin is a lawless, traitorous, insolent, anti-Christ character. It cannot bear God’s authority; it cannot bend to Christ’s rule. And though isolated instances of sin do not amount to a life of lawlessness — only “a practice of sinning” does (1 John 3:4) — even the smallest sins are lawlessness in utero. Every sin bears some resemblance to the nails and spear that pierced our Lord; every sin sounds something like, “Crucify!” So, if nourished and cherished, if cultivated and indulged, any sin can take the heart captive to a kind of rebellion that cannot abide with Christ.

We will continue to sin this side of heaven — on that point John is utterly clear (1 John 1:8). Yet as D.A. Carson writes, sin never becomes something less than “shocking, inexcusable, forbidden, appalling, out of line with what we are as Christians.” “Whoever makes a practice of sinning is of the devil” (1 John 3:8) — and every sin, however small, beats with his lawless heart.

Christ Is Sinless

If in sin we see absolute darkness, utter lawlessness, in Christ we see absolute light, utter purity. The two are mortal enemies, opposite poles: the one crooked, the other straight; the one night, the other day; the one hell, the other heaven. And therefore, because of both who Christ is and what Christ does, “no one who abides in him keeps on sinning” (1 John 3:6).

“If we abide in him, sin cannot abide in us — not persistently, not presumptuously, not peacefully.”

Consider, first, who Christ is. “In him there is no sin,” John writes (1 John 3:5). How then can anyone abide in him — live in him, commune with him, worship him — and keep sinning as before? We could sooner light a fire under the sea or breathe deeply on the moon. Christ holds no tinder for sin; he gives no oxygen to lawlessness. If we abide in him, then, sin cannot abide in us — not persistently, not presumptuously, not peacefully.

Then, second, consider what Christ does. “You know that he appeared in order to take away sins” (1 John 3:5). Or again, “The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil” (1 John 3:8). He came, the Sinless One, to make many sinless ones — first by forgiving and justifying us, and then by gradually yet ceaselessly purifying us.

In a season of encroaching sin, then, we do well to ask ourselves, “Jesus came to destroy the devil’s works — and will I endorse them? Jesus died to take away my sins — and will I now take them back? Will I roll the stone back over his tomb; will I take down his cross?”

You Are New

So far, John has bid the church to look outside themselves. Now, however, he tells them to look at themselves. For sin is lawless, Christ is sinless, and they are new. Three times in one sentence, the apostle points to their newness in Christ:

No one born of God makes a practice of sinning, for God’s seed abides in him; and he cannot keep on sinning, because he has been born of God. (1 John 3:9)

Conversion involves not just a change of mind, but a change of heart and soul — a change so great it can rightly be called new birth. And new birth brings the truth about sin and Christ down into the deepest places.

By new birth, we not only see sin as lawless, but we have hearts whose lawlessness has been replaced by God’s life-giving law (Jeremiah 31:33). The pen of the Spirit has reached where ours never could. And by new birth, we not only see Jesus as sinless, but we enjoy him as glorious, the Spirit opening our eyes to a Beauty far beyond sin (Ezekiel 36:27). We have felt, deep down, the blessing of obedience without burden (1 John 5:3), the delight of abiding in the one who knows no darkness (1 John 1:5).

Pulsing in these words of John, then, is not only a mighty cannot — “he cannot keep on sinning” — but a mighty can. However strong temptation seems, and however weak we feel, we can kill sin and cleave to Christ. We can raise these weary feet and flee again; we can lift these tired arms and strike again. We can put our face in the Bible and our knees on the ground. We can say no to the loudest urges of the flesh and yes to the quietest promptings of the Spirit.

Our ‘Truceless Antagonism’

The battle against sin lasts long, even all life long. But in Christ, we have a different disposition, a better bent, a new life that will never die. And buried deep in our spiritual DNA is a ruthless opposition to sin — a “truceless antagonism,” as Robert Law calls it.

Such antagonism will look strange and unnatural to the world around us; at our worst, we too may wonder if the Christian life can run on roads less narrow. But when we remember what sin really is, who Christ really is, and who we really are, then even seemingly small compromises — little lies, secret glances, prayerless mornings, quiet bitterness — will appear for what they are: Lawless guides leading us from Christ. Dark hands stealing our hearts. Utter contradictions of our new birth.

And then our zeal will burn again. And then our blood will boil again. And then our boots will feel again the bellies of our lusts. For “no one born of God makes a practice of sinning” (1 John 3:9). And in Christ, we are born of God — irrevocably, eternally, powerfully new.

It is those who are asleep who need to be awakened. Those who have become listless and lethargic need to be stirred to liveliness and labor.

The Lord was pleased to do this in wonderful ways during the eighteenth century in various parts of the world and by various human instruments. In England, he raised up George Whitefield (1714–1770) and the Wesley brothers, among others. In America, the name of Jonathan Edwards (1703–1758) is well-known, as both a preacher and a theologian, and in connection with Whitefield’s transatlantic labors.

And then in Wales, God employed a number of men to glorify his name. Again, Whitefield was involved, but among the other prominent names for us to learn from today is that of Daniel Rowland (c. 1711–1790).

Land of Spiritual Dullness

The work in Wales was manifestly a work of mercy and grace. Little in the country at the time commended it. Wales was poor and deprived, both naturally and spiritually. Some had recognized gospel needs during an earlier time and, in 1649, a particular Baptist church at the Glaziers’ Hall in London held a day of prayer “to seek the Lord that he would send laborers into the dark corners and parts of this land.”1 Two men offered their services and were sent to Wales.

God blessed their labors mightily. Conversions and baptisms followed, and a church was constituted at Ilston that had 43 members by October 1650. Yet by the early to mid-1700s, even this gospel progress of about a century before seems to have stuttered and stalled. One well-known statement suggested that Christianity in Wales was less a subject of inquiry and more a subject of mirth and ridicule.2 Faithful ministers were few and far between, though some knew a measure of spiritual effectiveness. Churches of all stripes were typically sleepy and dull, if not altogether dead. Does that sound familiar to us today?

Daniel Rowland was born into this environment. He grew up manifestly gifted, typically passionate, and evidently godless, in a family that had known something of true religion but that seems to have declined. His education directed him toward the clergy, and he was ordained deacon on March 10, 1734. He walked from the little Welsh village of Llangeitho to London and back for the occasion. Up to this point, Rowland’s ministry had been sadly empty of any gospel fervor and force. However, about this time, Rowland heard the truth through a godly preacher, Griffith Jones (c. 1684–1761), and became a new man in Christ. Rowland was ordained as a priest in the national church on August 31, 1735. His preaching began revealing his genuine change of heart.

‘The Angry Clergyman’

The same earnest soul that had once run in ungodliness now showed itself zealous to declare divine truth. A heart once given over to wickedness had been stirred by a sense of God’s holy majesty and stricken by the cutting edge of his righteous law. Like John Bunyan before him, Rowland preached what he felt, what he smartingly (deeply, acutely) did feel.3

“The same earnest soul that had once run in ungodliness now showed itself zealous to declare divine truth.”

Constrained by a heavy sense of his own sinfulness before God, Rowland inclined toward Scriptures that emphasized God’s holy hatred of sin and the fearful punishments that hung over the heads of the unrepentant. It was a far cry from what seems to have been the tame, tepid, and toothless homilies of his earlier ministry. He preached as a son of thunder, a true Boanerges (Mark 3:17), bound by the majesty of God’s person and the value of men’s souls. Under the influence of the Holy Spirit, such preaching, with its emphasis on God’s holy law, drew and slew many hearers, earning Rowland the nickname of “the angry clergyman.”

This kind of ministry was powerful and effective, but its unrelenting force over the space of a couple of years was in danger of driving sinners to an unscriptural despair. Rowland’s ministry of judgment was not tempered with much mercy; his hearers were marked more by profound distress of soul than anything else.

Jerusalem of Wales

At this point, a godly Dissenting pastor by the name of Philip Pugh (1679–1760) stepped in to help the younger man. He advised Rowland to apply the blood of Christ to the spiritual wounds he was causing. His hearers needed to know not just that they needed a Savior; they also needed to know the Savior!

Rowland, still young in spiritual years, felt that he lacked sufficient sense of that reality himself — his faith in the Lord lacked something of what he felt was its necessary vigor. Pugh pressed him with the need to let some beams of light through the storm clouds before he killed his hearers. He told Rowland to preach till he felt more of that for which he yearned. Now the gentle tones of a Barnabas began to mingle with the piercing cries of a Boanerges, and the sweet gospel balm was readily poured into the wounds that God’s holy law had righteously inflicted.

