The Bible Study Hour

Dr. James Boice: Have you ever wondered what role obedience plays in being a Christian? The Apostle Paul spoke quite frequently about the obedience of faith, but what exactly did he mean by this?

Guest (Male): Welcome to The Bible Study Hour, a radio and internet ministry of the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals, featuring the Bible teaching of Dr. James Boice, teaching you to think and act biblically. Today, we continue our new series in the book of Romans, Part 1, an introduction by examining what Paul calls the obedience of faith.

As we begin our study, ask yourself what role obedience plays in your faith. Is it a necessary ingredient of what it means to be a Christian? The Bible has a lot to say about the kind of faith we need to have if we follow Jesus, but it may be a little different than what you expected. Let's turn now to Romans Chapter 1 and begin our study.

Dr. James Boice: It's a puzzle to me that whenever I speak about the lordship of Jesus Christ, as I did in the last study, stressing that a person must submit to Him and follow Him in order to be a Christian, there are always people who think an emphasis like this destroys the gospel. "If you talk about following Jesus Christ, this is no longer simple faith," they argue. You stress that Jesus must be Lord; according to their view, you inevitably add works as a means of salvation, and that, as we all know, is another gospel which rightly falls under the condemnation of the apostles.

But it's a puzzle to me because it doesn't seem to matter when I stress that the biblical view of faith is a faith that involves commitment or that I stress that all these things flow from regeneration, that you never have justification without regeneration, and that when we're born again, we not only believe but we obey and follow Jesus. At any rate, I think that the Apostle Paul must have had the same kind of problem, if for no other reason than because people are basically the same—all nations, all periods of history.

But I think that as well because of the way the Apostle Paul unfolds his thoughts in these opening introductory verses to the letter to Romans. In the Greek text, these first seven verses are all one sentence, and yet there has been a climax as we have seen at the end of Verse 4 in those great words, "Jesus Christ our Lord." Everything before this has led up to it. Quite rightly, Paul has spoken of his calling to be an apostle, an apostle of the gospel that concerns Jesus Christ, that one who was born of the seed of David according to the flesh and who was declared to be the Son of God in power by the resurrection, that one who is, he says, Jesus Christ our Lord.

That's a natural climax, and it would have been quite right, very good Greek, if Paul had simply stopped at that point and then had gone on in quite another vein to talk about something else. And yet he doesn't do that because having spoken of Jesus Christ as Lord, he goes on to say in a verse that amplifies that before he comes to the wrap-up in Verses 6 and 7, "Through him and for his name's sake, we received grace and apostleship to call people from among all the Gentiles to the obedience that comes from faith." This idea is very important because it has implications for how we understand the gospel and how we engage in our task of evangelizing everyone.

Now, the key words in Verse 5 are those words "obedience" and "faith," and it's important that we understand them. The New International Version translates the phrase "to the obedience that comes from faith," but the Greek text actually says "to the obedience of faith." Now, that phrase can be taken in two different ways. Firstly, it can be taken in the way that I think the New International Version translators do take it—that is, to an obedience that is the result of having faith in Jesus Christ or that follows from faith.

Now, that's not bad, of course, because that is true. When we have faith in Jesus Christ, obedience does follow. And I think that's not the proper way of understanding the phrase, but even if it were the proper way of understanding the phrase, it still makes the point that I'm emphasizing. You see, if we have faith in Jesus Christ, obedience will follow. And if in our lives, obedience does not follow our profession of faith, the faith that we profess, that faith we have, is not the kind of faith the Bible is talking about when it speaks about the need to have faith in Jesus.

It's a dead faith. It may be intellectual assent of a very high order. It may be the kind of intellectual assent, informed intellectual assent, that a theologian might have as he studies the documents and can articulate clearly and effectively what it is that the Apostle Paul is saying. But if obedience doesn't follow, if the life is not changed, that is not saving faith. It's merely intellectual assent, the kind of assent the devils have when they believe and tremble, according to the teaching of the Apostle James.

So, I say even if the phrase does mean the obedience that is the result of faith, which is what the New International Version seems to think, it makes the point I'm emphasizing. And yet, I think the argument is even stronger than this because, in my judgment, the proper understanding of this phrase is not unto the obedience to which faith leads, which is the first interpretation, but rather unto obedience, the very nature of which is faith. That is the genitive, if you know Greek grammar, is a genitive of apposition and not another kind.

We can turn it around and put it this way: we can say "faith which is obedience." Now, this point is so important that I want to take a moment to try and establish it in your minds. I'm going to show why it's important in a minute, but let me establish the proper understanding of the phrase first. And the way I want to do that is by showing that this is the view of all the major commentators. I want to quote what they have to say and, by repetition, get this point across, get it anchored in your mind. I want to start with the more recent commentators and then move backwards.

