2. Vivification or Resurrection.
expressions denote conceptually the transfer from spiritual death to spiritual life. But that the raising to life or resuscitation takes place through faith in the Gospel is stated in scriptures as Col. 2:12: ovvnyépOnte 51a tic tioteMe Thc Evepysiac Tod Osod [Ye are risen with Him through the faith of the operation of God.’]; °8 Eph.
hominibus generatur fides, adeoque homines ex non credentibus fiunt credentes, 1 loh. 5:1: Omnis, qui creiit Iesum esse Christum, ex Deo natus dicitur. Nasci ex Deo autem est renasci, et sic manifeste constat hominem per hoc ipsum renasci, quod fides in ipso accenditur. [It is easy to see that regeneration consists in the fact that faith is generated in men, so that men from unbelievers become believers, 1 loh. 5, 1: Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ is said to be born of God. But to be born of God is to be reborn, and thus it is evident that a man is reborn by this very fact, that faith is kindled in him.] One must not conclude from the fact that Baier and other dogmatists treat regeneration in a special section alongside conversion that these teachers allow regeneration and conversion to be in distinction from each other objectively.
the new spiritual life. Meyer 2:5-8: 6vtac Huds vVEKPOds TOIs TApAaTTmLAGLW ODvECMOTOINOEV TH Xplotd — T yap yapiti Eote ceOMOLEVOL GCEOMOLEVOL 616 MioTEMc. [But God... even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ.... For by grace are ye saved through faith.] 13° Spiritual revival is opposed to spiritual death. How is it that the transfer from spiritual death to spiritual life takes place on the part of man through faith in the Gospel? Sin does not kill as matter, it is not matter at all, as has already been explained, °° but sin kills as guilt before God and, seen in terms of its effect on the human heart, as a consciousness of guilt or an evil conscience. The evil conscience is already present through the law written in the human heart. It is called by the heathen: 10 duxkaimpa tod OEod ExtyvovtEc Sti Oi TA TOLADTA TPAGOOVTESG G01 Savatov sioiv. °°) This killing effect is further increased by the revealed law, because the revealed law only increases sin and guilt, as Paul so casually points out. °°) Since man cannot erase guilt and an evil conscience points it almost singularly and very persistently to the bodily resurrection to eternal life, which is anticipated by faith. Meyer's thought is according to Scripture (Joh. 5:24-25; 11:25), but here it is against the context. The ovvnyépdnte dé Tg Tiatews corresponds to the ovvtagévtés avtw ev TE Partiopati; and like this, so also this one falls into the life here on earth. Correctly Baehr e. g., who also quotes Hunnius: Modum explicat nostrae vivificationis et regenerationis, eamque per fidem effici testatur, cuius interventu remissis peccatis homo ad illius spiritualis lucem resuscitatur. [Google] — Meyer also wants to grasp the words tic Evepysiacs Tov @sov as object of faith, "not as Luther: ‘by faith God wrought' and almost all the moderns want, genitivus causae". Correctly Baehr: "If nothing can be said grammatically against this explanation of the genitive as object, the parallel passage Eph. 1:19 certainly speaks against it. There one cannot possibly regard kata as designating the object of faith, but must translate 'by virtue of the effect’. According to this parallel passage, the translation must be: fides, quam Deus efficit vel operatur, as most, and especially older, exegetes do. It was mostly for dogmatic reasons that one left this, the simplest and most natural explanation. One wanted to avoid all predestinarianism or feared that this explanation would lead to it.
life, which the readers have already experienced in itself, not the expectation of a future life. This against Meyer, who also understands here the deadness of eternal death and the making alive of eternal life.
Cary, avtn Etc Savatov. by any action on his part,!°° he remains in death before God as long as he remains under the law. Man, on the other hand, becomes alive at the moment in which God works faith in the Gospel in the heart and thereby writes his divine judgment of justification into the heart in place of his divine condemnation. This is why the apology of faith in the Gospel says: vivificat contritos — This faith quickens the contrite (172:36 [Trig/. 261, XII [V1], 35]). —In a different sense, the Pietists in particular have used the word "awakening". They used it to describe the state in which a person is frightened out of his carnal security without having come to faith in Christ. Such a state exists, as we can see from the example of Felix, when, in Paul's sermon on righteousness and temperance and the future judgment éugoBoc eyéveto, Acts 24:25. to call this process " awakening " is not according to the usage of Scripture, but it is not factually incorrect either. However, false and very harmful doctrine is present when, with the Pietists and Synergists, one describes as merely "awakened" but not yet converted persons those who, although they possess the prima initia fidei, have not yet had sufficient "spiritual experience", have not yet carried out "conscious self- determination" or "self-decision". It is to be noted: Whoever has "the first beginnings of faith", scintillulam fidei, is already a believer or converted (FC 591, 14).