Alongside his enlivened ministry of the word of God, Rowland had become a man of earnest prayer. He would often climb the hills around his home. The panoramic view of the region stirred his heart to plead for God’s blessing upon the people. Gripped by the gospel of Christ and sustained by his communion with God, Rowland’s preaching now began to have an even wider range and deeper effect. Crowds flocked to hear the gospel minister of Llangeitho, and they were transformed by the transformed man and his transformed preaching.

Previously, groans of distress had risen from hearers gripped by conviction of sin; now, cries of “Glory!” began to mingle with those groans, as convinced sinners looked to Christ and saw in him the beauty and majesty of the Savior. Soon Rowland was preaching to hundreds, if not thousands. He preached as “a seraph in tears.”4 God drew near to preacher and hearer alike, and some of the descriptions of his preaching leave us aching for the sense of heaven that often seemed to accompany his efforts.

Eventually ejected from the Church of England, Rowland continued to preach with spiritual force, enjoying the favor of many who relished the word of God. Howell Harris (1714–1773) reckoned that by 1763 as many as ten thousand were coming to hear him at Llangeitho. The little village was becoming known as the Jerusalem of Wales.

Lessons from Revival

This is a mere snapshot of the beginnings of the labors of one man in one place. In conclusion, let me offer three observations for pastors today.

Coordinated Efforts

First, consider that Rowland was one man among several, each one blessed of God in similar ways. He did not stand alone. In Wales, a few godly men had faithfully labored for years and had known a measure of real fruitfulness, as evidenced both in Rowland’s conversion and in the salvation of other men in his generation in Wales — such as Howell Harris and William Williams, Pantycelyn (1717–1791).

Recall also that Whitefield was converted at about the same time as Rowland and became a firm friend of and co-laborer with the Calvinistic Methodists in Wales. It is too easy to isolate, romanticize, and even idolize individuals. Nevertheless, we need not become spiritual or historical cynics. It is proper to recognize the distinct gifts and contributions of men raised up by God, seen and appreciated in their broader context.

Lively Men, Lively Ministries

Furthermore, learn that spiritually lively ministries come from spiritually lively men. Do not imagine that potent sermons will spring from dull hearts. Our desire for striking sermons or a powerful ministry must not be for its own sake, but for the glory of God and as the consequence of heart communion with him. Grace gripped godless Rowland, drew him out of darkness into God’s light, and made him both a faithful Christian and a useful preacher. What then seemed to mark him out was his deep meditation on divine truth and his seeking the face of God in prayer. Like him, we can learn to long for God’s blessing for his own glory’s sake and for the good of mankind, never for our own exaltation.

Preaching Under God’s Eye

Finally, Rowland’s power as a preacher derived from his profound and primary consciousness of the eye of God upon him. Like the apostle Paul, he spoke “not to please man, but to please God who tests our hearts” (1 Thessalonians 2:4). He was clearly a gifted man, capable of high flights of spiritual oratory, his own fervor impacting his hearers. Nevertheless, his usefulness was at least as much a matter of heavenly substance as heavenly style.

“Spiritually lively ministries come from spiritually lively men.”

Rowland preached a full-orbed gospel, increasingly marked by the supremacy and centrality of Christ. He preached felt truth, both the law and the gospel. He set out to bring sinners to see their need of a Savior, and to show them the Savior they needed. Another well-known Welsh minister, Thomas Charles of Bala (1755–1814), converted through Rowland’s ministry, described it thus: “Rowland preached repentance, until the people repented; he preached faith until men believed. He portrayed sin as so abhorrent that all hated it; and Christ so glorious as to cause all to choose Him.”5

Brothers, are we preaching for repentance and faith, preaching the law and the gospel, preaching an abhorrent sin and a glorious Christ, for the glory of God and for the blessing of sinners? This is the ministry God blesses, and a ministry worth pursuing.

C.S. Lewis’s Pilgrim’s Regress is an allegory about the life of the mind — Lewis’s mind — as it wrestles with the soul’s desire for God. Filled with allusions to Lewis’s own intellectual development, the book is equal parts fascinating and impenetrable. Its full original title gives you a taste of what you’re in for: The Pilgrim’s Regress, or Pseudo-Bunyan’s Periplus: An Allegorical Apology for Christianity, Reason, and Romanticism. No wonder Lewis would later apologize for its “needless obscurity” in an afterword to the third edition (207).

Still, Pilgrim’s Regress is worth the work — especially if you can find the recent annotated edition, which supplies explanatory notes, including some written by Lewis himself. What you find is that Lewis’s pilgrimage reflects not merely the familiar desire to lose the burden of guilt, but also the desire to satisfy his soul’s thirst, his soul’s longing. Pulled between the competing demands of intellectual consistency and bodily passions, the pilgrim is led by a glimpse of eternity. It pulls him in and through the false offers of the world, often in spite of his own weaknesses.

The Stern North

Since The Pilgrim’s Regress is about Lewis’s own “return,” it has all the features of the early-twentieth-century academic class. Lewis’s pilgrim struggles with classic temptations like lust and pride, but they frequently take the form of ideologies. His allegorical foils include “Puritania” and “Victoriana,” as well as personifications of Marx, Freud, and Nietzsche. Lewis even makes space for his contemporary pilgrim intellectuals on their own journeys, both divine and devilish.

In one of the more arresting scenes, Lewis shows us the northernmost extremity of the journey. Described as the “sterner regions of the mind” (94), the northern territory is where “the tough-minded” go. Their great opponent is what they view as a childish sentimentality, the tendency to still hold to emotions, hopes, and dreams — all of which they believe are illusions. The northern men are intellectual, but harsh and cynical. They believe they have seen through all the deceptions.

But they are not the final mountain peak. No, the top of the mountain is something more: a figure called Savage. Dressed in a Viking helmet and quoting Nietzsche and Wagner, Savage is terrifying, “almost a giant.” He’s joined by a Norse sorceress and sings the philosophy of heroic violence in epic verse. Here are a few of his convictions, the first about ordinary simple men and the second about self-important intellectuals:

These are the dregs of man. . . . They are always thinking of happiness. They are scraping together and storing up and trying to build. Can they not see that the law of the world is against them? Where will any of them be a hundred years hence? (105)

The rot in the world is too deep and the leak in the world is too wide. They may patch and tinker as they please, they will not save it. Better give in. Better cut the wood with the grain. If I am to live in a world of destruction let me be its agent and not its patient. (106)

This northern Savage has rejected attempts at morality and even rationality, at least as traditionally understood. To him, everything is ultimately meaningless because it will crumble. All men will die. The only eternal thing is “the excellent deed.” A more common expression today might be “the will to power.”

Servants of Savage

Savage is giant, but there are many varieties of dwarves that work for him. These dwarves can “reappear in human children” and take on many variations, though they are ultimately animated by the common spirit of Savage.

Among these dwarves are the Marxomanni, Mussolimini, Swastici, and Gangomanni (105). Here Lewis is illustrating the social and political breakdown of the 1920s and ’30s by showing us violent Marxists, Fascist revolutionaries, and American gangsters. Each movement, whether highbrow or lowbrow, had given up on the ordinary rules of society, had given up on law and order, and had instead decided to impose its will through brute force. They are dwarves, but they regularly show up among the children of men. They are, all of them, servants of Savage.

“It’s quite remarkable that Lewis was able to see fascism for what it was: the dwarf-servant to savage nihilism.”

The Pilgrim’s Regress was originally written in 1933, the same year Adolf Hitler became chancellor of Germany. While the savagery and mania of Nazism can be taken for granted by modern writers, this was not true in the 1930s. Indeed, one of Lewis’s own heroes, G.K. Chesterton, was more than partially taken in by fascism. And while never a proponent of Nazism, Chesterton did frequently explain its attraction as an understandable response to modern social decay (The Sins of G.K. Chesterton, 183–84, 213–22). When considered from that context, it’s quite remarkable that Lewis was able to see fascism for what it was: the dwarf-servant to savage nihilism.

Three Pale Men

There’s another layer to Lewis’s tale, though. One of the more obscure parts, he singles it out as a “preposterous allegorical filigree” (215). Yet, when decoded, it speaks to our moment in a powerful way. This is the scene of the “three pale men.” These are men of the north. They conceive of themselves as fully rational and realistic. They have no interest in romantic ideals. Indeed, they are a sort of intellectual reaction against Romanticism (which was itself a reaction against the first round of the Enlightenment). They consider themselves extremely deep thinkers who have worked through all the other failed theories and movements. They represent a sort of “return” to older ways.