Firstly, this is the view of Martin Lloyd-Jones. He wrote, "The Apostle says 'the obedience of faith' in order to bring out this point: that he is talking about an obedience which consists in faith, or, if you like, an obedience of which faith is the central principle." Here's John Murray: "It is intelligible and suitable to take faith as in apposition to obedience and understand it as the obedience which consists in faith. Faith is regarded as an act of obedience or commitment to the gospel of Christ."

Charles Hodge wrote, "The obedience of faith is that obedience which consists in faith or of which faith is the controlling principle." Robert Haldane expressed his view like this: "The gospel reforms those who believe it, but it would be presenting an imperfect view of the subject to say that it was given to reform the world. It was given that men might believe and be saved. The obedience then here referred to signifies submission to the doctrine of the gospel."

Frédéric Godet said, "The only possible meaning is the obedience which consists of faith itself." Martin Luther contrasted Paul's statement with merely human arguments. Paul here speaks of obedience to the faith and not of obedience to such wisdom as first must be proved by arguments of reason and experience. It's not at all his intention to prove what he says, but he demands of his readers implicit trust in him as one having divine authority.

Finally, here's John Calvin; he always sees the issue clearly. "By stating the purpose of his call, Paul again reminds the Romans of his office, as though he were saying, 'It is my duty to discharge the responsibility entrusted to me, which is to preach the word. It is your responsibility to hear the word and wholly obey it, unless you want to make void the calling which the Lord has bestowed on you.' We deduce from this that those who irreverently and contemptuously reject the preaching of the gospel, the design of which is to bring us into obedience to God, are stubbornly resisting the power of God and perverting the whole of His order."

Now, I've taken a good bit of time to emphasize the point and do it in that way simply because this is so very important. It's important when we contrast what Paul is doing with the way we normally or habitually present the gospel of Jesus Christ in evangelistic meetings and in personal evangelism today. Why is it that we usually present the gospel? It's true, isn't it, that we usually present it as an offer—something which, in our judgment (and we're quite right in this), will help the people to whom we present it if they'll receive it.

It'll give them wholeness of life, happiness, joy, turn them from sort of things that are harmful to them. But we present it as an offer, as an invitation, which they are at perfect liberty to refuse if they choose to refuse it. Sometimes people say the Holy Spirit is a gentleman and He would never think of coercing anybody. Well, the problem with that, you see, is that it doesn't come to terms adequately with the nature of sin.

What is sin—the sin that we're to turn from in order to believe in Jesus Christ? Well, it's not merely something that makes our life miserable, though it is that. It's not merely something that keeps us from our fullest potential. It's not merely something that harms other people. It is all that, but it's much more. Sin primarily is disobeying God. Sin is rebellion against God. And God, because He's the sovereign God, has the right, and as a matter of fact does demand, that we turn from it, that we turn from disobedience and instead of disobedience, obey Him.

When we fail to present the gospel in that manner, we actually distort the gospel and pretend that sin, in one way or another, really doesn't matter. The Apostle Paul preached the gospel in this way, and it's worth thinking about that. We sometimes overlook this because of our own weak methods. But just think for a moment about how Paul talks of what happens when the gospel is preached and men and women respond.

I think, for example, of the 17th chapter of Acts and the conclusion of that great sermon he gave in Athens to the Greeks. He began by talking to them about the unknown God that they ignorantly worshiped, and he said, "You've done that in ignorance, but this unknown God is now made known to you. He's revealed himself in Jesus Christ." And when he got to the end of the sermon, he summed up his points like this: "In the past, God overlooked such ignorance, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent, for he set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed."

In God's name, Paul, you see, was commanding the Greeks to turn from their sin and believe in Jesus Christ. We find the same thing in Romans. In the sixth chapter, later on, we're going to come to it in the course of our study. You'll find Paul summarizing the response of the Roman Christians to the gospel by saying, "Thanks be to God that though you used to be slaves to sin, you wholeheartedly obeyed the form of teaching to which you were entrusted."

Or in Romans 10, where he's writing about Jewish unbelief, he said, "They have not obeyed the gospel." Or again, "They did not submit to God's righteousness." I take you to one more text at the very end of Romans, in that great benediction that concludes the book. Paul, as it were, reflects back on the kind of things he says at the beginning, and the same terminology we find here in his introduction to the letter is there when he concludes.

And this is what he writes: "Now to him who is able to establish you by my gospel and the proclamation of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery hidden for long ages past, but now revealed and made known through the prophetic writings by the command of the eternal God, so that all nations might believe and obey him. To the only wise God be glory forever through Jesus Christ. Amen."

