“But when the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that being justified by his grace we might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life.” (Titus 3:4-7, ESV)

What does Paul mean when he writes “by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit“?  We should know that we do not earn our salvation.  It is not even something we deserve.  God grants it!  He saves us out of His desire/will and love.  Paul states clearly we are saved “according to his own mercy.”  Further, we are “being justified by his grace.”  Yet Paul used the Greek preposition dia, meaning “through the agency or means of… indicating how something happens” (Concise Oxford English Dictionary).  In fact, it is through the agency of washing AND renewal.

C. Michael Moss has pointed to two possible interpretations. The first is that Paul may be saying that God has saved us “through the washing,” which is characterized by “rebirth and renewal.”  In this case the washing is accomplished “by the Holy Spirit.”  The second option is that Paul may be understood as saying that God has saved us through an event.  That event includes both “…’the washing characterized by rebirth’ and the ‘renewal’ either ‘characterized by or given by the Holy Spirit’.” (Moss. 1, 2 Timothy & Titus. The College Press NIV Commentary)

The Event – Aorist Tense

What is the event that is both a washing and a renewal?  The Greek word translated ‘regeneration’ (παλιγγενεσία) is a word that has at times been translated as regeneration, restoration, renovation, or rebirth. In Acts 3:21 the word points to that which will occur when the Son of Man shall come in His glory. But in this passage the emphasis is on the individual’s restitution.  Zodhiates writes, “The washing of regeneration… refers to the spiritual rebirth of the individual soul” (The Complete Word Study Dictionary: New Testament).

So it is that G. R. Beasley-Murray (Baptism in the New Testament) points to baptism.  I like what he has written,

As in the ‘faithful saying’ of 2 Tim. 2.11 ff, this hymn is rich in baptismal significance and we do well to call its elements briefly to mind. The believer experiences ‘salvation’ in baptism (eswsen, v.5) because a saving event has happened: ‘the kindness and love for man of God our Saviour appeared’ (v.4) …it is God our Saviour who saved us through the loutpon…

God saved us ‘through the washing wherein the Holy Spirit wrought regeneration and renewal.’.  No statement of the New Testament, not even Jn. 3.5, more unambiguously represents the power of baptism to lie in the operation of the Holy Spirit. 

Think again about Acts 2:38 – “Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.”  Once again a “washing of regeneration” is combined with receiving “the gift of the Holy Spirit.”

The Now and the Not-Yet

Though I use the ESV above, I prefer the NIV’s translation of the phrase “having been justified by his grace.”  The word translated justified is an aorist tense verb.  What does this mean?  Heiser and Setterholm write, “The aorist verb tense is used by the writer to present the action of a verb as a “snapshot” event. The verb’s action is portrayed simply and in summary fashion without respect to any process” (Glossary of Morpho-Syntactic Database Terminology).

This is another example of the now and the not-yet. Paul writes to Titus that we were saved (aorist tense) by the “by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit.”  At this same point in time in the past we were also justified (aorist tense). 

The not-yet is that we must continually seek transformation by the renewing of our minds (Romans 12.1-2).  We must also continue to “work out [our] own salvation with fear and trembling” (Philippians 2.12).