One of these pale men is Mr. Humanist, representing an embrace of Renaissance and Enlightenment thought, though stripped of all idealist and romantic elements. Another is Mr. Neo-Classical, a character obsessed with antiquity, but also without its mystical or religious elements. The third pale man is Mr. Neo-Angular, and Lewis’s notes describe him as “the more venomous type of Anglo-Catholic.” Neo-Angular insists on dogma and what he takes as “Catholicism.” This seems to mean the universal and undiluted faith, but Mr. Neo-Angular’s true defining characteristic is his opposition to experiential religion. He has no time for “subjective” motivations (98). He rejects the pilgrim’s affective “soul longing” as a form of escapism and “romantic trash” (99).

The pale men do not expect to find good in this world, so they turn their attention to a distant past and an ever-stoic lifestyle. In the case of Mr. Neo-Angular, affection is also reserved for the future, the eternal life in heaven. Until then, a strict sort of spiritual segregation is expected. This world is not home. The men are “very thin and pale” (94), and their food is described as perfectly cubic in shape and “free from any lingering flavour of the old romantic sauces” (95). As an allegory, they are the various paths the reactionary mindset can take, varieties of elitist intellectual retreats to philosophy or religion without any of the affections or social graces.

Reactionism’s Dead End

When these pale men hear about Savage, two of them are put off, but Mr. Neo-Angular is attracted. “I should like to meet this Savage,” he says. “He seems to be a very clear-headed man” (107). From Savage’s own point of view, Mr. Neo-Angular has the most potential. “He said that Angular might turn out an enemy worth fighting when he grew up” (106). What is Lewis telling us about the relationship between a wholly institutionalized and stoic “Catholicism” and the savage spirit that animated Marxism, Fascism, Nazism, and Gangsterism?

Lewis’s point is not a simple slippery slope. He is not saying that a harsh and rigid “high church” Christianity leads to fascism. Instead, he is saying that those represented by Mr. Neo-Angular are caught in the same reaction to modernity as is fascism. What they believe to be a sophisticated and mentally strong rejection of “romance” is simply another version of the nihilism hollowing out the broader society.

Mr. Neo-Angular “relegates” and “transfers” the mystical and affective elements wholly to the life to come (and perhaps within the particular bounds of a worship service), but this leaves the rest of life to follow the same harsh rules as the non-Christian follows. That Mr. Neo-Angular likes what he sees in Savage shows us that he also has a certain quest for the “heroic” that could lead to prioritizing the will, power, and even violence. Professing to reject all romance, or to limit it wholly to the spiritual realm, the deepest hunger of the soul nevertheless expresses itself, but through political domination and anti-social violence.

Led and Kept by Longing

Lewis’s core apologetic in The Pilgrim’s Regress is that a sort of romance is natural, good, and inescapable. In fact, it is the way that God draws all of us to himself. He wants his creatures to find satisfaction, fulfillment, and joy. These desires are not to be cast off and rejected but rather embraced as means by which we might find our eternal satisfaction: life with God himself.

Mr. Neo-Angular represents a sort of Christianity that claims to reject affections. It has no interest in emotions. It will “taste and see” when it gets to the life to come. But this is self-deception. Such forms of religion can never eliminate the human urge and its spiritual longing. To the extent that they refuse to be satisfied by God in this life, they will invariably be satisfied by something else in this life — and probably by dark and sinister things.

“The promise of the ‘heroic’ is an echo of the divine. But imitation gods are demons.”

Put in a positive conception, Lewis also explains why intellectual and “tough-minded” Christians can go in for extreme reactionary movements. The fascist movements in Portugal and Spain both clothed themselves in the garb of Catholicism. In our own day, Vladimir Putin makes overtures to the “trad” Christian base, with more than a little fanfare. This works because such people are longing for a natural satisfaction that has been obscured by secularizing ideas and movements, but they respond in a newly disordered way. The promise of the “heroic” is an echo of the divine. But imitation gods are demons.

This isn’t a warning only for Lewis’s opponents. Throughout his literary corpus, “the north” is typically a good place for Lewis. He favors Norse tales. His own brand of Anglicanism, while not quite fully Anglo-Catholic, was certainly more “high church” than anything else. In The Pilgrim’s Regress, these symbols that might otherwise symbolize Lewis himself are shown to have their own dangers and temptations — dangers that could lead to destruction.

And so too for readers of Lewis, for intellectual Christians who appreciate the classics, for traditional and “tough-minded” pilgrims — we also need to see the dangers that most threaten us. Our “return” must be along a path of truth. Our enlightenment must expose ourselves. And we must bare our hearts so that their true desires might be fulfilled by God forever.

Audio Transcript

The prophet Isaiah tells us in Isaiah 65:17 something pretty incredible. In the new creation, he says, “the former things” — the experiences of this life, it seems — “shall not be remembered or come into mind.” And that raises question about eternity. In the new creation, are we mindwiped?

Two listeners are asking this exact question, Pastor John, who joins us remotely today over Zoom. Here’s David, who lives in San Antonio, Texas: “Hello, Pastor John. I praise God for you and for Tony and for your faithfulness to this podcast over the years. I’ve searched the archive high and low and cannot find your take on Isaiah 65:17” — which is true; the text has never appeared on APJ, until today. “So does this passage effectively say that we will be memory-wiped before we enter the new creation?” And then a listener named Ryland wants to know “how Isaiah 65:17 jibes with Revelation 5:12, which puts Christ’s sacrifice — the past-tense ‘was slain’ memorial of his crucifixion in this world — front and center for all of eternity. Pastor John, what do you make of Isaiah 65:17. And are my memories of this life deleted in the new creation?”

Well, here’s the quote. Let’s put Isaiah 65:17 right in front of us so that we can be specific. God is speaking:

Behold, I create new heavens     and a new earth,and the former things shall not be remembered     or come to mind.

So David is asking, Does that mean a complete memory wipe — like, I assume, the hard drive of our former life crashes and starts over as a totally blank slate? And my response is that there are numerous reasons why it does not mean that. And if we think about a few of them, we will get a clearer picture of what the Christian eternal future will be like.

Forgotten Former Troubles

First, in the immediately preceding verse, God says of his servants, “He who takes an oath in the land shall swear by the God of truth; because the former troubles are forgotten and are hidden from [our] eyes” (Isaiah 65:16).

Isaiah 65:17 says, “The former things shall not be remembered,” and Isaiah 65:16 limits those things to former troubles. Now that’s a contextual warning to me that we better be careful not to overstate the forgetting of verse 17. It’s probably not a memory wipe of all former things, but a selective memory wipe in some way. So that’s just a little flag warning me, “Be careful here. Don’t overdo this. Don’t overstate this.”

Or think of a total memory wipe. Think what it would mean. If you remember nothing from your former life, you are not you any longer. You have no identity at all. There would be nothing in your mind that could identify you as you. In essence, a total memory wipe means you don’t exist anymore as the person you were. And if you are to have any personhood at all, it would start all over again, like a new creation. You’d be a new total person, and there would be no continuity with that former person at all.

But that contradicts several things we know from Scripture. It contradicts the parables of Jesus and the teachings of the apostles, that we will be rewarded in the age to come according to our works in this life. So, there’s a correlation or a continuity between the person you are and what you did in this world and the person you will be in the new earth.

A complete memory wipe also contradicts the fact that we will recognize each other in the age to come. The risen Christ is the firstfruits, Paul says, of that final resurrection reality (1 Corinthians 15:20), and he relates to his disciples after the resurrection as one that they know. We will know Jesus as the one who came into the world and worked wonders and died for us and rose from the dead — and we will know each other. All that assumes that our memories have not been wiped out.

Song of the Lamb

Perhaps the most important of all is the fact that the ultimate purpose of history, the ultimate purpose of redemption, from creation to consummation, is the praise of the glory of the grace of God. That’s a quote from Ephesians 1:6. God has worked in history so that his wonders would be remembered and praised, especially the wonders of his grace.

“He has caused his wondrous works to be remembered; the Lord is gracious and merciful” (Psalm 111:4). God is not going to obliterate the memory of his thousands of works of grace, as though they didn’t matter. On the contrary, according to Isaiah 63:7, God will cause to be remembered “the steadfast love of the Lord . . . the great goodness to the house of Israel that he has granted them according to his compassion.”

This is why Ryland’s question about Revelation 5:12 is relevant. He’s right that the book of Revelation pictures the perfected saints in heaven as singing the song of the Lamb. That’s the Lamb that was slain at a point in history at a place called Golgotha. “Worthy is the Lamb who was slain, to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing!” We’re going to be singing that in the age to come.

God did not send his Son to die and just have his sacrifice be forgotten for all eternity. The death of Jesus was the high point of the glory of the grace of God. And that’s the point of the universe: the praise of the glory of the grace of God. We will sing it forever. We will not forget the high point of the grace of God in this history, which means that the death of Jesus will make sense forever. And the only way the slaughter of the Son of God makes sense is to remember sin.

