God’s Sovereignty in Regeneration

Since Jesus Himself spoke on the new birth—regeneration—all Christian traditions affirm some doctrine of regeneration. This doctrine has been formulated in many ways, but it will be helpful to consider the two core views of regeneration held in the visible church—monergism and synergism. Now, there are differences between the various positions that could fall into the camp of monergism, and the same is true of synergism. Nevertheless, there is a core difference between these categories: monergists affirm that God alone is responsible for our regeneration, and synergists believe that God and man bring about the new birth together.

Synergism teaches that God and man cooperate in regeneration. Some synergists would affirm that God by grace makes the initial move; otherwise, they believe the Pelagian heresy. Many synergists would say that grace implores unbelievers to change, perhaps enabling them just enough to make a choice for Christ. Still, regeneration in this view does not happen until the sinner says yes to God’s call, making the will of the sinner the final deciding factor in whether one experiences the new birth. Yet this idea of cooperation between God and man in regeneration cannot be found in Scripture. Regeneration does not happen to people who are mostly dead or are renewed enough to believe but not enough to guarantee the response of faith. Regeneration, instead, is a work in dead sinners to make them fully spiritually alive (Ps. 51:5; Eph. 2:4–5). Being dead in sin, we are incapable of making the right spiritual choices and trusting in Christ, and dead people cannot ask God to make them spiritually alive. Synergism also errs in putting faith before regeneration, but we have already seen in John 3:3 that regeneration comes first. It is not that we have faith and then are regenerated; rather, faith is the fruit of regeneration.

Monergism, by contrast, teaches that only God acts in regeneration. He moves sovereignly not merely to give us a little bit of life but to remove our heart of stone and give us a heart of flesh. He does not first ask our permission to do this, and that is good news, for being dead in sin, we would never give such permission if He were to ask. He acts by His mercy, and He shows mercy to whomever He will, not giving it to all (Rom. 9:18). Moreover, once He acts to give us a new heart, that work cannot fail. We will certainly receive that new heart, and saving faith will flow from it.