Verse explainer
Salvation here is entirely God's move — his mercy, his washing, his renewing — with no foothold for anything we contributed.
Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us, by the washing of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy Ghost;
BSBHe saved us, not by the righteous deeds we had done, but according to His mercy, through the washing of new birth and renewal by the Holy Spirit.
The plain meaning
Paul has just finished describing what Gentile converts used to be: foolish, disobedient, deceived, enslaved to passions (v. 3). That portrait is deliberate. People who were all those things had no righteous works to trade on — so if they were saved, it had to be by mercy alone. The verse rules out works as cause, condition, or even contributing means, and replaces them with two divine actions: a 'washing of regeneration' and a 'renewing of the Holy Ghost.' The two are distinct but inseparable — regeneration is the once-for-all new birth, renewing is the ongoing daily work of the Spirit in the believer's life (v. 6 adds that this Spirit was 'shed on us abundantly'). The whole weight falls on God's side of the ledger. The passage (vv. 4–7) closes with the goal: that having been justified by grace, believers become heirs of eternal life — entirely a gift flowing from the same mercy that started the work.
The common misreading
What the commentators say
Clarke argues the preceding description of the converts' former life — foolish, disobedient, enslaved to lusts — makes the point unavoidable: they had no works of righteousness to plead, so mercy was the only possible ground of salvation. He treats the 'washing of regeneration' as baptism understood as a visible sign of the Spirit's cleansing work, insisting the sign must never be separated from the thing signified but equally must never be confused with it: 'Baptism changes nothing; the grace signified by it cleanses and purifies.'
Gill presses that 'works of righteousness' here means genuinely good post-conversion works, not merely hollow ones — and still Paul excludes them entirely as cause or condition of salvation. The 'washing of regeneration' he takes as the new birth itself, not the water rite, since baptism cannot be opposed to 'works of righteousness' (it is itself a righteous act). The 'renewing of the Holy Ghost' he reads as explanatory of regeneration, with the Spirit named as its author, while also pointing to the daily progression of grace in the believer's inner life.
JFB notes the Greek preposition 'out of' — salvation does not spring from works as its source. They distinguish regeneration (once-for-all) from renewing (daily and progressive), arguing that grammatically the 'renewing of the Holy Ghost' is connected not to the 'laver' but to the separate verb 'saved us,' so baptism seals regeneration while the Spirit's renewing is an ongoing work sealed by the abundant outpouring of v. 6.
The word behind it
'Regeneration' — literally 'again-genesis,' a new coming-into-being. It appears only twice in the New Testament: here for the individual new birth, and in Matthew 19:28 for the cosmic renewal at Christ's return. The word signals not moral improvement but a new origin — a re-creation of the person. This is why Paul grounds it entirely in God's mercy rather than human effort: you cannot cause your own birth, first or second.
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