We have to remember sin — our sin. Christ died for our sin. The most poignant expression of Paul’s worship of Christ, it seems to me, is Galatians 2:20: “[Jesus] loved me and gave himself for me.” Do you think Paul won’t say that forever? “He loved me. He gave himself for me.” That poignant love and thankfulness will not be memory wiped. It’s the reason Christ died, to win for himself everlasting songs of thankfulness and worship for his bearing our guilt.

“The reality of hell would make no sense if there were no memory of the outrage of sin.”

Or consider the other side of the coin. In the age to come, we will know that there is a reality called hell. The very last verse of Isaiah pictures the saints in the new age gazing on the defeated foes of God (Isaiah 66:24). But the reality of hell would make no sense if there were no memory of the outrage of sin and no memory of the patience of God in this age.

Remembering in Eternity

So, I conclude that Isaiah 65:17 does not mean that we are memory wiped in the new heavens and the new earth, which would cause David and Ryland to say, “Well, then, what does it mean? Okay, Piper, we get that. We get what you’re saying. What does it mean when it says the former things shall not be remembered or come to mind?” Here are three observations that suggest there is a kind of forgetting and there is a kind of remembering that is different from what we now experience.

The Bible speaks of God not remembering our sins against us. I think that’s a crucial phrase. Psalm 79:8: “Do not remember against us our former iniquities.” Or Ezekiel 18:22: “None of the transgressions that he has committed shall be remembered against him.” This is probably what the Bible regularly means when it says that God will not remember our sins, as in Isaiah 43:25: “I will not remember your sins.” That is, God will not remember them against us. He will not call them to mind to in any way harm us or punish us. But he does not cease to be God, with perfect knowledge of all reality — past, present, and future. So there is a way to remember sin that is very different from our present experience.

Second, the Bible pictures us in our eternal future as having fullness of joy. “In your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore” (Psalm 16:11). That means no memories will ruin this joy. We may not be able to imagine how any memory of all our sins could serve our joy, but that leads me to my third and last point about how forgetting and remembering in the age to come will be different from how we experience forgetting and remembering now.

Memory Will Serve Worship

Paul says in 1 Corinthians 13:12, “Now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.” In other words, there is a way we know our sins now, and there’s a different way we will know our sins in the age to come.

“Whatever God grants us to remember of this world will only serve to deepen our joy, the joy of worshiping Christ.”

We will know them as God knows them, as we are known. We will be granted the capacity to see them as the reason why Christ died, and yet the effect of that seeing, that remembering, will be so changed that the pain of it, the guilt of it, the shame of it will be transformed into a pure, joyful magnifying of the grace of God, which is why God made the world and sent Jesus to save us. That’s what he was after: the magnifying of his grace.

So I take Isaiah 65:17, “The former things shall not be remembered or come into mind,” to mean this: in the new heavens and the new earth, whatever God grants us to remember of this world will only serve to deepen our joy, the joy of worshiping Christ. Everything will be forgotten in the sense that everything that would hinder that worship will be excluded or transformed.

Lightning can be majestic. That is, from a safe distance. Or from a secure shelter that frees us from the threat of electrocution, and allows us to enjoy the spectacular show.

The concept of majesty first brings to mind great sights, like distant lightning. Whether it’s a scenic vista of purple mountain majesties, the skyline of a great city, the dazzling beauty of gold or precious jewels, or the grandeur of a royal palace and its decorum, we typically associate the noun majesty, and its adjective majestic, with stunning glimpses, panoramas, and sights.

Majesty captures a greatness, power, and glory that is both impressive and attractive. And as with lightning, what is majestic from a safe distance can be terrifying when right overhead, without shelter. And so it is when the living God showcases his majesty at the Red Sea — his enemies panic with fear (Exodus 14:24), while his people, whom he rescues, know themselves safe and praise his majesty:

In the greatness of your majesty you overthrow your adversaries;     you send out your fury; it consumes them like stubble. . . .     Who is like you, majestic in holiness,     awesome in glorious deeds, doing wonders? (Exodus 15:7, 11)

Yet when Scripture mentions the majesty of God, the reference is not exclusively to the visible. Thunder, not only lightning, also may strike us as majestic, when we don’t find ourselves exposed and at risk. And so, as Scripture testifies, God’s voice is majestic.

His words ring out with divine greatness, and tangible goodness, in the ears of his people. His speech is both authoritative and appealing, imposing and attractive. His voice both cuts us to the heart, and makes our hearts thrill. His words wound us in our sin, and we welcome it in the Spirit. God’s majestic words, spoken and written, surprise and delight his people, even as his enemies cower at his thunderings. Their fear is terror; ours is reverent awe and joy.

His lightnings enthrall his saints. As does the thunder of his words.

Greatness of His Word

Consider, first, the greatness of “his majestic voice” (Isaiah 30:30).

“No voice speaks with such authority — or remotely close to such authority — as the voice of the living God.”

No voice speaks with such authority — or anywhere even remotely close to such authority — as the voice of the living God. His words, unlike any other words, are utterly authoritative, and on every possible subject he chooses to address. Like no other mind and mouth, his words are not limited to an area of expertise. His expertise, as God, is all things, without exception.

But the greatness of his word includes not only his right to speak on any given subject (and every subject), but also his ability to speak to the most important subjects and do so extensively, and perfectly, and have the final say. He not only takes up far-reaching, bottomless, eternal, truly great topics, but he never speaks above his head, or out of his depths, as even the world’s greatest minds do when they come to the topics that matter most.

God never speculates. He never overreaches or overextends his knowledge. He never over-speaks. As God, he may publicly address any subject matter he chooses, and with unassailable authority, and he does so perfectly, every time, in all he chooses to say and not say.

In Scripture, he does give us an extensive word, but not an exhaustive one. He chooses to limit his spoken revelation to a first covenant and then a new one, 66 books, and 30,000 verses across the span of a millennium and a half. However, he chooses not (yet) to speak to every possible subject in his created world and beyond, but to speak with both clarity and repetition, despite the trends and undulations of every generation, to the realities that are most timeless and essential. And in doing so, he cues his people in on the subjects and proportions of his focus that prove most important in every time and season.

Power of His Word

Ponder also the power of his majestic voice. His divine speech is not only authoritative on every subject but indomitably effective in accomplishing every purpose he intends. His words do not return to him empty, but effect, every time, precisely what he purposes (Isaiah 55:11).

“God has the ability to do exactly what he says — and to do it simply by saying it.”

Like no other being in the universe, God has the ability to do exactly what he says — and to do so simply by saying it. “Let there be light,” he says, and without delay or uncertainty, there is light. And he keeps the world he made in existence — he upholds it — says Hebrews 1:3, “by his powerful word.” And when he chooses, he speaks into the deaf hearts of “those who are perishing” — those whose spiritual sight has been blinded by “the god of this world” — and he says, “Let light shine out of darkness.” At that moment, dead hearts begin to beat. Deaf ears hear, and blind eyes see the light of his gospel. They believe and are saved (2 Corinthians 4:3–6).

Well did Martin Luther, author of “A Mighty Fortress,” marvel at the majesty of the divine voice when he wrote that we tremble not for the prince of darkness — because “one little word shall fell him.” According to John’s Apocalypse, the God-man, with his risen, glorified, human mouth will speak the decisive, effective word in the end. On the isle of Patmos, John first heard “a loud voice like a trumpet” (Revelation 1:10), and turned to see — among the visible majesties of Christ’s robe, sash, hair, eyes, feet, and face — that “from his mouth came a sharp two-edged sword,” and “his voice was like the roar of many waters” (Revelation 1:15–16). With no weapon in hand, but fully armed with the power of his perfectly effective word, Christ will defeat his enemies, making “war against them with the sword of my mouth” (Revelation 2:16).

From his mouth comes a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations. . . . And the rest [those who had received the mark of the beast] were slain by the sword that came from the mouth of him who was sitting on the horse. (Revelation 19:15, 21)

The day fast approaches when the risen Christ, as the divine-human mouthpiece of the Godhead, will have only to speak and fell the devil and his hordes with one majestic word from his mouth.

Glory of His Word

Finally, consider the glory of his majestic voice. Even more than greatness and power, glory comes closest to the heart of what majesty signals.

Majesty is typically emotive. It’s the worshiper’s word of choice, not the scientist’s. Applied to God’s word, his majesty relates to the moral beauty of his speech. The divine voice is not only great in volume and pitch but good in the ears of his people; not only powerful but wonderful for his church; not only true but desirable in the hearts of his saints.

