A real, thorough conversion consists mainly and essentially in repentance and faith, two gifts of the Spirit that are often used together or even separately to denote the whole of this great change: repentance indicating what the sinner turns from, faith, what he turns unto. Conversion is the turning point at which he turns out of the broad way that’s leads to destruction and into the strait, the narrow way that leads unto life. He then flees from the wrath to come and flees to Christ as his refuge. He forsakes the service of sin and follows Christ as his Master. He shuns perdition and seeks salvation in Christ as his Saviour.
Now repentance describes his conversion with reference chiefly to what he turns from, and faith describes his conversion with reference chiefly to what he turns to. Each implies the other, there being no true repentance where there is no faith, and no true faith where there is no repentance. Both are wrought in the soul at the time of its conversion by the power of the Holy Ghost applying the truth as it is in Jesus. From this radical change of heart, there flows an outward change of life, reformation of life proceeding from a renewed mind. First, the tree is made good; and the fruit becomes good also(Matt. 12.33). The fountain is purified, and the stream that flows from it is also pure,
The production of true faith is often spoken of in Scripture as amounting to the whole work of regeneration: “Whosoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ is born of God” (1 John 5. 1). And again, “But as many as received Him, to them gave He power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on His name: which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God” (John 1. 12, 13). Here, every one who really believes is said to be born of God; and as every true believer is a converted man, it follows that the production of saving faith is equivalent to the work of regeneration.
But then it must be real, scriptural faith, such as is required in the gospel: not the faith which the Apostle James declares to be dead, but that living faith that is described in Scripture as a well-grounded belief resting on the sure testimony of God. It must be positive belief, not a mere negation of absence of disbelief, nor a doubtful and wavering opinion, but a thorough conviction of mind. It must be an intelligent belief, such as is inconsistent with blind ignorance and implies a perception of the meaning of God’s truth, a full and comprehensive belief, embracing all that is essential to be known in regard to the method of salvation.
This belief implies scriptural apprehensions of God is His true character, of Christ in His Person as Immanuel, in the fullness of His offices as Mediator, His great design and His finished work, and of ourselves as guilty, depraved and exposed to a sentence of righteous condemnation. This belief, thus founded on God’s testimony and implying spiritual apprehensions of His truth, is a vital, active and operative principle, bending the will to compliance with God’s call, awakening suitable emotions of reverence, fear, complacency, delight, love and joy renewing, transforming, purifying the soul, and effecting a complete change on all our practical habits.
The production of this real, living and sanctifying faith is the great work of the Spirit in conversion, a work which implies of produces a universal change on all the faculties of our nature, so that as soon as this faith is implanted in his soul, the sinner becomes a new man, the truth of God received by faith renewing his understanding, his conscience, his will, his desires, his affections: “Old things are passed away: behold, all things are become new” (Cor. 5 17).
Every believer then, in the gospel sense of that term, is born again. In other words, no-one is a believer who is not regenerated. The production of saving faith is that wherein regeneration properly consists. But then it must be such a faith as the gospel requires and describes. That faith, although it may have its seat in the understanding, implies a change in our whole moral nature, and especially a renewal of the will. The understanding is, in the order of nature, the leading and governing faculty of the soul, and it is by means of truth cordially believed that the great change is accomplished.
But the truth is either not duly understood or not really believed, where it works no change on the heart and habits of the sinner. He may read, speak and speculate about it; he may even embrace some fragments of it and hold them tenaciously; but the substantial truth of Christ’s gospel cannot be really understood and believed by any man who remains unconverted. It is true that many an unregenerate man may suppose that he believes: he may never have questioned the general truth of God’s Word; he may even have ranged himself on the side of the gospel; and by a public profession or in private conversation, he may have often defended and maintained it. Nay, he may have had many thoughts passing through his mind, many convictions awakened in his conscience that show that he is not altogether ignorant or unimpressed, Yet I apprehend that nothing can be plainer from the Word of God than that man, and that the man who is not regenerated and transformed by his faith has no true faith at all.