From The Inside Out - Obedience as Evidence: The Glory of New Birth in Christ! 1 Peter 1:3
📖 Scripture:
“Praiseworthy is the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! By His great mercy He has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.”
– 1 Peter 1:3
🔎 Examination:
Scripture asserts and assumes something infinitely more profound and foundational than behavior: IDENTITY. The Apostle Peter doesn't begin his letter with imperatives or indicatives; he begins with identity. God is. Period. And two things flow from that reality: 1) God's inherent praiseworthiness, and 2) His lovingkindness toward all humanity. Before addressing suffering, submission, holiness, or honorable conduct, Peter anchors the saints in what God has already done because of who God is. New birth, i.e., supernatural regeneration by the Holy Spirit, precedes new living. New life precedes submission. Baptismal identity and union precede obedience.
This order is non-negotiable. When tampered with, manufactured, fabricated, synthesized, or imitated, Christianity collapses into superficial moralism, sacramentalism, or performance-driven religion. Obedience detached from identity is a self-righteousness for self-salvation. It is the rebellion of Genesis 3 dressed up, repackaged, and rebranded as Christianity. But submission detached from regeneration becomes either fear-based compliance or manipulative posturing. Peter rebukes the crafty Serpent's attempts at such compromise and confusion.
“By His great mercy He has given us new birth…”
That statement demolishes every “King Jesus +” theology. New birth is no cooperative venture. It is not initiated by decision, sustained by effort, or validated by outcomes. It is an act of divine mercy grounded in the resurrection of Christ. Saints don't manufacture obedience to belong; we obey because that's who we are in Christ Jesus.
This matters profoundly when Peter begins revealing the nature of submission. Depraved hearts and deaf ears hear “submit” and immediately think in terms of power dynamics, personality, competence, fairness, or worthiness. But Scripture doesn’t start there. Scripture starts with who we are in Christ. The call to submission is not grounded in the virtue of the one being submitted to (e.g., earthly authorities, masters, or husbands), but in the finished work of the One to whom the saint already belongs.
Peter refers to his audience as “elect exiles.” That phrase is not poetic flair; it is theological precision. The elect are chosen, regenerated, secured, guarded, and sanctified by God. Peter reveals that as citizens of heaven, we are exiles—displaced, misunderstood, and often mistreated. Our obedience doesn't flow from either cultural approval or material prosperity; it flows from our baptism-identification-union and election.
This directly confronts the prosperity gospel myth that blessing equals material blessing, physical comfort, and financial peace. Peter explicitly says the saints have been given new birth into a living hope, not a sheltered or insulated snowglobe life. That hope is anchored in the submission, sufferings, and resurrection of Christ... not personal comfort.
The problem with much contemporary Christianity is that identity is treated as fragile and provisional. People speak as if identity must be continually reinforced through affirmation, success, visibility, or control. Scripture says the opposite. Identity in Christ is settled, secure, and non-negotiable precisely because it was established outside of us—in Christ’s death and resurrection. The Apostle Paul said it like this: “I want to know Christ and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to Him in His death, and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead.”
Submission is never a threat to identity. Only counterfeit identities feel threatened or endangered by surrender. When Peter exhorts citizens, servants, wives, and husbands, he is not asking anyone to become something through obedience. He is reminding us of our calling because of our identity: “For to this you were called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, that you should follow in His footsteps.” Saints submit because we are united to our submissive Savior. Saints endure because we have been born again into an inheritance of suffering and submission that cannot perish.
This exposes another modern heresy: obedience as self-expression. The world insists that authenticity means acting in alignment with internal desires. Scripture clearly refutes and rebukes this time and again: “Do not be conformed to this world...” and “See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deception, which are based on human tradition and the spiritual forces of the world...” Scripture reveals that authenticity means living in alignment with our new nature in Christ. “I have been crucified with Christ, and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me.” The flesh screams for self-assertion. The regenerated heart craves obedience because it craves Christ.
