601. When We Have Been Regenerated, We Have a New Will and a New Intellect

When we have been regenerated we are renewed, or new. This is something the church of today knows, both from the Word and from reason.

We know this from the following teachings in the Word.

Make your heart new and your spirit new. Why should you die, O house of Israel? (Ezekiel 18:31)

I will give you a new heart and I will put a new spirit within you. I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. I will put my spirit within you. (Ezekiel 36:26-27)

From now on we regard no one on the basis of the flesh. Therefore if anyone is in Christ, she or he is a new creation. (2 Corinthians 5:16-17)

The new heart in these passages means a new will and the new spirit means a new intellect, since "heart" in the Word means the will and "spirit," when it appears alongside "heart," means the intellect.

From reason as well we know about our renewal: the person who has been regenerated must have a new will and a new intellect, because these two faculties are what make us human. They are the parts of us that are regenerated. The quality of these two faculties determines the quality of the human being. People who have an evil will are evil; if their intellect supports that will, they are even more evil. The opposite is true of good people.

Only religion renews and regenerates us. It is allotted the highest place in the human mind. Below itself it sees civic concerns that relate to the world. In fact, it rises up through these concerns the way the purest sap rises up through a tree to its very top, and surveys from that height the earthly things that lie below, the way someone looks down from a tower or a high point of land onto the fields below.

382. 10. Evil People Have No Faith

All people who deny that God created the world, and who therefore deny the existence of God, are evil. They are atheistic materialists. They are all evil, because everything good that is good not only in an earthly way but also in a spiritual way comes from God. Therefore people who deny the existence of God do not want to, and therefore cannot, accept anything good from any other source outside what is their own. What is their own is the craving of their flesh. Anything that comes from that craving is spiritually evil, however good it may appear from an earthly perspective. People like this are evil in a theoretical way.

There are also people who are evil in a practical way. They are people who have no use for the divine precepts that are summed up in the Ten Commandments. These people live like outlaws. They too deny God at heart (although many of them confess him with their lips), because God and his commandments are united, which is why the Ten Commandments are called "Jehovah there" (Numbers 10:35-36; Psalms 132:7-8).

The following two propositions will make it more obvious that evil people have no faith:

a. Evil people have no faith, because evil relates to hell and faith relates to heaven.

b. All people in Christianity who are dismissive of the Lord and the Word have no faith, no matter how morally they behave or how rationally they speak, teach, or write, even if their subject is faith.

We will take these points up one at a time.