RENEWAL AS DEATH

The prefix re- tells us that something has happened again, or that it has returned. There has been a return to an original condition. It appears in hundreds of our words, including revival, meaning something was once alive and vivid has become alive again.

When it occurs in renewal, we can guess that something has happened to make something new again and when we die that it is exactly what happens. 

Nicodemus was confused when Jesus told him he had to be “born again,” to be re-born. This had to happen to see (enter) the Kingdom of God. Nicodemus knew that he could not interpret the words literally and go back into his mother’s womb. Jesus told him that his mother had given physical birth to him, but the Holy Spirit would give birth to a spiritual life. But the old life had to die first.

Paul tells us something that we know and have experienced: our natural desires and the desires of the Spirit are in conflict. We need our “lower bodies” to be transformed like what happened to the glorious body of Jesus. Paul reminds us in Galatians 5.17 (NIV) that “the flesh desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the flesh. They are in conflict with each other, so that you are not to do whatever you want.” We need to change! We need to be re-bodied.

Paul also tells the believer to “put to death” the natural sinful nature and be baptized into a life with Christ. We become “buried” with him so that we can we be “raised” to a newness of life, one that exabits the righteousness of Christ. (Romans 6.3-4)

We see regeneration and renewal clearly in the natural world when a seed is planted (buried) and changes into a plant. The seed must first die, and as it is dying, it is transitioning into something arising from it, yet totally new and different.

My siblings and I planted seeds in a garden each spring. The smaller the seed, the less dirt was put on top of it. We watched closely when the first leaves of our seeds sprouted, then slowly became our carrots, radishes, beans, corn, lettuce, and so on. We were planting our seeds on good ground and expected a good harvest.

A good harvest doesn’t always happen. It depends on the soil. On our farm we had one area where only buckwheat would grow. It was on a ridge that was not rich or deep with soil because it had a lot of shale in it. And, as we read in Mark, chapter 4 in the Bible, the emerging plants can be choked out by weed and thistle, or they can wilt if the soil is not deep enough and the plants come up quickly. 

At creation there were no plants on the earth because no seeds had sprouted (Genesis 2.5) The identity of seeds was unique and planting two kinds of seed in the same field was forbidden (Leviticus 19.19).

Scientists describe seed germination like this: it is “the process where a dormant seed ‘wakes up’ and starts growing into a seedling, triggered by water, oxygen, and warmth, allowing the embryo to emerge, first with a root (radicle) pushing down and then a shoot (plumule) reaching up, using stored food (cotyledons/endosperm) until it can photosynthesize.”

In a similar way, after we die physically, we will “wake up” and emerge into a new life, which will be “triggered by” the power of the Holy Spirit, resulting in our having a new and glorious body.

We see regeneration in nature: the worm becomes a butterfly, the tadpole becomes a frog, and the small seed sprouts and becomes a stalk of corn. 

What we sow is also what we reap (Galatians 6.7-8), and people who “plant wickedness like seed” will harvest the same (Job 4.8). This includes planting “seeds of injustice” (Proverbs 22.8) and even good seed can produce a harvest of weeds (Matthew 13.37). When this happens “the good seed is the people who belong to the Kingdom; the weeds are the people who belong to the Evil One;” (Matthew 13.38).

God will give each seed the body that he has determined for it (1 Corinthians 15.38: God provides that seed with the body he wishes; he gives each seed its own proper body)

The process of regeneration consists of a dramatic change in the form of the “body” of an insect or plant. Such a change will also happen to the body of Christians when they die. The body will rot but the spirit is released and transformed into a new and glorious body. 

“For we know that when this earthly tent we live in is taken down (that is, when we die and leave this earthly body), we will have a house in heaven, an eternal body made for us by God himself and not by human hands.” (2 Corinthians 5.1) 

Karl Franklin