Obedience Is Not a Dirty Word

Hi, this is Justin. Today on Theocast, we are talking about obedience. Obedience is actually not a dirty word, though we know that for many of you, your experience with obedience has been hard. You have often been scolded or shamed or motivated by fear.

You've often had your assurance eroded in order to motivate you towards obedience and holiness in the Christian life. But what we're going to do today is, from the Bible and from the perspective of the Reformed Confessions, point people to the reality that assurance and rest and peace in the Lord Jesus Christ actually motivates and propels us forward in pursuing obedience in the Christian life.

We didn't intend for this to happen, but we were really getting ramped up at the end of the regular podcast. The members' podcast is both lengthy and very spirited, and we think quite good. And so if you're not already a Total Access member, you're going to want to go over to theocast .org and get on a 14-day free trial so that you can listen to the members' podcast on obedience.

Stay tuned. Welcome to Theocast, encouraging weary pilgrims to rest in Christ. Conversations about the Christian life from a Reformed perspective. Our hosts today are John Moffitt, pastor of Community Bible Church in Spring Hill, Tennessee.

Jimmy Buehler, pastor of Christ Community Church in Wilmer, Minnesota. And I am Justin Perdue, pastor of Covenant Baptist Church in Asheville, North Carolina. Jimmy, you've got the cultural update today, my man.

What's going on in your world?

What's going on in my world? Let's see. Well, this past weekend, we're about to start school back up in our house. I think you guys started a little earlier than we do down in North Carolina.

North Carolina.

In Minnesota here, we do not start school until after Labor Day. And I'm not really sure why that is. I think it just seems maybe like a natural break. But anyway, so we went back to school shopping this weekend.

And so we have That's always fun. Yeah. Oh, so we did the clothing, the shoes, because we're in the stage where our kids are just constantly growing. And our kids are what I like to call horizontally challenged.

So they are just long and lean. And so finding clothes and shoes for them is a little bit of a challenge. Praise God for the internet, that we can find weird sizes and things like that. So we loaded up all of our kids, took them clothes shopping, took them shoe shopping.

And then we did probably the worst thing on the planet, which is the supplies. You have to go find the supplies. And man, I don't know what it is. But I feel like whenever we do this, it's like the supplies on the list, you can't find.

You can't find anywhere in the store. It's like, man, I can find the 16 count Crayola. I can find the 24 count. But bro, where is the eight count? And so man, it is a test in sanctification for me. Just to rummage through.

And plus, Wilmer is a smaller town. So everybody has the same idea. And everybody's going to the same stores. And so it's like, you walk into Target or OfficeMax or Walmart or wherever, and there's just school supplies everywhere.

It's like post-apocalyptic school supply shopping. So I don't know.

So Jimmy, what you're saying is you're having a hard time obeying the school list that they're giving you?

Oh, wow. Yeah, you did that.

Is that what we're saying?

You did that.

Dad jokes.

The back to school supply list here in Asheville is incredibly exacting, because everything has to be chemical-free and all of these things because of where we live. It's pretty absurd. The standards are rigorous.

Do you guys have organic markers?

I'm sure.

Edible? Edible markers?

Made with only natural dyes.

Non-toxic is just way too low of a bar around here.

Are they gender-neutral markers?

Oh my goodness. Everybody in Asheville has to bring homemade granola. That's part of the school supply list.

That's right.

Bro, there is a place downtown Nashville that is that way. I felt when I was walking around, there's a hemp store. Isn't it kind of like a transient? The people will go out and stay out in the wilderness.

I felt like I found this community of, wow, there's a lot of people who just came from hiking. Am I off? Is that right?

No, you're not off. It's an incredibly eclectic place. Keep Asheville weird is a thing. Everything is organic. It can't have any of these harsh chemicals in it. Every restaurant in the city is farm to table because it's like, well, if you're not doing farm to table, then why be in business and all that.

So it's just the kind of place it is.

Well, when you keep everything weird, then nothing's weird.

Oh, there that is. Yeah.

It seems almost legalistic to live in that city.

It does seem legalistic.

Oh my goodness.

So John, what are we talking about today, man?

Speaking of lists and obedience and legalism, we are talking about obedience in the Christian life. And many of you who are listening to the podcast have either just joined us. This might be episode number one or you've been listening for a long time.

One of the accusations we get here at Theocast over the years is that we're antinomian. And if you don't know what that word means, it's we're anti-law. We think there's no place for obedience or there's no place for law in the Christian life.

And so we wanted to bring some clarity to what is, I think, an abuse of obedience. And then what we would say is joy, delight in obedience. So not dread, but delight. So that's really what this conversation is going to be about is our experience and what we've seen within evangelicalism, within, I would say, conservative evangelicalism, and this draw towards fear and guilting people into obeying God, and how we believe that the Reformed confessions and scripture actually leads the believer to the joy and the delight and rest, actually, in obeying God.