Peter says this new birth produces a living hope—but hope for what? Not for immediate relief, but for an eternal inheritance “imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, reserved in heaven” (1 Pet 1:4). That future certainty reorders present priorities. Saints readily submit now because nothing eternal is at risk: “...and the one who has faith in Him will never be put to shame.”
That's why submission is inseparable from hope. Fear-driven religion is unwilling and incapable of submission. Fear clings, controls, and manipulates. But hope anchored in our resurrection-identity frees the saints to obey without Satan's empty promises of fame, fortune, health, wealth, and guarantees. Anything that doesn't flow from faith is sin (Rom 14:23), and faith doesn't manifest as fear.
Scripture declares that identity is a gift, not a reward. New birth is not God’s response to obedience; obedience is regeneration's fruit. When that order is reversed, the Church is either authoritarian or anxious, demanding submission without gospel grounding or avoiding obedience altogether in the name of social justice and compassion.
Peter avoids both errors by rooting everything in regeneration. Union with Christ means the saints share not only in Christ’s benefits but in His pattern of life. Resurrection union produces cruciform living. The same Spirit who raised Jesus from the dead now animates obedience in the saints—not as external pressure, but as divine internal transformation.
This is why Peter can speak of suffering as verifying and validating faith. Trials don't create faith; they reveal and refine it. Submission doesn't manufacture holiness; it exposes identity. When obedience flows from union, it glorifies God because it testifies that Christ is alive and active in His people. Nowhere does Scripture command the church to strive to recover this... the church is simply called to repent... SEVEN TIMES, in fact, in the first few chapters of the book of Revelation. Striving produces the doom of counterfeit disciples through counterfeit discipleship. The Apostle Paul said it like this, “Godly sorrow brings repentance that leads to salvation without regret, but worldly sorrow brings death.”
Only the living Word, applied by the Holy Spirit, creates legit saints who obey from the inside out. So when Peter calls the saints to live honorably among the nations, he is not calling us to performative Christianity. He is calling us to be who we already are—children of God, born again through resurrection power, living witnesses testifying to a Kingdom, and a KING, not of this world.
Submission is not the threat. Suppression is. When sinners suppress the knowledge and reality of God in wickedness (Rom 1:18), it's not merely something they do; it's who they are... who we all were before Christ. Obedience is oppressive to the unregenerate and deceitful heart. When saints reveal who we truly are, obedience is lived in unending worship. That's living from the inside out!
🤺 Action:
Examine the source of your obedience: “Examine yourselves to see whether you are in the faith.” (2 Cor 13:5) Do you obey to secure identity, or because identity has already been secured in Christ?
Test for fear-driven living: “Search me, O God… see if there is any offensive way in me.” (Ps 139:23–24) Where does fear—of loss, rejection, or suffering—shape your decisions more than resurrection hope?
Expose performance-based faith: “Let us examine and test our ways.” (Lam 3:40) Have spiritual disciplines become tools for self-validation rather than responses to grace?
Measure hope biblically: “Test all things; hold fast to what is good.” (1 Thess 5:21) Is your hope anchored in circumstances improving, or in Christ’s finished work and promised return?
🧠Reflection:
New birth changes everything. Imitation changes nothing. If regeneration is real, it reshapes how we view suffering, submission, sacrifice, service, obedience, and identity. We are not working toward acceptance; we're either living it in joyful thanksgiving... or rejecting it. Nobody can obey their way to acceptance and regeneration. If we could... we'd have something to boast about; Christ would be reduced to a way rather than The Way.
Living as upside-down citizens of the upside-down Kingdom of Christ is only odd and disorienting when one finds more comfort and commonality with Sodom and Gomorrah than heaven. Submission flows super-naturally, from the inside out, in the regenerate saints of Christ. Which defines you?
Blessings & love,
Kevin M. Kelley
Pastor
Click >>HERE<< for today's short video devotional.
Click >>HERE<< for Sunday's message from Pastor Kevin.
Comments