"Through him we have received grace and apostleship to bring about the obedience of faith for the sake of his name among all the Gentiles," Romans 1:5 (CSB)
"according to the command of the eternal God to advance the obedience of faith among all the Gentiles —" Romans 16:26b (CSB)
Paul, as an apostle to the Gentiles, bookends his epistle to the Romans with a purpose statement of "to bring about (or to advance) the obedience of faith" (Romans 1:5; 16:26) The letter is packed full of doctrine and exhortations on how it should affect and be applied to our lives, but it is of no small consequence that The Holy Spirit inspired Paul to sandwich all of the deeply powerful truth between this phrase - The obedience of faith.
Shortly after being brought to faith, this phrase from Romans 1:5 seemed to leap off the page. I had read the introduction to Romans countless times within the first 39 years of my life, but until recently it was never with unblinded eyes. I had studied Scripture for years, and even preached and taught it over the years, it was more like a math teacher might impart Algebra 1 knowledge to his/her students. Now it is different as The Holy Spirit speaks to me through His Word. This is one of those truths that just recently "clicked" with me - The Obedience of Faith.
I grew up in church. I'm grateful for parents who took me faithfully, and who lived as consistent as I could imagine anyone living out their faith. Sure they made mistakes, I'm not saying they are perfect, I'm saying they are consistent. The church I grew up in, I also believe, was composed of people who sincerely love The LORD. I want to be clear that what I am about to say is not an attack on my parents or those in the church who had always poured their love over me, even when I was quite possibly the most obnoxiously loud and opinionated kid in the congregation. I was raised in a movement that had the tendency to separate faith and works. I believe it was an over-correction in an attempt to avoid propagating a "works-based" salvation; however the movement ended up in an equally unbiblical quagmire of what some like to call "easy believe-ism". The teaching that if you simply ask Jesus into your heart then you're saved, which is a kissing cousin of works salvation. I believe this happened due to a tendency in this movement to focus on the thing they didn't want to be like so much that the standard shifted from being biblical to "be as far away from that thing as we can". Many times this resulted in the movement circling back around and becoming a mirror image of the thing they hated, but since they were a reflection of the reality it seemed hidden from their purview. Enough back story, back to the topic at hand.
The obedience of faith is what Paul, through the power of The Holy Spirit, was aiming at. When one believes on Jesus that entails so much more than merely praying the "sinner's prayer". Wrapped up in coming to Jesus is the realization that we have sinned against The Holy God, our Creator. That we are hopelessly under His judgment and the only means of restoration provided to us, since we are at His mercy, is the atonement accomplished by His Son Jesus - the second person of the Trinity. Through the working of The Holy Spirit (the third person of The Triune God) we take God The Father at His word, and rest upon God The Son's finished work as we repent of our sins. This repentance will play itself out in our life through works as we live for Him, however there is no coming to Jesus without repentance. This is not a thing that may happen later. Biblical faith always has biblical obedience. We cannot believe in Jesus and continue to walk as children of darkness. Our life will change and The Holy Spirit will sanctify us more and more as we progress towards meeting Jesus face to face.
This is not to be confused with a religious moralism; some outward conformity to a standard as a means to visibly provide an observable demarcation between a religious group and the rest of the world. This is not to permit us to say, "God, I thank Thee that I am not like other men" (Luke 18:11) This is not an attempt to convince ourselves that we are truly saved by providing our own proof of acts that we can lean upon. We can only wholly lean on Jesus, anything other than this is sin. The works I am speaking of are the inevitable fruit that The Holy Spirit will produce in our lives as He works in us both to will and to do of His good pleasure (Philippians 2:13). This is the obedience of faith. This is what Paul opens and closes his phenomenal letter to the Romans with. We strive to live for Jesus. We long to obey Him and take great pleasure in walking as He walked (1 John 2:6) , being imitators of our LORD (Ephesians 5:1) for the sake of His name.
This is the obedience of faith.
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