So how there's actually a huge difference between the two. So that's where we're at, guys. Who's going to bring us in?

Happy to jump in on this one. So in many of the contexts that exist in the evangelical world that are pietistic, I think we can say that, we want to be really clear about what we're talking about here.

In those contexts, Jesus is preached. We're not saying that Christ isn't preached. In those contexts, the Holy Spirit is even seen to be central in obedience and sanctification. So we're not saying that the role of the Holy Spirit is somehow downplayed or minimized, but there is practically no outworking of that preaching of Christ and of that seeing the Holy Spirit as central to obedience and sanctification.

Because practically speaking, when you sit in most evangelical contexts these days, you're pounded with law, just absolutely beaten to death with law, and assurance is eroded as a means of getting people to take obedience seriously.

So it's like, hey, let me unsettle everybody in the pew in order to motivate people towards holiness. And as you said already, John, we're going to scold people towards obedience. That's one of the issues, the problems that we're pointing out with our current evangelical moment.

I was joking with you guys before the podcast started about a song I grew up singing, and the lyrics go, obedience is the very best way to know that you believe, which is attaching a child's assurance to their obedience.

So how well they obey is the level of their assurance.

Yeah. Both of you, I think that's dead on. For the average person sitting in the pew, I think this is most likely true, that the law is used as a means by which to motivate, where it's do this. I wouldn't even say the emphasis or the posture is do this and live.

It's do this or die. Obey or die. That can just be so terrifying, and specifically to the person who's sensitive in conscience. I just think of Luther, if you're familiar with Luther's origins and his beginnings.

The brother spent upwards of eight hours in confession because he never felt like he measured up. I remember listening to that story and just identifying with that so much because there's this fear that my life of obedience or my life of disobedience is the measure by which I relate to God.

The Contradiction of Grace Preached and Law Applied

Yeah. I think one of the things that we're.

Pointing out here is the inconsistency that exists in the evangelical world. In particular, there are many guys, many people who rejoice in what we would call the doctrines of grace. They understand themselves even to be Calvinistic and will, on the one hand, herald the glorious truths of the unconditional grace and love of God towards his people.

But then it's interesting. There's a great contradiction in the posture and in the tone of preaching and of teaching and of life in the church because then we herald this unconditional love and grace of God toward the elect on the one hand, but then everything in terms of its practical outworking becomes exacting.

It becomes threatening even in tone. That's one of the things that we're trying to point out here that we want to talk about today in this podcast, biblical motivations for obedience. That's where this conversation will be headed here in just a.

Moment. The tone is, as Justin was just saying, it is subtle. You will hear the gospel and you will hear messages that are invigorating. They are gripping. They bring you close into the cross. They love the cross.

But as we pointed out a couple of weeks ago, I can't remember the exact episode, but it might have been the dark side of Christianity where there is this fear of laxity. There's a fear of laziness. There's a fear that Christians will not take God serious.

Instead of going at the root issue of that, which tends to be, I think, not seeing the glory of God, not seeing Christ clearly, not participating in the sacraments rightly, we counteract that and we use fear tactics.

Instead of allowing your child to feel safe in your home and they feel loved and they feel drawn into your love, you're basically telling your children that they're going to live in a context of fear and doubt.

If you do not perform at a certain level, then there is pending punishment coming your way.

Right. Would you guys say that this is perhaps maybe a byproduct? That kind of tone and tenor of preaching and teaching. Part of me wonders, is this a byproduct of a rugged individualization of the Christian life where we've really divorced the Christian life from the context of the body, the context of the church at large?

I guess what I'm trying to get at is we use this word obedience, and I think a lot of it is so nebulous. If I hear obedience, my specific context and individual Christian life, I'm going to know the things that I'm disobedient in perhaps on a daily basis, which could be different than Justin's, which could be different than John's, which could be different than Billy or whoever.

Insert yourself or insert a different name. But I think one of the things we see in the New Testament, specifically the epistles, is that Paul and the different writers were able to address the various areas that the body was being disobedient in to one another.

What do you.

Guys think about that? No, I think it's what I call the only child syndrome. It's just me and God. We use this language, my personal relationship with Jesus Christ, which is not a biblical term, by the way.

I don't mean those exact words, but the concept of it's just me and Jesus, and we walk in the garden alone, and I'm trying to make sure that he's happy with me and I'm happy with him. It's a horrible understanding of Scripture.

I think it's right, Jimmy. When you have a highly individualized, focused view of your own Christian life, it does very much become this moment where you are analyzing every area of your life, and you're not analyzing it within the context of the church.

I think a lot of sermons even.

Are geared towards that. I think that we have to acknowledge the impact of movements through history in the church as well. You can't have this conversation about even the individualization of the Christian life.

