Letters to My Grandchildren: The Obedience of Faith

My Dear Grandchildren,

Well, we’ve taken a look at two basic elements of the Gospel, the problem, God’s justice showing as His hatred of us because of our sin, and the solution, believing in Jesus who, as our Savior, has experienced, in our place, all of that hatred.

So, far so good. But now what? How is a Christian, someone whom Jesus has rescued, to live?

There are many good answers to that question. Here’s one: the obedience of faith. I get this phrase from the Apostle Paul.

…we have received grace and apostleship to bring about the obedience of faith for the sake of his name among all the nations… Romans 1.5

Let’s take a look at this. The first thing to do is to define what the words mean.

First, there’s obedience. What’s that? Real obedience (not just going through the motions) is submitting from the heart to another person in order to do what he commands. This is how we are to live, submission to God leading to doing what He commands.

Now, I hope that you noticed that I didn’t describe obedience in terms of following some rules. I didn’t even write that we are to do what the Bible says. Christians are to obey a Person, God, and not a book. To be sure, God uses the Bible. It is absolutely indispensable! (More on this at another time.) But merely obeying a book will not result in experiencing the life of eternity that God promised in John 3.16. Life, real life, comes by obeying a Person, by obeying God (who speaks through that book). There is a big difference between the two, and it would be good if you spent some time thinking about that: obeying a Person versus obeying a book. (How are you doing at this?)

Then, there’s the other word in that phrase, faith. Faith is just a noun form of the verb to believe. And you already know that believing in Jesus is entrusting yourself Him based on what you know about Him. So, the obedience of a Christian is related to the faith of a Christian. It’s the obedience that comes from faith. We obey not because we’re just supposed to but because we trust Jesus.

Now, we can pull these things together. The obedience that is to be the hallmark of every Christian is the obedience that comes from trusting Jesus as He commands us.

There are plenty of times that obedience to Him makes perfect sense. That makes obedience easy. But there are also plenty of times when doing what Jesus calls you to do will be thoroughly confusing. It won’t make any sense. It will be like God telling Abraham to sacrifice his son, Isaac. What loving father wouldn’t be confused by that kind of command? And yet, Abraham obeyed. Based on what he knew about God, he trusted God and obeyed Him. That’s the obedience of faith. There will be times when you will need to obey God not because you understand what He is up to, but because you trust Him.

Now, a question. Why should Christian’s do this? Why should we express this obedience of faith? Paul tells us. Look at the verse again. It’s for ‘the sake of his name among all the nations’. All right, let’s take a look at this.

First and foremost, we obey God for His sake. There will certainly be benefits for us if we obey, but that is not to be the most important reason for us to do this. The point of a Christian’s life is to make God look as good as He really is, or to say the same using church words, to glorify Him. That’s living ‘for the sake of His name’. So, when you are confronted with some difficult command that God puts before you, this is what you tell yourself. ‘I am to do this for God’s benefit, to glorify Him, to make Him look as good as He really is.’ Glorifying God is always the most important thing.

But did you notice how Paul adds,

…among all the nations…

The people around us, ‘the nations’, are watching us. And they should be watching us. We Christians make some very large claims about the Gospel and how life actually works. What good is it to talk about that but not to live it. So, we pursue the obedience of faith so that the people around us who aren’t Christian can see the power of the Gospel of Jesus in action in our lives. And when they see that in us, and how living in this way makes life worth living, they will come to us, asking us how we do it. ‘How is it that your life works while mine doesn’t?’ When that happens, be ready to tell them about Jesus and His Gospel.

You see, it’s as we obey God in the way that Paul has described that we become whole people. Sin does terrible things to us. It messes us up and makes life so confusing. But as we follow Jesus, as we respond to Him with the obedience of faith, He changes things. Bit by bit, He removes the mess that sin creates in us. We, slowly but surely, become what God intended but what we are not now, fully human people. That’s the benefit to us. And our being changed in this way is what makes God look as good as He is. It’s what will make people come to us wondering how it happens. It’s what will give us lots of opportunities to tell them about Jesus.

There are many good ways to answer our question, ‘How is someone whom Jesus has rescued to live?’ This is just one of them. I’m sure that you will encounter other good answers as you continue to follow Jesus.

I think that this is a good place to stop. And I also think that this does it for the topic of the basics of the Gospel. Next time I’ll write you about some other topic.

I love you all.

   Grandpa B

PS Let me know if you have any questions about what I’ve written.