For a long time I have trying to figure out what it means that we are regenerated. In many places, I think I have stretched, distorted, or simply mistaken the truth, but nonetheless I think what I have been taught is correct. If we consider the Law as commandments that we must do, we quickly ascertain that our works do not make us righteous. How can that tension be resolved, so that there is in fact a kind of third use of the Law? I believe the answer involves an inversion. For a Christian, the Law still speaks, but it speaks by inversion, like an object that has been turned inside out still retains it same shape but loses its “orientation”. The Gospel is promising us new life, offering us forgiveness of sins, and creating new men in us. Are these promises realized through our obedience? No! Faith alone grasps salvation.
The genuine freedom of the Gospel is so wide, so unthreatening that it speaks in this way: all things are lawful. Yet the letter of the Law begs to differ. We have a ripped the guts out of the Law, grasped its beating heart outside its body, and turned its animation in against itself. The Law no longer teaches us about what we must do to be saved; it now has the effect that it gives us knowledge that instructs us in what is not necessary by telling us about what is necessary. The renewed conscience wants with all fervor to all things without asking why or how; the Law now gives us a sense of what works we do not need to perform. What genuine Christian would not gladly give an arm and a leg? Out of love, having received forgiveness of sins, we have been fully liberated from all these materialistic concerns.
A clear way to explain this inversion of the Law would be to look at the concept of a Venn Diagram.
Christus Victor 