More to be desired are [his words] than gold,     even much fine gold;sweeter also than honey     and drippings of the honeycomb. (Psalm 19:10)

And we note, in a fallen world like ours, and with sin-swayed palates like ours, the divine glory often comes with unexpected or peculiar majesty. His majestic voice rarely speaks as human ears anticipate. With our own short-sighted and sin-shaped notions of what a glorious voice will say, we find ourselves startled again and again by Scripture. Here, in the words of God, we find a majesty, a glory, that does not meet our eyes and ears like the world and sin have taught us to expect. His voice rings out with a distinctly divine glory, a peculiar majesty, that far outstrips our small assumptions.

His majestic voice upstages the wisdom of the world, and unnerves the scribes and debaters of this age. It arrests the wise, powerful, and nobly born according to worldly standards. It shames the world’s wise and strong, while exalting the low and despised (1 Corinthians 1:20, 26–28). As the Bible’s great meditation on divine majesty, Psalm 8, celebrates,

     Out of the mouth of babies and infants,you have established strength because of your foes,     to still the enemy and the avenger. (Psalm 8:2)

The one who “set [his] glory above the heavens” (Psalm 8:1) puts his peculiar majesty on display — or makes his majesty audible — in the mouths of the weakest, even babes and infants. And in such peculiar majesty, God’s people hear an undeniably self-authenticating glory: this voice is indeed God’s, not man’s. Humans may forge swords and devise missiles. They may construct towers and adorn palaces. But the Majesty on High will bring them down with the praise of children.

Victory of His Word

So we hear that when God himself came to dwell among us, “the Word became flesh” (John 1:14). He did not come with the majesty man expected. The Word came to Nazareth, to a virgin, to thirty years in obscurity, with “no form or majesty that we should look at him, and no beauty that we should desire him” (Isaiah 53:2). That is, no majesty for the eyes and ears of natural man.

But when God opens our eyes, and ears, we encounter his majesty. We hang on his words, as some did when he taught in the temple (Luke 19:48), and we testify in awe, with those officers who confessed, “No one ever spoke like this man!” (John 7:46). We say with the crowds in Galilee, Finally, a teacher with real authority! (Mark 1:22, 27). And we anticipate the day when he will smite our foes with the sword of his mouth, even as we his church praise him, with the tribute of Psalm 45:2, “grace is poured upon your lips.”

Then we will see even more of the majesty of his lightning, that comes with his thunderous word.

ABSTRACT: Most English Bibles translate diathēkē as “covenant” throughout Hebrews — except in Hebrews 9:16–17, where they read “will.” Though good reasons lie behind the use of “will,” better evidence weighs in favor of “covenant.” Not only does the near and wider context of Hebrews make “will” unlikely, but the particular wording of the passage, along with the covenantal background it alludes to, suggests the author refers here, as elsewhere, to covenants and covenant-makers rather than wills and testators. Further, the word “will” obscures a crucial connection only hinted at elsewhere in Hebrews: when sinful humans make a covenant with God, a sacrifice must die in their place. For sinners, life with God requires death.

For our ongoing series of feature articles for pastors and Christian leaders, we asked Jared Compton, assistant professor of New Testament and biblical theology, to argue for the best translation, and theology, of Hebrews 9:16–17.

Poor translators! It’s not an easy job. There’s a story about one unfortunate translation — now known as the “Wicked Bible” — where the translators accidentally left out the word “not” in the seventh commandment. If you remember that commandment, the “not” is kind of a big deal. Of course, not every translation “decision” is as important, much less consequential. But every decision matters, which is why I want to argue that we should change two words in most of our English translations of the Bible to best reflect what God says to us.

Most English translations translate the Greek word diathēkē in Hebrews 9:16–17 as “will,” even though they translate this same word as “covenant” everywhere else in Hebrews.1 The ESV is representative:

For where a will [diathēkē] is involved, the death of the one who made it must be established. For a will [diathēkē] takes effect only at death, since it is not in force as long as the one who made it is alive.

In what follows, I will argue that we should change “will” in both cases to “covenant.” I’ll begin by first explaining why so many translations prefer “will.” As we’ll see, there are good reasons behind this decision. But I’ll then argue that “covenant” is the better option, especially because it preserves a connection between sin and death that Hebrews doesn’t make anywhere else.

Why Our Bibles Say ‘Will’

I’ll begin with the case for keeping “will” in our Bibles. As I said, there are good reasons behind this translation decision. Here we’ll consider four.

First, diathēkē referred to a will in the first-century Greco-Roman world. The word was used to describe how a testator — a will-maker — committed to having his property distributed upon his death. It could refer to other binding commitments, which is why the Greek Old Testament (third century BC) used diathēkē to describe the binding commitments God made with Abraham and Moses and David. But such alternative uses were quite rare in comparison.2 What’s more, while the author of Hebrews keeps a firm eye on his audience’s Bible (the Greek Old Testament), he is also attuned to their everyday lives (see 3:4; 5:1–4; 6:16; 9:27). Thus, the case goes, an appeal to his readers’ everyday experience of diathēkē-making (i.e., will-making) wouldn’t be out of character.

Second, Jesus could be the diathēkē-maker in Hebrews 9:16–17. He could be “the one,” Hebrews says, “who made it” and, therefore, whose “death . . . must be established” (verse 16). If these verses are about a will, then Jesus would have to be the diathēkē-maker. Who else could be the (necessarily dying) testator? Since the previous five verses focus on Jesus and his death (verses 11–15), it’s not a stretch to think verses 16–17 have the same focus, with their threefold mention of a diathēkē-maker who must die. And when we zoom out to the larger argument (8:1–10:18), we see that Hebrews has already called Jesus a “priest” (8:1–2) and a “mediator” (8:6; 9:15). It would be easy, therefore, to imagine Hebrews adding one more title to that list — “testator.”

Third, what Hebrews describes in Hebrews 9:16–17 initially may sound like a will. After connecting Jesus to a diathēkē (“He is the mediator of a new diathēkē”) and an “inheritance” (verse 15), Hebrews says, “Where a [diathēkē] is involved, the death of the one who made it must be established” (verse 16). Hebrews goes on to say the same thing two more times: “A [diathēkē] takes effect only at death” and “is not in force as long as the [diathēkē-maker] is alive” (verse 17). What Hebrews describes, to say it again, sounds like a will: a testator’s inheritance is distributed when he dies. If Hebrews is not describing a will and is instead describing a covenant, then this focus on the maker’s death would seem out of place. Moses and Israel were in covenant relationship with God and (apparently) lived to tell about it (see Exodus 24). If they had to die first, then that part seems to have been left out of the story.

Fourth, there is a good reason for briefly introducing the idea of a will in Hebrews 9:16–17. By talking about Jesus as a testator, this gives Hebrews one more way to explain the necessity of his death, which is the author’s larger point (see, e.g., “it was necessary,” verse 23). Granted, he makes the point with a parenthetical pun, since diathēkē means “covenant” everywhere else. But it’s a move that serves his purpose and was right at hand. The idea of diathēkē-as-will was simply too obvious and too useful to overlook.

“‘Diathēkē’ refers to a covenant everywhere else in Hebrews — a total of fifteen times.”

These four arguments explain why so many of our translations say “will” instead of “covenant” in Hebrews 9:16–17. In these verses, translators assume that Hebrews briefly departs from his normal pattern of speech and appeals to the commonplace experience of his readers in a two-verse wordplay on diathēkē. Jesus had to die so that we might receive the inheritance he so graciously willed to us.3

Case for ‘Covenant’

While good reasons exist for keeping “will” in our English Bibles, there are even better reasons for replacing it with “covenant.” Here I’ll give the four best, moving as Hebrews does from the lesser to the greater. Further, when giving my third reason, I’ll also interact with two versions of an increasingly popular argument used in support of “covenant.” I am not convinced either is right, but both are worth considering.

1. Diathēkē Elsewhere in Hebrews

First, diathēkē refers to a covenant everywhere else in Hebrews — a total of fifteen times (7:22; 8:6, 8, 9 [2x], 10; 9:4 [2x], 15 [2x], 20; 10:16, 29; 12:24; and 13:20). Hebrews, in fact, refers to a covenant just before (9:15 [2x]) and just after (9:20) Hebrews 9:16–17. What’s more, when Hebrews 9:18 begins, “Not even the first . . . was inaugurated without blood,” most translations supply “covenant” there too, since Hebrews goes on to describe the first covenant’s inauguration in Exodus 24 (see Hebrews 9:18–22). Of course, this doesn’t mean that diathēkē must be translated “covenant” in Hebrews 9:16–17; otherwise, how could an author ever make a wordplay? Still, the evidence gives “covenant” a kind of inertia. Or, to put it another way, it predisposes us to consider diathēkē-as-covenant innocent until proven guilty.

