Restoration

God . . . was pleased to reveal his Son in me. (Galatians 1:15–16)

I love classic cars. Something about seeing an old really well built car. There are days that I feel like a classic car – old, showing definite signs of wear and tear, and original replacement parts are impossible to find!

I especially love an old car that someone has taken the time to rebuild and restore one of these beauties to look as close to what it must have looked like on the showroom floor.

For us, when we accept Christ, luckily He is not just in the restoration business, but His desire is for us to be regenerated in Him.

“But when the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior” (Titus 3:3–6, ESV).

Our prior selves before we came under Christ were not worthy of being restored. We live in a sinful body in a sinful world, and we were, spiritually speaking, a wreck, not worthy of being restored. And that is not what He seeks to do. He doesn’t just want to put original parts back in us and restore us to our former selves like an old classic car. He wants to regenerate us back to the relationship we were designed to have with Him.

Regeneration means taking an already existing thing and making it new again or starting over. In literal terms, it means “birth again.”

This renewal work of the Holy Spirit is described as “cleansing” and “purifying” in Ezekiel 36:25–27: “I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean; I will cleanse you from all your impurities and from all your idols. I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws.”

As long as we are in this earthly life we will, like an old car, still have problems. We are not promised a perfect life here, but the promise is that of an amazing eternity!

Our earthly regeneration is not meant to draw attention to us.

When we look at a restored classic car we don’t think of what a great job the car did on itself! We look to the owner and tell him what a great job he did making it look new again.

In the same way, anything good in us as a result of our regeneration should point people around us to the Master Mechanic and what He did in us.