You certainly can't have the conversation about obedience and the transformation of life in our current context without acknowledging things like revivalism and just this emphasis that took place in the history of the church on moral transformation, where the Christian life became, essentially, the understanding is the Christian life is about that.

It's about the moral transformation of the individual. And so, all of these movements through history have contributed to this current moment. And I think, absolutely, you're talking about a context in the West, in America, where we are rugged individualists anyway.

You take with it this kind of idea of moral transformation, and you think about revivalism and its impacts as well in just this kind of decision moment where people are walking aisles and praying prayers and committing their lives to Christ.

And yeah, we end up talking about obedience only in this context of the individual, not in the body of the church, which, again, I couldn't agree more, Jimmy, is the context of.

The New Testament. So, I think we've done a pretty good job over the last few episodes. If you've not listened to the last, I would say, four episodes that Theocast has produced, including our introduction, we've tried to expose what we call pietism, emphasizing our faithfulness, the internal of the Christian life.

And today, really, what we want to turn this conversation is towards a positive approach towards obedience. In other words, how do you see obedience in a way that brings delight, where you're excited about the pleasing God and you're not doing it out of fear because you haven't done it at a certain level?

And so, this is probably a different context for some. Some would even say obedience is a dirty word. If they've experienced grace, and they love grace, they would say obedience is a dirty word. And the should and ams are anti-gospel in a way, I guess.

Justin Perdue. Right. Yeah, I mean, so often.

In evangelicalism, obedience comes across like a trip to the DMV, you know, where you're just, seriously, it's like the last thing in the world that I would want to concern myself with or do because whenever obedience has been talked about or preached or considered, it's always with this threatening, exacting tone, and it sounds miserable.

Whereas in Scripture, obedience is presented as a joyful thing. And as you've already used the word, John, delight. And so, I think it would be good for us to turn the conversation in that direction and help people see biblically and even from the confessions, what are the motivations for obedience that turn it into something that is good and something that is joyful, something that's restful.

We're excited to announce that.

We have a new free ebook available at our website called Faith versus Faithfulness, A Primer on Rest. And we, the hosts, put this together to explain the difference between emphasizing one's faith in Christ versus emphasizing one's faithfulness to Christ, and how one leads to rest and how the other often to a lack of assurance.

And you can get this at theocast .org slash primer. And if you've been encouraged by what you've been hearing at Theocast, we'd ask you to help partner with us. You can do that by joining our total access membership.

That's our monthly membership that gives you access to all of our material that we've produced over the last four years, or simply by donating to our ministry. You can do that by going to our website, theocast .org.

We hope that you enjoy the rest of the conversation. Let me ask you guys this question, and it may seem like a trick question, but it's not. And it's a grounder, and at Theocast, we have rules. You don't throw grounders, but you guys are new, so you get a grounder.

Does God need your obedience? No. That's a weird question. It is. Does God need your obedience? Jimmy, yes or no? I've already said no. Yeah, I think I would say no. Why not?

First of all, I think the witness of the Scripture is that we are the ones in need of what only God can provide. God is not in need of anything that we would bring to Him. This matters for a whole host of things, including how we think about obedience or the corporate gathering or a number of things.

Our obedience does matter. Our lives will be transformed. We have been made for good works in Christ Jesus. God has prepared good works for us to walk in, so those things are going to happen. God is honored in that.

But honestly, those good works and that obedience matter more for my neighbor in life.

On earth than it does for me. What I was going to say is I love the line,.

What God requires in His law He gives in His gospel. When we think about obedience, does God require my obedience? Well, no. But I think, as Justin said, what the Scriptures attest to and even what the Reformed Confessions speak of is that God produces obedience in His children.

Let me just read this. This is the 1689 London Baptist Confession, chapter 16, paragraph 3, where they write this, their ability to do good works. Speaking of Christians, regenerate Christians, their ability to do good works does not arise at all from themselves, but entirely from the Spirit of Christ.

As you think about, again, pushing against this rugged individualism, I think what Justin pointed out so well is that these good works do not exist in a vacuum. If I think about my life and think about the good works that God produces in and through me, it's not just so I can feel good in my prayer closet, but rather the good works that God produces in me benefit my wife, benefit my children, benefit my church, benefit my neighbor.

There is a real horizontal value to these good works that God produces. They don't exist just between me and God,.

But these good works really do benefit people. Here's a second question for you. When we think about the individualization of the Christian faith, where it's me and God, we tend to read Scripture in this way.

Go read Ephesians, Colossians, Corinthians, and the instructions that are given there. It's as if God is speaking directly to us for the application of our own personal life, and we completely remove the context that Paul is writing to a church for the context of a church to be applied and obeyed in the church.

So here's my question. What command has been given, or what sin can you commit that doesn't directly affect? Is there a sin that you can commit that does not affect another human being in your life? It's only an offense against God.

