The Regenerating Work of the Spirit
John 3:1-21; Acts 2:1-41
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by Phil Newton

John Tennant, a contemporary of Jonathan Edwards, and who died faithfully preaching the gospel when he was twenty-five, identified eleven evidences of the regenerating work of the Spirit. I will adapt these for our attention [edits in brackets].

The understanding is renewed…a light from on high shines into it, whereby its natural darkness is in some measure dissipated, so that it [has] new apprehension of things.

He has a new assent, his understanding being enlightened to perceive the precious truths of Christ; he assents to them with a kind of [full certainty], in a lively, sensible manner.

His judgment is changed.

His estimate of things is changed.

His purposes are changed, he has vastly different designs from those he was [accustomed] to entertain and indulge before his new birth…In short, his purposes were for sin and self, but now they are for God and his soul, now he strives as much daily to get his heart and affections deadened to the world, as he did before to secure and advance his interest in it.

His reasonings are changed.

The will is changed. It has got a new bias and centre of its actings…He aims at God's glory in all his actions universally, and singly, the inclinations of his will bend toward God freely from an inward and powerful principle of life…Furthermore, his will has new enjoyments.

The affections of the soul are changed.

The conscience is changed…now, when the soul feels the regenerating influences of the Holy Spirit, what a tender sense fills the renewed conscience! For what small things it will smite, rebuke and check the sinner! How strongly will it bind to duty, and bar against sin!

The memory; now is more apt to embrace and retain divine things than formerly.

Their conversation is changed. They were [accustomed] to be like moles groveling in the earth, now their mind and conversation are in heaven [Tennant, 275-285].

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