2. Sinful Humans as Diathēkē-Makers

Second, sinful humans are the diathēkē-makers, the ones entering into covenant with God, in Hebrews 9:16–17. Jesus is present, but he is not the focus. Sinners are. Already in the previous paragraph (verses 11–14), Hebrews introduces us to people who need to be “purif[ied]” and “rede[emed]” by sacrificial “blood” (verses 12, 14). Then, just before verses 16–17, Hebrews talks about the same people, this time of their need to be “redeem[ed] . . . from . . . transgressions” by sacrificial “death” (verse 15). Without “blood” (verses 11–14) or “death” (verse 15), sinners can’t receive the benefits of a covenant relationship with God (verse 15a, “so that”). They can’t enter his presence (compare 9:1–10 with 9:24 and 10:19–21; see also 2:5–9, 10). Then, just after verses 16–17, Hebrews says that covenants are not “inaugurated without blood” (verse 18), once again linking “blood” (or “death,” verse 15) with sin — “without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins” (verse 22).

When Hebrews talks about “death” in verses 16–17 and links that death with a diathēkē-maker, we’re prepared to see a reference to the sacrificial debt sinful humans owe because of their sin. Jesus is present, only not as the covenant-maker but as the sacrificial death that gives sinners access to God.

3. Covenantal Background

Third, what Hebrews describes in Hebrews 9:16–17 fits a covenant even better than it does a will. It’s true, on a first reading, the connection between death and diathēkē-making may seem straightforward: the diathēkē-maker himself must die. This, of course, fits a testator’s case easily since he actually dies. A covenant-maker, on the other hand, dies only vicariously — through a sacrificial substitute. The description of the diathēkē-maker’s death, however, isn’t as straightforward as it may first appear. Hebrews doesn’t say that the diathēkē-maker must die but, rather, that his death “must be established” (verse 16), which translates a verb (pherō) elsewhere translated “endure” (so 12:20; see also “go on,” 6:1; “bear,” 13:13; compare “uphold” [or “bears up” YLT], 1:3). Neither inside nor outside of Hebrews does the word ever mean “establish.” Even if “endure” (or “endured”) is the better translation, it’s still an odd way to describe someone’s death, whether covenant-maker or testator.

This “odd” word’s close-cousin (ana+pherō), however, is used in Exodus 24 to describe the sacrifices Israel “brought” (anapherō) at Sinai. Hebrews recalls this scene in 9:18–22, even quoting directly from it (verse 20, citing Exodus 24:8). The same close-cousin word is used at the end of Hebrews 9, in this case referring to the sins Jesus bore for his people: “So Christ, having been offered once to bear [anapherō] the sins of many . . .” (verse 28). Here once more, Hebrews uses language from the Old Testament, this time from Isaiah 53:12, where the Servant vicariously suffers for his people (see also pherō in Isaiah 53:4 LXX).

Hebrews also doesn’t say that a diathēkē “takes effect only at death” (verse 17a). Rather, he says, “upon dead bodies” (epi nekrois). Again, it’s an odd way to describe someone’s death. This peculiar language, however, also recalls the Sinai story, this time the bodies — the calves — Israel sacrificed (Hebrews 9:18; see Exodus 24:5). It’s a moment in Israel’s story later described in the Psalms in language almost identical to Hebrews: “Bring my faithful people to me — those who made a covenant [diathēkē] with me by giving sacrifices [epi thysiais]” (Psalm 50:5 NLT; compare Brenton LXX). A diathēkē upon bodies — it’s an unusual way to talk about death, but it certainly fits a covenant better than a will.

The same can be said for other details in Hebrews 9:16–17. For example, Hebrews says a diathēkē “takes effect” (bebaios, verse 17a) and is “in force” (ischyō, verse 17b) only upon its maker’s death. In the first century, these were true not at death but at the moment a will was drawn up and notarized. If we insist that both refer instead to the execution of a will, then we still run into trouble. For starters, neither word means “execution.”4 And Hebrews goes on to claim that a diathēkē is “never [mēpote] in force [i.e., executed] as long as the one who made it is alive” (verse 17b; on “never,” see NIV, NASB, CSB). Such a sweeping claim would be out of step with first-century will-making, which allowed for the execution of a will before the testator’s death.5

SELF-MALEDICTORY RITUAL

Some think the details of Hebrews 9:16–17 fit a covenant better than a will for another reason. These insist that Hebrews describes a well-known covenant-making ritual known as a drohritus. In the ritual, covenant-makers swore an oath, calling down curses upon themselves were they to violate the terms of the covenant (see, e.g., Ezekiel 17:13–19, esp. verses 15–16). The oath would then be followed (in some cases) by a sacrifice symbolizing the penalty if the oath should be broken. Thus, the parties said, in effect, “What we are doing to this animal, may God do to us if we violate our covenant commitments” (see Jeremiah 34:18–20). The ritual’s focus on future, potential sins (i.e., covenant-breaking), however, is out of step with Hebrews. In Hebrews, it is actual sins that must be forgiven by sacrifice if sinners are to enter into covenant with God (9:22; also verse 15).

Still others insist that Hebrews 9:16–17 describes the self-maledictory ritual from the perspective of covenant-breaking, not covenant-making. These argue that a covenant-maker must die “since [a broken covenant] is not in force as long as the one who made it [and has now broken it] is alive (verse 17b; compare Ezekiel 17:15). This view rightly maintains the connection between death and actual sin but wrongly characterizes the sin as covenant-breaking. Those needing and receiving forgiveness in Hebrews aren’t first-covenant breakers but faithful believers who sinned under the first covenant (9:15) and whose subsequent sacrifices pointed to but simply could not provide the forgiveness they needed (see, esp., 9:8–10 and 10:1–4; see also 11:39–40). There were first-covenant breakers (10:28). But in their case, the problem went beyond the limits of the Levitical priesthood and included hearts hardened by disobedience and unbelief (3:7–4:13; see also 8:8–9; compare with the faithful in 11:1–40). Again, this latter group is present in Hebrews but not in Hebrews 9:16–17 (see “called,” verse 15; also “our,” verse 14).

“Hebrews 9:16–17 uniquely explains what Levitical sacrifices pointed to and what Jesus’s death finally provides.”

We might also wonder why, if Hebrews 9:16–17 have a broken first covenant in view, Hebrews 9:18 then says, “Therefore not even the first covenant was inaugurated without blood.” Hebrews 9:18 makes it sound like verses 16–17 have another covenant and covenant inauguration (not maintenance) in view. If, however, we grant that the transition from Hebrews 9:16–17 to 9:18 is from the first covenant’s breaking (verses 16–17) to its beginning (verse 18), we are still surprised by “not even” (oude). We would expect “not” (ou): “The first covenant is enforced by sacrifice, since it was not inaugurated without blood.” That is to say, “Of course the first covenant is enforced by a death penalty, since it did not begin without sacrificially symbolizing such a punishment.” Again, I can see how “not” fits that reading; however, I do not see how “not even” can.

Further, Hebrews says the (inauguratory) blood of Hebrews 9:18 was necessary for “forgiveness of sins” (verse 22). That is different from saying it prefigured the forgiveness future sins would require. Plus, a focus on future sins downplays the immediate and continued, if still insufficient, cleansing first-covenant members needed if they were to live in covenant with God. It downplays, in other words, the connection Hebrews everywhere makes between sacrifice and atonement (see, for example, 5:1–3; 7:27; 8:3–5; 9:1–10, 11–14, 18–22, 23, 25; 10:1–4, 11). Finally, on either drohritus reading, the need for “better sacrifices” in Hebrews 9:23 is hard to explain. In the ritual, the quality of the sacrifice isn’t relevant — beyond, of course, being blemish-free. What mattered was the symbolism: “As to this animal, so to me.” Even allowing for a substitute penalty-taker, the substitute’s quality matters only if it is somehow less than the guilty party (e.g., an animal). To require something more than or superior to the covenant-breaker wouldn’t fit the ritual.

4. Life Through Substitutionary Death

Fourth, Hebrews uses diathēkē-as-covenant in Hebrews 9:16–17 to make a theological connection only hinted at in other places. Life with God (i.e., the goal of covenant-making) is here explicitly linked with the sinful covenant-maker’s necessary death. The idea is implied elsewhere in the purification, redemption, and forgiveness available in sacrificial blood (see verses 15 and 18–22; compare Hebrews 2:9). Animals — to put it plainly — weren’t killed for their own sins! But Hebrews only here explains that the sacrifice’s death takes the place of the sacrificer’s (necessary) death. Thus, after saying that “transgressions” require “death” if sinners want to experience a relationship with God (Hebrews 9:15), Hebrews explains,

For where a covenant promising life to sinful human beings is involved, sin’s debt — the death of the human covenant partner — must be borne. For a covenant like this takes effect only upon dead bodies, since a covenant promising life to sinful human beings is not in force as long as the sinful human partner lives and sin’s debt remains unpaid. (verses 16–17, ESV altered + my own additions)

“Take away ‘covenant,’ and we lose a crucial step in the author’s larger argument.”

