But people are commanded to repent and believe the gospel, so it seems to me the Holy Spirit who himself is the Spirit of Life would have to regenerate a spiritually dead believer prior to his faith and repentance.
I agree that the work of the Spirit must be first. As a well known writer once stated:
Please remember that the first Adam was created as very good. He had a very close relationship with his maker and was provided something that we no longer posses, (
both the ability and liberty to choose either good or evil).
The Bible clearly and consistently teaches (1) man is free to do good or evil, that he is at liberty to do either, but (2) that he is able to do only evil because of his fallen condition. The will cannot escape the moral character out of which it comes. If the soul is entirely corrupt so that its knowledge and desire are defective and rotten, it follows that it will ever
will to do that which is evil.
The
ability to do good was lost with the fall of Adam. Now “every imagination of the thoughts of his heart are only evil” (Gen 6:5). He is
able to do good only as he is regenerated in order that he may again possess the good heart and will and to do God’s good pleasure (Eph 2:1, John 3:3, Phil 2:13).
Yet his
ability is not identical with that which Adam originally had. The regenerate man is not yet
able to do God's will perfectly. He does truly delight in the will of God. He does persist in the way of righteousness. Sin cannot prevail in him as it formally did. But sin is present with him (Rom 7:21). The reason for this is that we are in the process of being made holy.