Do you sneeze when you look at the sun? Are your earlobes attached or detached at the side of your head? When you clasp your hands together do you put your left or your right thumb on top?
Scientists have discovered that each one of these traits—earlobe attachment, hand-clasping preference, the photo-sneeze reflex—all of them are genetic traits that you inherited from your parents’ DNA.
DNA is a special nucleic acid found in each one of your body’s cells. It’s made up of two strands of molecules called “nucleotides,” that spiral around each other in a shape called a “double helix.” DNA contains all the genetic information you inherited from your parents, determining how you will form and grow and function. It’s the genetic blueprint that makes you you.
The individual sections of DNA that determine individual traits are called genes. Scientists have discovered how to extract individual genes from the DNA of one organism, and insert it into the DNA of a new organism, so that the new organism will express the genetic trait of the donor as it grows and matures.
This process is called genetic engineering, and it has produced all sorts of fascinating genetic hybrids, like drought resistant plants, or pigs that are more environmentally friendly.
While it is a very controversial field of study, genetic engineering can serve as a useful analogy for a central, but somewhat controversial theological concept that describes the role the Holy Spirit plays in bringing us to salvation.
The concept is: regeneration. Literally, regeneration means “being born again,” and it refers to the idea that, if and when we come to faith in Jesus, something fundamental must change in us from how we were before we came to faith. Almost as if we need to be reborn, a second time, as a brand new person.
This is, in fact, how Jesus himself describes it: “No one can see the Kingdom of God,” he said, “unless they are born again.” In another place, the Apostle Paul is talking about our salvation, and he says , “he saved us ... through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit.” The Apostle Peter agrees, “he has caused us to be born again to a living hope.”
All the writers of the New Testament agree, actually, that coming to faith involves becoming a brand new person, a change so fundamental that it can only be described as “rebirth.” The controversy is about when, and how this change happens. Does it happen when we believe, or after we believe? Does it have to happen before we believe, in order that we might believe?
And what exactly does this “new birth” look like? Do we instantly become a brand new person, and if so, what kind of change is it? And what about areas of my life that don’t change?
And this is where the analogy of genetic engineering may be useful.
Like the geneticist who initiates the process of genetic transformation, the Holy Spirit initiates our coming to faith through his prevenient grace; and just like no organism can initiate its own genetic transformation—it can only receive genes from the host—neither can we initiate our own rebirth.
However, if and as we receive God’s grace and don’t reject it, the Holy Spirit does a work of regeneration in us. Like a geneticist who takes the genes of a donor organism and inserts it into a host organism, so that the traits and characteristics of the donor show up in the host as it matures, so too with the Holy Spirit.
He takes the character, spirit and qualities of the Resurrected Jesus and spiritually “inserts them” into our heart, so to speak, so that as we mature in the Christian faith, our lives will exhibit his characteristics more and more.
In this sense, we are born again, with the DNA of Christ.
The change may not be immediate—sometimes genetic traits take a while to appear—but the New Testament insists that it has happened when we are saved. Like it says in one place: “Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God.”
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