The Imperishable Seed

Please help me get the word out about my blog. I plan to put something up most weeks. Today's topic, which I plan to flesh out this week is "The Imperishable Seed."

The Imperishable Seed
Phil Sanders


We are born again of an imperishable seed, the living and abiding word of God. (1 Pet. 1:22-25).

It is a living seed, and that is why it can bring life and can cause one to be born again. Life can only come from life, and an imperishable life can only come from an imperishable seed (1 Pet. 1:23). Our faith is more precious than perishable gold (1 Pet. 1:7). Our hope is living and our inheritance imperishable (1:3-5), all because we have been redeemed not with perishable things but with the blood of Christ (1:17-19).



This seed can only produce after its own kind. Vegetation and trees only produce after their own kind (Gen. 1:11-12). Sea creatures, fish, and birds produce after their kind (1:21). The beasts and creeping things produce after their kind (1:24-25).
Jesus observed that a tree is known by its fruit. “For there is no good tree which produces bad fruit, nor, on the other hand, a bad tree which produces good fruit. For each tree is known by its own fruit. For men do not gather figs from thorns, nor do they pick grapes from a briar bush” (Luke 6:43-44). Plants and animals can only produce after their own kind; this is God’s unalterable law of propagation.

When men add to the imperishable seed, it will produce some other than what the imperishable seed produces. When men take away from the imperishable seed, it will produce something other than what the imperishable seed produces. A seed can only produce after its own kind, and a perverted seed will produce a perverted kind.

But when men preach the pure gospel, unaltered by the traditions or the desires of men, that gospel can only produce what it was designed to produce—children of God, born by the will and purpose of God. The pure gospel alone will produce only Christians, nothing more or less. Anyone who has heard and accordingly obeyed that God-given, God-willed, and God-empowered message is my brother. He is not my brother because I proclaimed him so; he is my brother because God begat him through his imperishable seed. What God Himself begets through that imperishable seed belongs to God; it is produced by His power and with His blessing.

Time will not diminish the power of the imperishable seed. Though we are centuries removed from the first gospel preaching, the imperishable seed can still produce after its kind, and only after its kind.


The edicts of men will not diminish the power of the imperishable seed. Though some man or group of men should make a law respecting what they believe; this will not stop the imperishable seed from producing after its own kind. The imperishable seed is not subject to the will of men; it cannot be. The imperishable seed produces by the will of God (John 1:12-13). The edicts of religious councils and creeds cannot keep the imperishable seed from doing what it was designed to do—produce after its kind. The laws of emperors and kings cannot keep the imperishable seed from doing what it was designed to do—produce children of God, born by the power and in the will of God.

Though the Sanhedrin commanded the apostles not to preach in His name, though emperors have burned copies of the word of God, though a church chained Bibles to its pulpits, and though men have died for translating the Word of God, the imperishable seed remains alive and powerful, fully able to produce after its own kind.

Men cannot overrule God. What God plants cannot be uprooted by men; but what men plant will surely be uprooted by God (Matt. 15:13). Some men deceive themselves in thinking they can plant their own plants and find God’s blessing, but man-made religion has never found the approbation of God. One cannot make the man-made holy any more than Jereboam’s golden calf was Jehovah.

Nor can any man long take that which is right and holy and proclaim it profane. That which God does is not subject to man’s editing. What God has cleansed, no man has a right to consider unholy (Acts 10:15). Conscientiousness is not a license for presumption, and the traditions of the elders will not annul the commandments of God (Matt. 15:1-9). No man has a right to bind what God has not bound, nor to loose what God has not loosed.