In my opinion, the weakness of much of our contemporary evangelism can be traced to a deficiency at exactly this point, a deficiency in the way we regard sin. Because, you see, when we fail to present the gospel as the command of God to turn from sin and have faith in Jesus Christ, we minimize sin, we trivialize discipleship, we rob God of His glory, and we delude many people into thinking that they're Christians when actually they are far from the kingdom and are lost.

But now, let me deal with a problem. I would anticipate an objection at this point by some who know some theology and who are well aware, as we will find as we go on in Romans, that the Apostle Paul is going to stress later on that we are so entrapped in sin, apart from the grace of God, that it is impossible for us to respond even to the preaching of the gospel unless God first of all does a great miracle in our hearts.

People who are aware of this say, "Well, if that's the case, if we're unable to respond even to the preaching of the gospel apart from God's work by the Holy Spirit, how is it that God can command us to do it? How can He command us to do something that we cannot do? That just doesn't seem just or right." This is the problem, you may recall, that bothered Pelagius. Pelagius, who introduced a deviant theology in the 4th century and, as a result, got into that great clash with Saint Augustine—much of his writing was against the Pelagian mistakes.

Pelagius said, "If we're commanded to do something, we must be able to do it. 'Ought' implies 'can.' Therefore, we must have ability." What Pelagius was doing, you see, was dealing with the problem many people deal with today but in a different way. Today, you see, we throw out the idea of the command, but in Pelagius's theology, he threw out the idea of inability. He was well aware that God commanded us to do certain things, but he argued, "Well, if God commands it, we must be able to do it," and so he said, "We can."

The problem was that Pelagius didn't understand the nature of the inability, and he would have understood it a lot better if he had actually thought a little more deeply about God's command. The point, you see, is that there are different kinds of inability. There is such a thing as physical inability, for which one is not accountable. If a person were paralyzed and we would say to them in the name of God, "Now, get up and come over here; we have something to tell you," they couldn't do it, and they wouldn't be blameworthy because of their inability.

It's physical; there's nothing they could do about it. That's one kind of inability, but that's not the right analogy to what is involved spiritually when we are told that we can't seek or find or understand God. What's involved here is a moral inability. That is, it's not that we're physically unable to believe, but that we are morally unable to believe because we don't want to believe. We don't like the God who is there; we don't want to submit to a God who exercises His lordship over us through Jesus Christ.

We want to be our own God; we want to be our own Lord. And so, morally, we are resistant against God's commands over us, and we don't respond for that reason. Let me give you an illustration of that. Jonathan Edwards, probably the greatest theologian that America ever produced, wrote a great treatise on the freedom of the will. Edwards wanted to say in that treatise, and did say, that which all the great giants of the faith, the great theologians back through the centuries, had been saying, namely, that we are unable to come to God unaided by the Holy Spirit.

But Edwards clarified the matter by a very careful definition of this freedom or bondage of the will. He said, "You see, it's not that our will actually is bound; it's that our nature is corrupt." And that's why we're blameworthy even though we can't, in a certain sense, respond. And then he gave this illustration. He said, "Here are two men. Both of them are prisoners. One is in prison having rebelled against his rightful king, having been a traitor, and in this sad state, imprisoned behind strong doors and iron bars.

His king comes to him and says, 'I want to forgive you, and if you'll come forth from the prison and fall before me and ask my forgiveness, not only will I forgive you, I will restore you to your place, and I will show great mercy to you. I'll give you great honors and riches.' The man is of a repentant spirit; he wants to do that, but he's unable to respond to the king because he's confined within the prison. There are strong doors and iron bars."

"That's one case. Now," says Edwards, "consider the second case. Here is a man in the same situation. He too has rebelled against his king; he is imprisoned. The king comes to him, and now, instead of merely speaking, the king causes the jailer to throw the door open, to remove the bars, to unlock the chains, and then standing before him, he calls him to come forth and fall down and ask his forgiveness, promising that if he does so, he'll bestow great honors and riches upon him and restore him to his lost condition.

But," says Edwards, "this man is of such an obstinate spirit, so hostile against his king, so bent on his treacherous and rebellious ways, that he will not do it. The doors are open, the king stands, the offer is presented, but he will not do it. He will not bow. He holds himself back, haughtily resisting the grace of this most gracious sovereign."

"Now," says Edwards, "certainly anybody can understand the difference between the two illustrations and understand that the nature of the inability is quite different in the one case from the other." Whenever we come across an illustration like that, our first instinct is to say that it's not true of us. We're not like that rebellious, stubborn prisoner who has the opportunity to respond but won't do it.

