The Need for the New Birth - What is regeneration?

The need for regeneration lies in our natural degeneration. In consequence of the fall of our first parents, all of us were born alienated from the Divine life and holiness, despoiled of all those perfections wherewith man's nature was at first endowed. Ezekiel 16:4,5 gives a graphic picture of the terrible spiritual plight at our entrance into this world: cast out to the loathing of our persons, rolling ourselves in our own filth, impotent to help ourselves. That "likeness" of God (Gen 1:26) which was at first stamped on man's soul, has been effaced, aversion from God and an inordinate love of the creature having displaced it.