A lot of passionate conversation goes on about what or who caused us to be saved. Some of it healthy and some of it not.
If we changed the focus of our understanding of salvation to its rightful core and Biblical focus, then I think and hope that much of the passionate disagreement we've seen on the site of late might be avoided. At its' core, salvation is the real union of our souls with Jesus Christ, becoming a new creation, Christ in us but also, the actual spiritual oneness or union our spirit has through the Holy Spirit with Jesus. Being one with Jesus is our wisdom, our righteousness, our sanctification and our redemption because Jesus is all those things.
I don't think there is one person on this site who would say that they were a participant even remotely in their new birth and creation of new spiritual life or their subsequent union with Jesus.
Too often we reduce this issue to some mechanical process. It isn't. God creates life where there was none and He joins us together in a mystical union with Jesus, His beloved Son. This mystical union isn't subject to dissection with a microscope. There are pictures in the Bible of this spiritual union like the physical union found in marriage where two become one flesh or the joining of a branch to a vine. All natural pictures however fall far short of the miraculous reality that they shadow. The reality is that we are truly one spirit with Jesus and that is what it means to be saved.
The Bible calls men to repent and believe. The Bible makes clear that some people "believe" but their faith is not a living faith. The Bible makes clear that the word of Jesus may land on or in a heart, but it is not efficacious, it does not bear true new life because the heart is not "pure and noble". It looks like the seed of the word has taken root but it has not. Man, in the end, however, is a "recipient" of new life and new birth and of union with Jesus. None I hope would argue that new life isn't received.
In order to be saved, we must be born again. Men may want to use a microscope to dissect new birth and union with Jesus. In the end, no matter what camp we come from, we have to admit that we are born again not by the will of the man or of the flesh.
I'm not trying to reignite a blaze in the forest. The point I'm trying to make is that like everything else in Christendom, there is a battle that goes on between the natural ( what man can do ) and with the supernatural ( what only God creates and does ). The crazy thing is that not one of us born naturally can take credit for anything we do that is right or good even in the natural.
Whatever we do that is good was because of something we received from God in natural birth. What do we have naturally that we did not receive by natural creation? What we do in life is not done in some kind of a vacuum.
What we do is a direct product of our natural birth. We have a Creator. We don't self create.
Back to the essential point. If everyone would focus on the reality of the new birth, what it is, what it accomplishes and what it looks like in the man or woman of God, then we can more fully appreciate, give praise for and live out the life of Christ in us and what it means to be a child of God.
Western Christianity has gotten far too absorbed in the "legal" side of justification. We are actually justified because Jesus is actually one with our soul and His righteousness is ours not just because of a legal declaration based on the validity of our faith but rather most importantly because our soul and Jesus's spirit are together as one. When God sees our soul, He sees Jesus at the same time. His righteousness is ours by union and His righteousness over time becomes our very nature by that union and through communion with Him on a glory by glory, day by day transformational miraculous God creating basis.
New birth and union with Jesus in mystical but extremely real and active and life giving reality is the very essence of what it means to be a child of God.
There is far too much use of a microscope in our discussions of salvation and far too little use of a telescope.
Men of old understood and talked much more about union with Jesus as our ground and source of salvation. We would do well to move our focus to that. An effort to make far too many people feel warranted in an unwarranted way that they are saved ( done in misplaced compassion and desire ) is the reason why so many people focus on what we have done to be born again. We can make ourselves and others feel all too comfortable that more are saved than actually are if we can just focus on the issue of "do I believe". If we merely focus on faith and on our experience and perception of how we exercised it and of how we got born again by it, we will miss the forest for the trees.
God completely as the sole Creator is the cause of all things good, especially as the creator of spiritual new birth and the union of our souls with Jesus. This single issue of union with Christ is what separates us from a perishing mankind. The hope of glory is Christ in us.
God causes the new birth by a revelation of Jesus to the soul. That revelation is accomplished most of the time by the preaching of the word of Christ. We are called to scatter the seed, the factual truth of Jesus and Him crucified, and then to water the seed that has taken root. God gives the seed life and God gives the growth.
If we moved all our spiritual attention to the required new birth and union with Christ, I would hazard a guess that much debate would end, greater focus would be on seeking God to create new life, something out of nothing, we would correctly discern what true salvation looks like.....union of our spirit and soul with Jesus and communion with Jesus, and we would expect far more from supernatural life in Christ from and for His people than most do presently. Branch and Vine. Husband and Bride. Jesus one by the Spirit with the "new man". Praising God for His unimaginable grace that is Christ.