The Obedience of Faith

"Paul, a bond-servant of Christ Jesus, called as an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God, which He promised beforehand through His prophets in the holy Scriptures, concerning His Son, who was born of a descendant of David according to the flesh, who was declared the Son of God with power by the resurrection from the dead, according to the Spirit of holiness, Jesus Christ our Lord, through whom we have received grace and apostleship to bring about the obedience of faith among all the Gentiles for His name's sake, among whom you also are the called of Jesus Christ; to all who are beloved of God in Rome, called as saints: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ." (Romans 1:1-7, emphasis added)

"Now to Him who is able to establish you according to my gospel and the preaching of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery which has been kept secret for long ages past, but now is manifested, and by the Scriptures of the prophets, according to the commandment of the eternal God, has been made known to all the nations, leading to obedience of faith; to the only wise God, through Jesus Christ, be the glory forever. Amen." (Romans 16:25-27, emphasis added).

"The obedience of faith." Paul uses this strange phrase to open his letter to the Romans and to close it. We tend to think of obedience as something that we do: "the actions that we perform, these are the evidences of our obedience." But does God, in fact, look for something else and the actions are in a way incidental?

In that same Romans letter, Paul quotes from the Old Testament Scripture regarding Abraham: "Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness" (Romans 4:3, emphasis added). So we see that Abraham's obedience was not external, but internal: he had faith in God. The result was a righteousness that he did not naturally possess. One might even say that the righteousness was incidental to the believing. Faith is obedience. "It means I believe what He says He is. What’s He saying, what’s the truth? I’m believing in Him in different operations, that’s all," as Norman Grubb used to say.

So what is God really looking for? For years I always thought it was my performance; He wanted me to do things for Him. Now I find that that's not necessarily so. What He's interested in is the fact that I believe Him, that I consider Him trustworthy, that I consider His word reliable because He said it. This is where my obedience truly lies, not in the outward things. To quote Grubb again: "It is the one and only basic obedience of the believer--that 'obedience of faith': not of works or some outer activities; no, of faith--which simply means inwardly committing myself to something (Someone) whom I now take to be total reality to me."

And this is where so often Satan speaks his insidious lies: that God is not trustworthy, that He doesn't have my best interests at heart, and that He is a harsh taskmaster serving only Himself. These are the same lies that he used back in the Garden of Eden. He is always seeking to undermine our confidence in God because he knows if he has that he has everything.

"Get up and do something!" he will scream even as the days or years go by in our waiting for God. But when we have the inner eye of faith we realize that our faith is the obedience, that it's the Spirit who gives life, the flesh profits nothing (John 6:63). In union with Him, we are His expression, we are Him in motion--whether that motion appears visible to the physical eye or not--for God is always a God of expression, of motion. We realize this and can turn a deaf ear to Satan who calls to us and pulls on us to do something.

Our attention is fixed on the object of our faith: the Lord Jesus. With singleness of eye we see only Him (Matthew 6:22, authorized version) and our lives hidden in Him in God (Colossians 3:3). In this same faith, Jesus could rest when His friend Lazarus was dying despite the fact that He would be criticized for His waiting by those who were closest to Him (John 11). In this same faith, Jesus could sleep in a boat in the midst of a storm (Matthew 8:24) and Peter could sleep soundly the night before his supposed execution (Acts 12:6).

We will experience all the bodily and emotional pulls of living in this world as well as the difficulties that go along with following the One who went through them all Himself (and continues to go through them in our form): affliction, perplexity, persecution, being struck down (2 Corinthians 4:8-9). All with the luxury of realizing that we don't need to be anything more than earthen vessels. And with what result? We find that we are not crushed, not in despair, not forsaken, not destroyed--in the midst of death manifesting the life of Jesus through our bodies for others (2 Corinthians 4:7-12). God can only express Himself in life for others when He finds the human agent for His expression: you and me. "But having the same spirit of faith, according to what is written, 'I believed, therefore I spoke,' we also believe, therefore we also speak, knowing that He who raised the Lord Jesus will raise us also with Jesus and will present us with you." (2 Corinthians 4:13-14, emphasis added).

So, in the final analysis, the obedience of our faith in Him is what God requires. He will accomplish all the visible doing that proceeds from (and along with) that with the result that life will flow to others--for others are always His interest even as we are to Him.

This is a tremendous revolution in our thinking. There is a rest as well as obedience in faith that does not exist in endless doings. This is the practical outworking of that tremendous verse in Hebrews 4:10.

I'm learning it and finding rest for my soul (Matthew 11:28-29). Since "there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God" (Hebrews 4:9) let us enter it. Why did the original hearers fail to enter that rest? Because of disobedience (Hebrews 4:6). What disobedience? The disobedience of unbelief (Hebrews 3:18-19). ". . . the word they heard did not profit them, because it was not united by faith in those who heard" (Hebrews 4:2, emphasis added). So this was their disobedience rather than their "obedience of faith."