Nee/Lee — Soteriology
Introduction
“The Knowledge of Life” by Watchman Nee and Witness Lee presents regeneration as the fundamental experience of God’s life and the foundation for all Christian growth. The work emphasizes two aspects of the necessity for regeneration—both the moral corruption of human nature and God’s higher intention to grant humanity participation in His divine life—and describes at length what the believer receives through regeneration.
Why Regeneration Is Necessary
Nee and Lee distinguish two dimensions of the necessity for regeneration:
Why do we have to be regenerated? There are two reasons which make it necessary. First, speaking from the lower aspect, regeneration is necessary because our life has been corrupted and become evil (Jeremiah 17:9; Romans 7:18), and it cannot be changed from evil to good (Jeremiah 13:23).
This first reason speaks to the moral depravity of human nature. However, Nee and Lee introduce a deeper, higher reason:
If our life had not been corrupted and become evil, would we still need to be regenerated? Yes; we would still need to be regenerated, because our human life is only a created life, not God’s uncreated life.
God’s intention in creating humanity goes beyond the correction of a corrupt nature. It is nothing less than that humanity receive God’s life and become partakers of God’s nature. Regeneration is therefore not merely cleansing from sin, but constitutive of God’s redemptive plan. The Christian acquires not only freedom from guilt, but transformation into the image of God.
What Is Regeneration?
Regeneration is distinguished from moral improvement or self-renewal. Nee and Lee define it essentially:
According to the Scripture, to be regenerated is to be born of the Spirit (John 3:3-6). Originally our spirit was dead, but at the time we believed, God’s Spirit came to touch our spirit; thus, our spirit obtained God’s life and was made alive.
This is not a gradual process of moral improvement, but an instantaneous event of divine intervention. The Spirit of God enters the human spirit and plants God’s life there. This embodies what Nee and Lee call “being born of God”—a rebirth in the most essentially transformative sense.
How Regeneration Takes Place
The process of regeneration follows a definite sequence of divine and human actions:
How can a man be regenerated? In brief, God’s Spirit enters into man’s spirit and puts God’s life into it; thus, man becomes regenerated. How can God’s Spirit enter into man’s spirit? When man hears the Gospel or reads the word of the Scripture, God’s Spirit works in him and causes him to feel that he has sinned and is corrupted; hence, he is reproved for sin and righteousness and judgment (John 16:8).
The work of God’s Spirit first includes conviction—an awareness of sin and corruption. This leads to repentance and faith in the Lord Jesus as Savior. At that moment:
Once he receives the Lord as his Savior, God’s Spirit enters into his spirit and puts God’s life in it, causing him to be regenerated.
This is a cooperative work: God’s Spirit acts, but the human response of repentance and faith is essential. Regeneration is therefore at once wholly God’s work and simultaneously an act of human will accepting God’s offer.
The Fruits of Regeneration
Regeneration produces three fundamental transformations in the position and nature of the believer:
Regeneration causes men to become the children of God. Since regeneration means to be born of God, it automatically causes men to become the children of God (John 1:12, 13) and have the relationship of life with God.
Childhood brings with it a permanent relationship—not merely positional, but relational and vital. Also:
Regeneration causes men to become a new creation. A new creation is that which has the elements of God within it. When something has God’s elements within it, it is a new creation. In the old creation, there is no element of God.
This transformation into “new creation” is radical. The old creature—of merely human origin, unqualified by God’s element—is now opposed by something in which God’s life and nature dwell. This is the crystallization of God mingled with man.
Third:
Regeneration causes men to be united with God as one. By regeneration, God the Spirit enters into man’s spirit, causing man to be joined with Him as one spirit (1 Corinthians 6:17).
This unity of spirit is not moral equivalence, but a vital and pneumatic coalescence. It is God penetrating the human person and making deepest contact.
What Is Gained Through Regeneration?
Nee and Lee enumerate seven concrete things which the regenerated Christian receives. The first and foremost is:
The first thing we gain through regeneration is the life of God. We have already seen in the previous chapter that regeneration occurs when the Spirit of God puts the life of God into our spirit. In regeneration, the primary thing the Spirit of God does is to put the life of God into us.
This life is not abstract or juridical. It is the full being of God—God’s nature, God’s power, God’s love, God’s righteousness:
But what is the life of God? It is the content of God and God Himself. All that is in God and all that God Himself is are in the life of God. All the fullness of the Godhead is hidden in the life of God.
This life also contains the resurrection power by which Christ overcame death. In the regenerated person therefore dwells the same victory which Christ achieved.
The regenerated person also receives a “law of life”—not an external law written upon tablets of stone, but:
The laws of life are the laws of God which God has written with His life on our heart-tablet within us. The laws which were written on the stone tablets are outward laws, laws of letter, dead laws, and laws without power.
But the laws written by God’s life in the heart are:
Inward laws, the laws of life, living laws, and laws with great power; they enable us not only to know the heart desire of God and follow His will, but also to know God Himself and live out God Himself.
Furthermore, regeneration brings a “new heart” and a “new spirit.” The heart—that organ of inclination and feeling—is renewed, made soft rather than hardened against God. Simultaneously the spirit—the organ of contact with God—is quickened, made living rather than dead.
Finally, the believer receives Christ Himself:
Since regeneration causes us to have the Spirit of God within us, it also causes us to have Christ within us. Christ dwells in us as our life (Galatians 2:20) and wants to live out His life from us (2 Corinthians 4:10-11). Thus, He wants us, in His life, to grow into His image and become like Him (2 Corinthians 3:18).
The Totality of Regeneration
Nee and Lee conclude that regeneration endows the believer with the full riches of God’s being:
Therefore, we must see that what we obtain through regeneration is too great, too high, too rich, and too glorious. Through regeneration we obtain the life of God and the law of this life. Through regeneration we obtain a new heart and a new spirit. Through regeneration we further obtain the Holy Spirit, Christ, and God Himself.
This is not one transaction among many in God’s economy of redemption. It is the foundation upon which all subsequent growth, sanctification, and ultimate perfection rests. Regeneration is God’s redemptive initiative, in which the believer is not merely freed from guilt, but from death itself, and is embedded in God’s divine life.