REGENERATION!
- UnstoppableRevKev
- Oct 7
- 5 min read
📖Scripture:
“Because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now. For I am confident of this very thing, that He who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Jesus Christ.”
Philippians 1:5–6
🔎Examination:
The Apostle Paul’s confidence, assurance, indeed his faith (pepoithōs, G3982) in the Philippians’ perseverance rests not on subjective sentiment but on objective evidence: “your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now.” The saints’ obedience to the truth proved that God had indeed begun a “good work.”
Both Peter and Paul preached the same reality from complementary vantage points. Peter conveys assurance in the already perfected purification of our souls by the ongoing and active “obedience to the truth.” Paul expresses absolute confidence in the saints’ regeneration, salvation, sanctification, and ultimate glorification because of “partnership in the gospel from the first day until now.” Both reject the lazy distortion of “once saved, always saved,” which severs profession from active, present, and personal perseverance in the ministry of the gospel.
This is the biblical doctrine of perseverance of the saints, not presumption of the self-deceived.
In 1 Peter 1:22, obedience (hypakoē, G5218) literally means “to hear under.” It denotes humble submission to a superior’s authoritative word. This obedience is not a human work generating merit or divine favor; it is a supernatural, Holy Spirit-wrought fruit up from the regenerate heart. As John writes:
“By this we know that we have come to know Him, if we keep His commandments” 1 John 2:3
Obedience can be either relational or transactional. In the story of Cain and Abel (Genesis 4), Abel brought a glorious offering for the Lord! It was his firstfruits; Abel’s absolute best out of joyful obedience, expressed as adoration, i.e., worship in spirit and truth. Contrastingly, Cain brought a ritualistic sacrifice out of transactional obedience, expressed as legalistic obligation. Scripture reveals, “And the LORD looked with favor on Abel and his offering, but He had no regard for Cain and his offering.”
Relational, joyful obedience flows from the love, thanksgiving, and adoration of adopted children toward our gracious and merciful Heavenly Father (Romans 8:15). Therefore, when modern pseudo-Christian systems redefine tangible obedience as optional or a “works-based” salvation, or redefine sin as subjective “brokenness” rather than our total depravity, they’re denyiing the marks and doctrine of biblical regeneration. Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and other cults counterfeit obedience by Cain-like, human-wrought, legalistic obedience and conformity — obeying a ritualistic system to earn personal exaltation. Liberal Protestantism and modern evangelical consumerism counterfeit God’s grace by claiming relationship without objective obedience to the TRUTH via partnership in the gospel. These fatal errors emerge from the same root: rejecting the sovereignty, sufficiency, and authority of Christ Jesus as the only WAY to the Father, the only objective TRUTH, and the only source of everlasting LIFE (John 14:6).
The obedient heart is one captured by and enraptured with love. King Jesus said, “If you love Me, you will keep My commandments” (John 14:15). Notice, He did not say, “to earn My love,” rather, “If you love Me,, you will…” Joyful, ongoing, relentless obedience in the present, i.e., the perseverance of the saints in the ministry of the gospel, that’s the validation of our love for God, not His love for us, and certainly not the currency for our redemption’s purchase at the cross.
Peter’s “by obedience to the truth” is inseparable from being “born again… through the living and enduring Word of God” (1 Peter 1:23). The same divine Word that gives life also governs it (hypakoē, G5218). The human heart/will, previously enslaved to sin, once liberated, delights in God’s law. This is what distinguishes regeneration from mere reformation. Reformation alters behavior; regeneration transforms nature.
“I will delight in Your statutes; I will not forget Your word.” Psalm 119:16
The good work, which God initiates, is completing, in fact, has completed (John 19:30) in Christ Jesus, is the creation, purification, and glorification of a new heart — one that cannot finally fall away because it is guarded by God's omnipotence (1 Peter 1:5). Rather than nullifying human responsibility, this reality activates and inspires it. God’s sovereignty guarantees perseverance precisely by producing joyful obedience. As Augustine, one of the early church leaders, said, “Give what You command, and command what You will.”
Satan's lie of modern nominalism dismisses all obedience to the Word as “legalism.” But Scripture distinguishes sharply between religious legalism (seeking justification by the law) and authentic holiness (walking in the law of divine liberty). The false gospel of Moralistic Therapeutic Deism (MTD) — the notion that God just wants everyone to be nice, happy, and self-fulfilled — is just as foreign to authentic, apostolic Christianity as Gnosticism (salvation achieved via “secret” knowledge) or Pelagianism (manufactured salvation by humanity's free will and innate “goodness”). MTD replaces holiness with comfort, repentance with affirmation, and the cross with therapy.
The saints’ “partnership in the gospel from the first day until now” reflects the unrelenting and joyful obedience Peter describes: those previously and perfectly purified will always continue in the objective truth of God’s Word. When obedience wanes, assurance vanishes. The cure is not to redefine truth as subjective, salvation as guaranteed, evil as goodness, or grace as affirmation, but to repent in submission to the GOOD NEWS, that Christ Jesus alone purifies, sustains, and offers everlasting life to the REGENERATE, devoted, joyfully obedient members of His Body & Bride.
The true Church — Christ’s one Body and only Bride — is a unified company of the hēgnikotes, those having been purified by obedience to the truth. Our lives radiate a consistent and ongoing pattern of submission, humility, repentance, faith, endurance, devotion, and fervent love for Christ and His Bride. The counterfeit church offers attendance without accountability, transaction without transformation, tolerance without truth, community without commitment, rejoicing without regeneration, sentiment without sanctification, and gathering without glorification unto the LORD.
Our perseverance and participation in the gospel is no passive drift down the river of God’s boundless grace; it is manifest in our active rowing in the power of the Holy Spirit, steered by the rudder of the Word, toward glory’s golden shores!
🤺Action:
Test whether your obedience is selfishly intermittent or selflessly enduring. Has it persisted “from the first day until now” as evidenced by your relentless participation in the ministry of the gospel?
Ask the LORD to expose counterfeit, “comfort-based” areas of your life where joyful obedience to the truth has been replaced by emotionalism, experiences, convenience, or obligation rather than Spirit-wrought devotion and adoration.
Renew your partnership with Christ’s Body in tangible gospel ministry — submitting, serving, discipling, and evangelizing as evidence of your baptism/identity in Christ, not a substitute for it.
🧠Reflection:
Ask the Holy Spirit to confirm whether your obedience is from the infinite overflow of regeneration’s love or the exhaustible rubbish of self-effort’s filthy rags. Seek conviction, not condemnation or comfort — so that your partnership in the gospel may demonstrate that He who began the good work of REGENERATION in you... is indeed bringing it to completion for your good and His glory.
Just as King Jesus told Nicodemus, “Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again.” The evidence of that REGENERATION is always joyful obedience to the TRUTH of the WORD, i.e., Christ Jesus.
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Blessings and love,
Kevin M. Kelley
Pastor
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