Bible Dictionaries
Regeneration

Vine's Expository Dictionary of NT Words

"new birth" (palin, "again," genesis, "birth"), is used of "spiritual regeneration," Titus 3:5 , involving the communication of a new life, the two operating powers to produce which are "the word of truth," James 1:18; 1 Peter 1:23 , and the Holy Spirit, John 3:5,6; the loutron, "the laver, the washing," is explained in Ephesians 5:26 , "having cleansed it by the washing (loutron) of water with the word."

The new birth and "regeneration" do not represent successive stages in spiritual experience, they refer to the same event but view it in different aspects. The new birth stresses the communication of spiritual life in contrast to antecedent spiritual death; "regeneration" stresses the inception of a new state of things in contrast with the old; hence the connection of the use of the word with its application to Israel, in Matthew 19:28 . Some regard the kai in Titus 3:5 as epexegetic, "even;" but, as Scripture marks two distinct yet associated operating powers, there is not sufficient ground for this interpretation. See under EVEN.

In Matthew 19:28 the word is used, in the Lord's discourse, in the wider sense, of the "restoration of all things" ( Acts 3:21 , RV), when, as a result of the second advent of Christ, Jehovah "sets His King upon His holy hill of Zion" (Psalm 2:6 ), and Israel, now in apostasy, is restored to its destined status, in the recognition and under the benign sovereignty of its Messiah. Thereby will be accomplished the deliverance of the world from the power and deception of Satan and from the despotic and anti-christian rulers of the nations. This restitution will not in the coming millennial age be universally a return to the pristine condition of Edenic innocence previous to the Fall, but it will fulfill the establishment of God's covenant with Abraham concerning his descendants, a veritable rebirth of the nation, involving the peace and prosperity of the Gentiles. That the worldwide subjection to the authority of Christ will not mean the entire banishment of evil, is clear from Revelation 20:7,8 . Only in the new heavens and earth, "wherein dwelleth righteousness," will sin and evil be entirely absent.