Hebrews 9:16–17, in other words, uniquely explains what Levitical sacrifices pointed to and what Jesus’s death finally provides: death-escaping life with God for sinners. What’s only hinted at elsewhere finally rises above the surface here.6

Recovering ‘Covenant’

Translating the Bible is tough business — and not just for those poor souls in the pre-digital age! Those who give their lives to this task deserve our gratitude and our support and, on occasion, our thoughtful feedback. Such is the case in Hebrews 9:16–17. As we’ve seen, the reasons for translating diathēkē as “covenant” are superior to those for translating it as “will.” On top of this, the decision made in most of our English translations comes with a hidden cost. After all, take away “covenant,” and we lose a crucial step in the author’s larger argument. For the moment, this step has been lost in translation. And I think it’s time we ask to have it back.

What is Look at the Book?

You look at a Bible text on the screen. You listen to John Piper. You watch his pen “draw out” meaning. You see for yourself whether the meaning is really there. And (we pray!) all that God is for you in Christ explodes with faith, and joy, and love.

Audio Transcript

We jolt awake, grab our phone, silence the alarm — and there, lying in bed, phone in hand, we face our first decision of the new day. Do we shut off the screen? Or do we start scrolling?

I wanted to know how common this dilemma was among Christians. So back in April of 2015, I conducted an online survey of eight thousand readers of desiringGod.org. The survey focused on smartphone and social media habits. I asked a bunch of questions and received a lot of revealing results, a few which made it into my smartphone book.

But here were three stats that immediately stood out to me. Of the eight thousand respondents, half admitted to scrolling through their phones within the first minutes of waking up in the morning. This figure rose to over 60 percent among those aged 18–29. And when asked whether they were more likely to scroll through texts, email, and social media before or after their morning devotions, a staggering 73 percent admitted to that they normally did so before spending time with God in the morning.

And while scrolling social media may seem like a harmless indulgence, we all know it’s an unhealthy way to start the day, like eating chocolate for breakfast. So I want to ask you, Pastor John, in light of these stats, what’s a better approach in these moments just after we wake up in the morning?

I think there is a better course, but to help everybody understand why I think that and what that better course is, it might be helpful to start by analyzing why we are so prone to click on our phones before we do almost anything else. I thought of six possible reasons why we do this, and I got these reasons out of my head by analyzing John Piper’s soul and his temptations. I haven’t done any surveys, so if people think this is narrow, I say, “Well, yeah, it is.” It comes out of me. If people are like me, then they might get help.

It seems to me that all of these six things I’m going to say are rooted in sin rather than rooted in the desire to serve others and savor God. I put it like that because I do think the great commandment does set the agenda for our mornings and our midday and our evening. We are to love God with all of our heart, soul, mind, strength when we wake up in the morning, and we are to prepare ourselves to love our neighbor, serve our neighbor as ourselves (Matthew 22:34–40).

“The great commandment sets the agenda for our mornings and our midday and our evening.”

Given how sinful John Piper is, and I presume others are like me, very few of us wake up with our whole soul spring-loaded to love God and love people. This takes some refocusing, to put it mildly. This takes some focusing of our souls by means of the word of God and prayer. We have to remind ourselves about reality in the morning in order to begin to love God and love people the way we ought.

Candy and Avoidance

Here are my six guesses for why so many of us are drawn almost addictively to consult with our phones or devices when we wake up in the morning. The first three I call candy motives, and the second three I call avoidance motives.

1. Novelty Candy

First, I think we love to immediately take a bite of candy from our phones for our novelty hunger. Call this novelty candy. We simply love to hear what’s new in the world or among our friends, what has happened since the last time we glanced at the world.

Most of us like to be the first one to know something, and then we don’t have to assume the humble posture of being told something that smart and savvy and on-the-ball people already know — unlike us, who didn’t know. We want to be quick and have knowledge of what’s new in the world. Then maybe we can assume the role of being the informer rather than the poor benighted people that need to be informed about what happened. “If they were smart enough, they would’ve been on their social media earlier.” There’s a big ego trip, I think, in our novelty hunger.

2. Ego Candy

Second, I think we love to immediately take a bite out of our candy phone for ego hunger. What have people said about us since the last time we checked? Who has taken note of us? Who has retweeted us or mentioned us or liked us or followed us? In our fallen, sinful condition, there is an inordinate enjoyment of the human ego being attended to. Some of us are weak enough, wounded enough, fragile enough, insecure enough that any little mention of us just feels so good. It’s like somebody kissed us.

3. Entertainment Candy

Third, I think we love to immediately take a bite out of our candy for our entertainment hunger. This is entertainment candy. There is on the Internet, as we’ve all come to know, an endless stream of fascinating, weird, strange, wonderful, shocking, spellbinding, cute pictures and quotes and videos and stories and links. Many of us have gotten to the point where we’re almost addicted to the need of something striking and bizarre and extraordinary and amazing.

At least those three candy motives, I think, are at work as we wake up in the morning and have these cravings that we satisfy with our phones.

4. Boredom Avoidance

Then there are these three avoidance motives. In other words, these aren’t positive desires for something. These are facing things in life that we simply want to avoid for another five minutes.

First, I would call it the boredom avoidance. We wake up in the morning, we find that the day in front of us simply looks boring. It feels boring. There’s nothing exciting coming in our day and little incentive to get out of bed. Of course, the human soul hates a vacuum. If there’s nothing significant and positive and hopeful in front of us to fill the hope-shaped place in our souls, then we’re going to use our phones, perhaps, quickly to fill that hole and avoid having to step into all that boredom.

5. Responsibility Avoidance

Second, there is the responsibility avoidance. We have a role — father, mother, boss, whatever. There are burdens that are coming to us in the day that are fairly weighty. The buck stops with us. Many decisions have to be made about our children, the house, the car, the finances, dozens of other things. Life is full of weighty responsibilities, and we feel inadequate for them. We’re lying there in bed feeling fearful, maybe even resentful that people put so much pressure on us, and we just are not attracted to this day at all. We would very happily avoid it for another five or ten minutes, and there’s the phone to help us do it.

6. Hardship Avoidance

The third avoidance incentive is hardship avoidance. You may be in a season of life where what you meet when you get out of bed is not just boredom and not just responsibility, but you meet mega relational conflict, or issues of disease or disability in the home, or friends who are against you, or pain in your own body, in your joints, so that you can barely get out of bed because it hurts so bad in the morning. It’s just easier to lie there a little longer, and the phone adds to the escape.

Those, Tony, are at least six of the things I thought of that are probably functioning in my incentive when I’m inclined to go there first before something else.

Better Way to Begin the Day

There are pretty strong things that are keeping us in bed and keeping us on our devices, but there is a better way. Here’s what points to the need for it: What if you are the first one to the news — and it is horrible news? Or what if your search for some ego candy finds ego acid, and people have hated you overnight? What if you spend five minutes getting yourself happily entertained in the morning rather than facing the responsibilities of the day immediately, and you find at the end of those five minutes that they have dragged you down into a silly, demeaning, small-minded, hollow, immature frame of mind? Was it worth it?

What if you take five minutes to avoid the boredom and responsibility and hardship of the day only to find, at the end of those five minutes of avoidance, that you are spiritually, morally, emotionally less able to cope with reality in the day than you were before? Was it worth it?

I think there is a better way to begin the day, and it will require some decisions before the morning. It never works to make last-minute efforts to decide to do something different. You need to decide twelve hours earlier what this crisis moment is going to look like. It will take some planning. It will take some alarm-clock thinking and setting.

“What we want in the morning routine is to be filled with the Holy Spirit.”

What we want in the morning routine is to be filled with the Holy Spirit. We want something that gives us a zeal for the glory of Christ for the day’s work. We want to be strengthened to face whatever the day may bring. We want something that gives us joyful courage to resolve to count others better than ourselves and pursue true greatness, like Jesus said, by becoming the servant of all. That’s the real agenda in the morning. Very few of us wake up strengthened to do all those glorious things that we get to join Jesus in doing.

