And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba! Father!”
-Galatians 4:6

I’m finding more and more that there are truths or facts in Christianity that have nearly no meaning or application without the Holy Spirit and his work of regeneration.

For instance, as people created by God, we have the responsibility to avoid sin and do good.  If we were to stop righ here, this leaves us in a precarious situation.  We must not do what we want to do so that we can please God.  This is the opposite of peace. However, once we add the work of the Holy Spirit, we end up with an entirely different picture. When we are saved, the Holy Spirit indwells us. Old things pass away and all things become new. (2 Cor. 5:17)  In salvation, God replaces our sinful desires with His desires. The resulting situation is this: we do what in our very spirit we want to do, and his pleases God and brings peace and joy to our lives.

This doctrine is known as regeneration, and it’s what makes Christianity different from every other religion.

I have often addressed God as father in my prayers.  I began this after I noticed a friend who always said “Father God,…” as he prayed. At the time, my attraction to the phrase was poetic.

Recently, I have began to use this phrase again, though I have found it to have an entirely different meaning to me. I first noticed this last week and it started me thinking which has resulted in this post.

However, it was just this afternoon that I fully understood the change.  Galatians 4:6 explains perfectly why the idea of God as our Father should be so powerful to every believer. It is literally our regenerated hearts crying out to our Spiritual Father.  It is the work of the Holy Spirit.

Paul echoes this idea in Romans:

For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, “Abba! Father!” – Romans 8:15

As Christians, it should be our desire to allow God’s work of regeneration to continue.  We can do this by:

1. Learning to recognize and avoid sin.

2. Learning to view sin like God views sin.

3. Asking God to remove these competing desires. (remnants of the “old things”)

The results will be exciting.

“True Christians consider themselves as not satisfying some rigorous creditor, but as discharging a debt of gratitude. Accordingly, theirs is not the stinted return of a constrained obedience, but the large and liberal measure of voluntary service.” – William Wilberforce, Real Christianity