What came first, the chicken or the egg? What comes first, regeneration (being made alive by God) or faith (believing in God)? These two questions are often debated and discussed, but we can find the answer to the second question in the Canons of Dort. The answer is that God first regenerates us, making us alive so that we can believe, as without God’s work in us, we cannot believe and be saved.
How We Can Be Saved?
The first four articles really laid out the problem that we are fallen and cannot get ourselves back up by our own strength. In fact, the law given to us in the Old Testament was not to teach us how to be saved, but rather to lead us to become more aware of our own sin since we are not able to keep it perfectly. “[W]hat is true of the light of nature is true also of the Ten Commandments given by God through Moses specifically to the Jews. For humans cannot obtain saving grace through the Decalogue, because, although it does expose the magnitude of their sin and increasingly convict them of their guilt, yet it does not offer a remedy or enable them to escape from human misery, and, indeed, weakened as it is by the flesh, leaves the offender under the curse” (3/4.5). The discussion continues into Article 6, “What, therefore, neither the light of nature nor the law can do, God accomplishes by the power of the Holy Spirit, through the Word or the ministry of reconciliation. This is the gospel about the Messiah, through which it has pleased God to save believers, in both the Old and the New Testaments” (3.4.6). One thing to note here is that people in both the Old and New Testament were saved by faith, not by their works.
Where Does Faith Come From?
In noting how we are saved, Article 6 tells us that God saves us “by the power of the Holy Spirit, through the word or the ministry of reconciliation.” This shows that the Spirit is the one who saves us; he is the one who gives us a new heart that then turns to God in faith. Articles 10-12 further explore this idea of God making us alive, which leads us to believe the gospel.
Article 10 notes that God “effectively calls [sinners], grants them faith and repentance, and, having rescued them from the dominion of darkness, brings them into the kingdom of his Son, in order that they may declare the wonderful deeds of the One who called them out of darkness into this marvelous light, and may boast not in themselves, but in the Lord, as apostolic words frequently testify in Scripture” (3/4.10). The way this happens is that “God not only sees to it that the gospel is proclaimed to them outwardly, and enlightens their minds powerfully by the Holy Spirit so that they may rightly understand and discern the things of the Spirit of God, but, by the effective operation of the same regenerating Spirit, God also penetrates into the inmost being, opens the closed heart, softens the hard heart, and circumcises the heart that is uncircumcised. God infuses new qualities into the will, making the dead will alive, the evil one good, the unwilling one willing, and the stubborn one compliant. God activates and strengthens the will so that, like a good tree, it may be enabled to produce the fruits of good deeds” (3/4.11). God works in a person to give him or her a new heart, making them alive, so that they believe.
This imagery comes from the Bible itself with the sixth and seventh sections in Rejection of Errors again noting key verses such as Ezekiel 36:26 (“I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; and I will remove your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.”), Jeremiah 31:33 (“I will put my law in their minds, and write it on their hearts.”), and Isaiah 44:3 (“I will pour water on the thirsty land, and streams on the dry ground; I will pour out my Spirit on your offspring.”). One also notes the prayer of Jeremiah in 31:18: “Convert me, Lord, and I shall be converted.” God works first in giving some a new heart to believe.
This giving of a new heart so we can turn to God in faith is called regeneration, as Article 12 explains. “And this is the regeneration, the new creation, the raising from the dead, and the making alive so clearly proclaimed in the Scriptures, which God works in us without our help.” Regeneration highlights how God is the one who does this — it is not partly God and then we do the rest: “But this certainly does not happen… by such a way of working that, after God’s work is done, it remains in human power whether or not to be reborn or converted. Rather, it is an entirely supernatural work, one that is at the same time most powerful and most pleasing, a marvelous, hidden, and inexpressible work, which is not less than or inferior in power to that of creation or of raising the dead” (3/4.12). God makes people alive with the result that we turn to Him in faith, and because God is powerful, all in whom He works will turn to Him. Article 14 further notes that “faith is a gift of God, not in the sense that it is offered by God for people to choose, but that it is an actual fact bestowed on them, breathed and infused into them. Nor is it a gift in the sense that God bestows only the potential to believe, but then awaits assent—the act of believing—by human choice; rather, it is a gift in the sense that God who works both willing and acting and, indeed, works all things in all people and produces in them both the will to believe and the belief itself” (3/4.14). God renews our hearts so that we are able to believe, so faith is His gift to us.
The Answer and the Implication
So what comes first, faith or regeneration? Regeneration. As God changes us and makes us alive in Him, this change results in us turning to Him. It is all of God, showing His complete and effective power. This gives me confidence that God can completely save me and anyone else, as it is not tied to us but tied to God. May we pray that we see His Spirit at work in making alive the people who seem farthest from Him.
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