Steadfast Love in the Morning

The new course for the morning, I think, is laid out in the Psalms, and here’s a key verse: “O Lord, in the morning you hear my voice; in the morning I prepare a sacrifice for you and watch” (Psalm 5:3). Let the first thing out of your mouth in the morning, while you’re still on the pillow, be a cry to God: “I love you, Lord. I need you, Lord. Help me, Lord.” That is the first cry out of my mouth in the morning. “I need you again today.” Then “prepare a sacrifice . . . and watch.” I think that sacrifice is my body and my attention devoted to him. I watch for the Lord to show up — and do what? What am I watching for?

And Psalm 143:8 puts it like this: “Let me hear in the morning of your steadfast love, for in you I trust. Make me know the way I should go, for to you I lift up my soul.” I’m looking — I’m on the lookout for the steadfast love of God, and I’m on the lookout for it in his word.

And then Psalm 90:14 tells me how to think about praying for it when it comes: “Satisfy us in the morning with your steadfast love.” Don’t just look for it and see it and “Here it comes!” but ask the Lord, “Oh, satisfy us with this steadfast love, that we may rejoice and be glad in you all our days.” We watch in God’s inspired word for revelations of his steadfast love and his guidance for our lives, and for a profound sense of satisfaction in our souls that he is beautiful and that he cares for us.

My eyes are awake before the watches of the night, that I may meditate on your promise. (Psalm 119:148)

How precious to me are your thoughts, O God! . . . I awake, and I am still with you. (Psalm 139:17–18)

I suggest that before you go to bed tonight, you make some choices and some plans and that you free yourself from the candy addictions and the habits of avoidance that have been ruining the strengthening potential for the beginning of the day.

In the early seventies, the Watergate scandal shocked the nation. One of the men involved was Chuck Colson, who later pled guilty and served time in federal prison. During this season, Colson came to faith in Jesus and converted to evangelical Christianity. In 1976, Colson published Born Again, which chronicles the events leading to his conversion and explains his radical life change. The book was an instant bestseller, making Colson one of the most influential evangelical leaders of his era.

Also in 1976, a dark-horse candidate from Georgia named Jimmy Carter won the Democratic presidential nomination, and then narrowly won the general election. Carter was barely known nationally, so his victory garnered even more attention. During his campaign, Carter professed to be a “born-again Christian.” Most political pundits and media outlets had no idea what that meant.

As the phrase grew in the public consciousness, many Americans assumed that born-again Christianity was a new Christian sect. However, as the media and pollsters investigated, they discovered the phrase “born again” was simply used by ordinary evangelical Christians to describe the supernatural transformation that people experience when they convert to Christianity.

Evangelical Christianity was certainly not new, but when the phrase entered mainstream America, it boosted evangelicalism’s profile. Evangelicalism’s enhanced notoriety and influence prompted Newsweek magazine to proclaim that 1976 was “the year of the evangelical.” The next year, world-renowned evangelist Billy Graham published How to Be Born Again. The book helped to reinforce the credibility of the phrase “born again” and, more importantly, it sent the message that genuine biblical Christianity was synonymous with “born-again Christianity.”

Modern or Ancient?

Some commentators asserted that the emphasis on born-again Christianity was an invention of the modern era. They claimed that the evangelical emphasis on the new birth was absent from most of church history. Evangelicals responded with Scripture.

Jesus said, “I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God” (John 3:3). The born-again experience is also known as regeneration. The apostle Peter asserts that this experience is made possible by the work of Christ (1 Peter 1:3). The apostle Paul also associates the new birth with salvation and the forgiveness of sins (Titus 3:4–7). Passages like these inspire an important question: How could detractors claim that born-again Christianity was a product of the modern era when the concept of the new birth so clearly comes from Scripture?

Most detractors would certainly agree that the concept of the new birth is indeed in the Bible, but they would also assert that the Christians of previous eras had a different understanding of the new birth than modern evangelicals do. They would argue that, for the bulk of church history, the moment of new birth was associated with infant baptism. In contrast, evangelicals associate the new birth with repentance and personal faith in Christ. Evangelicals believe that people are born again when they are converted to Christ.

New Birth in Church History

It’s true that new birth was associated with infant baptism for much of history. It’s not true, however, that everyone in the early church taught the new birth that way.

In fact, several influential early-church writers believed that the born-again experience was associated with repentance, confession, and salvific faith. This includes the Epistle of Barnabas, Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian, Origen, and Hilary of Poitiers (see Gregg Allison, Historical Theology, 649–67). However, as infant baptism grew in popularity during the third and fourth centuries, the vital association between regeneration and faith was greatly de-emphasized. Many Christians during the Middle Ages presumed that they had already experienced regeneration as infants at their baptisms. Therefore, it seemed unnecessary to preach about the new birth in adulthood.

REFORMATION

The Protestant Reformation brought a renewed focus on individual people believing the gospel, not merely participating in religious duties. The German equivalent of the term evangelical was coined by Martin Luther to describe the Protestant churches that exhorted their congregants to exhibit genuine faith in the evangel (the gospel).

The evangelical emphasis upon the new birth was later greatly promoted by Johann Arndt, a Lutheran theologian who studied under Philip Melanchthon. In the early 1600s, Arndt penned True Christianity, which greatly emphasized the new birth and piety. The book was circulated across Europe extensively for more than a hundred years and was tremendously influential on many future preachers, including John Wesley and George Whitefield.

GREAT AWAKENINGS

In the mid-eighteenth century, a series of powerful revivals swept through America, led by the preaching of men like Jonathan Edwards and George Whitefield. Their preaching emphasized the new birth and called people to repentance. These revivals gave birth to American evangelicalism, which would be an influential force in American society throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

However, by the end of the nineteenth century, a fracture emerged among professing evangelicals between modernists and fundamentalists. The modernists denied Christian orthodoxy and sought to reinvent Christianity in the light of modern science. The fundamentalists intensified their commitment to Christian orthodoxy, but they also developed a militant posture toward culture. By the 1920s, these two groups were worlds apart.

Birth of a Label

After the modernist-fundamentalist break, the modernists repudiated the evangelical emphasis on the born-again experience, but many fundamentalists doubled down on its importance. They began describing themselves as “born-again Christians.” While the phrase would not enter the mainstream for several more decades, it gained momentum within some conservative Protestant circles during the thirties and forties.

In the 1950s, a young evangelist named Bill Bright founded Campus Crusade for Christ, which became the most influential campus evangelism ministry in the nation. Bright embraced the label “born-again Christian,” and by the early sixties, the new converts in his ministry were embracing the label too.

Another notable segment of evangelicals that embraced the label were the young adults being converted to Christ as part of the Jesus People movement of the late sixties. Then, Billy Graham began using the phrase “born again” extensively. Graham had been preaching since the 1940s, and he would occasionally use the phrase, but in the 1960s the born-again vernacular became much more prominent in Graham’s ministry. The events of the sixties put the phrase “born again” on the radar of nearly every American Christian. And the events of 1976 then put the phrase on the radar of every American.

Born-Again Appropriation

Another interesting phrase that entered the lexicon, in time, was “born-again Catholic.” Being born again had typically been a marker of evangelical Protestantism, but soon even Catholics began reporting born-again experiences.

For various reasons, however, these people wanted to remain within their Catholic tradition. The number of self-proclaimed “born-again Catholics” has been modest since the 1960s, but the number nearly doubled from 2004 to 2016 (see Samuel Perry and Cyrus Schleifer’s “Understanding the Rise of Born-Again Catholics in the United States”). While it may appear that a genuinely born-again person can remain a devout member of the Catholic Church, there are some serious warnings to consider.

Also, by the late 1970s, the phrase “born-again” was being used (and misused) by Americans to describe any transformational experience, even if the experience was not directly related to Christ and Christianity. The phrase was so frequently used that when Bob Dylan described his own conversion to evangelical Christianity, he was reluctant to use the phrase “born again” because it was so “overused” (“John Lennon’s Born-Again Phase”). One prominent example of this was John Lennon calling himself a “born-again pagan.”

Fading Label, Crucial Doctrine

What, then, is a born-again Christian? Born-again Christians are those who believe the gospel, and so put faith in Jesus Christ for salvation, and have experienced the supernatural transformation often called regeneration. They have experienced a conversion from spiritual death to spiritual life. John Wesley described this experience as the “thorough change of heart and life from sin to holiness” (quoted in Thomas S. Kidd, Who Is an Evangelical?, 4).

This doctrine of the new birth took center stage in preaching among evangelicals and conservative Protestants in the modern era. This emphasis was not merely semantics. It inspired many to make the new birth essential in their lives and ministries, which in turn profoundly shaped the trajectory of American evangelicalism as it moved into the twenty-first century.

Over the last twenty years, the phrase has faded in popularity somewhat, but the doctrine of the new birth remains a crucial element of American evangelicalism’s history and legacy. Extra labels will come and go, but the doctrine — and more importantly, the experience, if genuine — will remain.