Ok, these prepositions are kind of awkward, I’ll admit. But I think we need some definition and order in what we say sometimes, and perhaps awkwardness sometimes catches people up enough to open a perspective shift possibility.
So, obedience is doing what you are told, right? And obedience to God would then be doing what God tells you to do. It’s impossible to please God without faith (Hebrews 11:6), and faith without works is dead (James 2:14).
BUT.
There is an order to this, and we often get it wrong. My friend and mentor Mike Wells had a great illustration for this, where he would demonstrate that giving all the numbers of his telephone number in no particular order did a person no good if they wanted to call him. You have to have the numbers in the exact order in order to connect with a person with a phone call. Just a bunch of random 7’s, 2’s and 0’s doesn’t help you at all!
In the same way, we have to get the order right in our relationship with God.
First, comes His reaching out in overwhelming love to make a way for us to become adopted and new. Obedience does not mean we deserve this—we can’t do enough to deserve it. Instead, you must choose to believe Jesus is enough and has changed you in His gift of salvation. That’s it!
Then, and only then, can we be obedient. Obedience is not adhering to the law, but rather responding to what God asks of us—a heart turned towards Him. And the obedience becomes a natural outflow of the life of Christ within us. Jesus has paid for our sin and freed us from it, and He has given us His Life and Spirit so that we can actually live in a manner pleasing to God. He has provided the means for all of it. Our choice is the only thing that we really need to make, and then acknowledge the rest in Him.
Guilt and fear are terrible motivators, and we often use them to try to keep ourselves or others from living immorally. The problem is that moral living is not God’s desire—it is complete transformation. I love Ravi Zacharias’ quote “The Christian faith, simply stated, reminds us that our fundamental problem is not moral; rather, our fundamental problem is spiritual. It is not just that we are immoral, but that a moral life alone cannot bridge what separates us from God. Herein lies the cardinal difference between the moralizing religions and Jesus' offer to us. Jesus does not offer to make bad people good but to make dead people alive.”
Cleaning up a dead person by obeying a moral law does nothing for their relationship with God. And trying to obey God while not acknowledging our weakness and His strength therein just makes us exhausted. We are striving for something we already have. His Life within us, as we turn and acknowledge our need, brings natural obedience to God. Our hearts become soft as we recognize the gift of relationship first, with life change being a natural outflow.
We must get the order right, or we end up in frustration and overwhelm. First, Jesus makes us new when we accept His breaking the chains of sin that entangle us. Second, obedience flows out like fruit on a vine because it is the fruit of His Spirit within us. Being moral is not obedience.
But now, independently of the law, the righteousness of God is tangible and brought to light through Jesus, the Anointed One. This is the righteousness that the Scriptures prophesied would come. It is God’s righteousness made visible through the faithfulness of Jesus Christ. And now all who believe in him receive that gift. For there is really no difference between us, for we all have sinned and are in need of the glory of God. Yet through his powerful declaration of acquittal, God freely gives away his righteousness. His gift of love and favor now cascades over us, all because Jesus, the Anointed One, has liberated us from the guilt, punishment, and power of sin! Romans 3:21-24