And yet, that's precisely what the Bible says we are like. That's the nature of sin. That is the essence of our rebellion. And so when the gospel is presented, one way in which it must be presented is as God's command. Only that really stresses how dreadful sin is and tells us what must be done if we would be freed from sin and find salvation in Jesus Christ. The command is essential.

And yet, I want to say one other thing. It is true that the gospel, the offer of the gospel, is a command. But notice: it is a command that is presented in the context of the gospel. The gospel is not bad news; the gospel is good news. Above all, the gospel is good news about the grace of God. I suppose that's why the word "grace" appears here in Verse 5 for the very first time in the letter. It's going to appear again, as a matter of fact; we're going to find it two verses later, in Verse 7.

"Grace and peace to you from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ." In all, it occurs 22 times in the book of Romans. It's one of the great theological terms of the book; it's one of the great theological concepts of the Christian faith. Grace. And here Paul speaks of the grace that he received, saying, "We received grace and apostleship to call people from among all the Gentiles."

What is grace? Grace is sometimes described as being God's unmerited favor or God's favor to the undeserving. That's true, of course, but it's actually more than that. It's not just that God shows favor to the undeserving; God shows favor to those that deserve the precise opposite. What we deserve is hell. What we deserve is God's fierce wrath and condemnation. Instead of wrath, we find love; instead of condemnation, we find the gospel, we find salvation. The grace of God presented to us at the cross of Jesus Christ.

I don't know what was in Paul's mind as he wrote these words. I only know what I read in the text, but I suspect that what Paul was thinking of as he began to write about the lordship of Jesus Christ and obedience to the faith, realizing that we must obey but that we don't naturally do that, was God's grace to him as he thought back on his own experience. Paul gives a clue to his thought, I believe, in 1 Corinthians 15, in those verses in which he speaks personally after having spoken of the great doctrines of the gospel, focused in the fact that Jesus died for our sins according to the scripture and was buried and rose from the dead according to the scripture.

And then as he goes on to say, "Was seen of the apostles and of James and of upwards of 500 brethren at once," and then he says, "Last of all to me as one born in due time." And then he says this: "For I am the least of the apostles and do not even deserve to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. But by the grace of God, I am what I am, and his grace to me was not without effect."

Like all who are truly converted, Paul could never forget what he had been apart from God's grace. He had been self-righteous, he had been cruel, he had been fighting against the goads of God in his conscience. He had been trying to destroy God's work by his persecution of the infant church, but God had stopped him in his tracks and had brought about an utter reorganization of his life. Before, he had been disobeying God. Now, that rebellious, haughty spirit was broken, and he found himself on his knees before Jesus, whom he had been persecuting, saying, "What will you have me do, O Lord?"

You see, the only thing that can produce a change like that is the grace of God. And so, when we produce our messages and when we proclaim the gospel, it's with the knowledge that it's only the grace of God that brings anyone to obey Jesus. And there's one other thing. Not only is this important to the gospel, it is the chief motivating factor in those who take the gospel to the world.

I guess that's why Paul also mentions his apostleship again at this point. He's done it once already, Verse 1: "Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle." Here he speaks of grace and apostleship, mentioning the apostleship once again. We're not apostles as he was, but we have an analogous function. We too are to take the gospel to the world. How is it that we're to do that? What is going to keep us doing that in the midst of opposition and hardship and ridicule and sometimes even outright physical hostility and reproof?

Only one thing that'll do it—it's a knowledge of the grace of God toward us, the love of God toward us, which when we were just like those to whom we speak, hostile to God, God reached out and saved us and did so by the proclamation of the gospel itself. The Apostle Paul talks about it in another book where he says, "The love of Christ constrains us." That's what causes us to go out with the gospel. That's the only thing that will, but it's that that God blesses as we take the gospel to the world.

Let us pray. Father, we ask you to bless these truths to our hearts. It may be the case for some that they have heard the gospel and have assented to it, but really are not obeying Jesus Christ and have no real intention of doing so. They're just going their own way. Disabuse them of any idea that just because they've mouthed the few words, it's all right with their soul, and place a burden upon them to seek you while you may be found and experience that regeneration that redirects one's whole purpose in life.

It may be also that a number of us have just been treating the gospel lightly. We talk about it as if it's an easy thing and present it to others that way, and so contribute to their delusions. Father, forgive us for that and give us an ability to see things clearly and present them clearly and winsomely so that as the gospel is being presented as you desire it to be shared, that those who hear it by your grace might turn from their sin and actually obey Jesus in that obedience which is also faith. We pray for great blessing in our day and great obedience to Jesus. We pray in His name, amen.

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