Obedience Is Hard!

If you think that obeying God is easy, you have never tried it. Hebrews 5:7-8 says that Jesus Himself learned obedience by what He suffered and that in the process, He had offered up prayers accompanied by loud cries and tears. That tells us that Jesus’ temptation, and His triumph over all sin, came as the result of a great personal struggle, as well as great effort. Of course, the Holy Spirit assisted Him and comforted Him. But we should not think that our Lord’s record of perfect obedience came easily. And if it was so for the Son of God, it will also be so for us.

Is Obedience Required?

But how are we to obey? I ask this question because of a series of questions that was asked by the Apostle Paul. Galatians 3:1–3 (ESV):

“O foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you? It was before your eyes that Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified. Let me ask you only this: Did you receive the Spirit by works of the law or by hearing with faith? Are you so foolish? Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh?”

This series of questions can be reduced to one. If you are to become obedient to Christ, will you achieve that through works or through faith? And furthermore, do you think you are saved through faith and then perfected through works? Or to put it another way: Do you think you can obey the commands of God by works? The correct answer must then be that we must not even think we can obey by works. To do so is to be bewitched or beguiled.

Paul’s questions help overcome a common misconception. Many a misinformed Christian has come to the erroneous conclusion that trusting in Christ’s finished work on the cross is a mandate. And obeying Christ in all that He commands us to do is good, but optional. We assume that our obedience has nothing to do with our salvation. Indeed, to insist on it is to fall into the trap of works theology.

Against this view are the troubling words of Scripture. Hebrews 5:9 tells us that Jesus is the source of eternal salvation to all who obey Him. James 2:14 says that faith without accompanying works is a sham. Acts 6:7, when describing the conversion of a number of Jewish priests, insists that their conversions consisted of them becoming obedient to the truth. And Paul himself, the one who taught more about justification by faith alone, also defines conversion as Luke did in Acts 6:7. In Romans 6:17, he writes,

“But thanks be to God, that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed.”

Indeed, at times, the word obedience and the word faith are used, almost as synonyms. But if that is so, then what do we mean when we say there is nothing we can do to earn our salvation, but that we must receive it as a free gift of God in faith in Christ and in Christ alone?

Romans 1:5

There is one sentence that I think profoundly explains the entire ministry of the Apostle Paul. It is found in Romans 1:5, where Paul describes what it is that he has been preaching,

“through whom (Christ our Lord) we have received grace and apostleship to bring about the obedience of faith for the sake of his name among all the nations.”

True Faith

From this one statement, I conclude there are two incorrect ways of understanding the faith, and one correct way. One erroneous way of understanding faith is to proclaim that it means a belief in Christ and in His cross without requiring the confession of our sins and calling Christ Lord.

A second erroneous way of understanding faith is to believe that we are saved by faith, but that we are made holy through our own efforts to be obedient.

The true faith demands that we obey by faith. But what is meant by the obedience of faith? And once we learn what it means, how do we do it? How do we obey by faith rather than by works? In upcoming articles, I wish to show how.