Can you think of a sin?

So my answer again here is no. I think that quickly people want to immediately object and say, well, what about these sins that I commit on my own without anybody else knowing about it? Clearly, that's not affecting my neighbor.

I would just say that's a very short-sighted and naïve perspective because a life lived indulging in the desires of the flesh or whatever is going to inevitably start impacting your neighbor, whether that's your spouse, your kids, your friends, other members of the church, your co-workers.

That is going to manifest itself, and it's going to start cutting people to pieces in ways that you can't foresee, in ways that you don't even realize right then in that moment when you're committing that supposedly private sin.

So if you go and read, just as an example, the latter half of the book of Ephesians, starting in chapter four. So all the first three chapters are the glorious gospel of Jesus Christ. Chapters four on, Paul gives a lot of instructions, but what's interesting about the instructions is that they're not individualized.

They're all dealing with a corporate reality in that if this is true about Jesus, this is what it should look like. He gives some pretty forceful commands and forceful instructions to the believer to be kind and gracious and patient, to be sacrificial, to consider how to build one another up in love and good works.

He never equates that to the believer's assurance. He never equates that to the believer's standing. It's always what I would say the reflection of the gospel. If this is true, this is how it's applied, and it is for the benefit because he says when the body functions properly, what does he say?

It builds itself up in love. So obedience, rightly understood, is not that God doesn't need our obedience. Then who needs our obedience, as Justin said earlier? Our brothers and sisters do, because that's how we maintain unity.

Obedience is the form of unity because we're all sinful people. We have to obey these commands, otherwise it's just going to be highly dysfunctional.

That's right. I think of Ephesians 2, 1 -10. That's a passage that I think everyone loves to quote. It's one of the most clear gospel, God has done this for you in Christ passages in the whole Scripture.

Then we get to verse 10, that we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works. A lot of times there can be almost a, we get to that, and either we do this, well, how does this fit with the rest of that passage?

Or we just hang on that and say, oh, well, this is where we need to live. When you look at the passage as a whole, if you just want to isolate those 10 verses, 1 -4 talks about our dead state before God, that we are spiritually dead apart from Christ.

Then there's that glorious shift where Paul writes, but God being rich in mercy, he then moves us to this reality that God has done this great spiritual saving work in our lives apart from us. We were dead in sin, not just face down in the water, but at the bottom of the ocean, dead in sin, and God has saved us.

When you think about this, this idea that we are created in Christ Jesus for good works, how can you move from this glorious presentation of what the gospel says about us, that we were dead, but then God made us alive?

Then all of a sudden get to this obedience, and it's almost like there's this mental shift where we can falsely believe verse 10 is like God saying, now it's your turn. Your turn. I did my thing. Now it's your turn.

Where in reality, yeah, prove it. Prove that I've done this. You even think about this in Galatians. You who began in the Spirit, are you now going to be perfected by the flesh? No. Again, as the confession speaks, God produces these works,.

This obedience within us. Part of the issue here in our human nature, we've alluded to this in other podcasts, and I'm sure we'll continue to talk about it. The legal spirit is hardwired into our DNA.

For us, naturally, from a human level, we see two primary motivators for obedience. One of them is merit. We're going to earn something. We're going to be rewarded with something. The second is escape of punishment.

For most people, as they think about this obedience question, and you tell me that in Christ Jesus, everything has been accomplished that's necessary for my salvation. He's provided me with all the righteousness that I will ever need, and I am safe.

You have now removed the possibility of merit, and you have now removed the possibility of punishment. Sometimes people look around and say, all right, why obey now? Help me understand why I should pursue obedience if I'm really safe and secure and I can't earn anything.

That's a legitimate question that people always are wrestling with in the church when they hear the glorious gospel of Jesus Christ. To quote the Proverbs,.

The way of the transgressor is hard. I don't know about you, but when sin has had its course, it's not fun. That's not the motivation we're talking about. There is a side of me that says, hey, realistically, if you look at anybody who goes headlong into sin, they're typically not a very happy person.

They might be on the outside, but the results of sin are never satisfying. Unfortunately, all three of us men still sin because we think it will satisfy. Our flesh still desires it. I said this to my congregation recently.

I said, if I had the capacity within me, if God gave me the spiritual gift to love my wife perfectly as Christ loved the church, to be the perfect dad, to be the perfect citizen, to be the perfect pastor, I promise you, if I could do that, I would, because it would bring more joy and less pain in my life, and it would glorify God to the upmost.

But I can't do those things. That's the problem.

So, Justin, to go back to something you said to the person—we're speaking of a hypothetical individual—the person who says, well, if I can't earn anything and if all the punishment has been bore on Christ, which those things are true, then why obey?

When you think about that, that's not an antinomian spirit. That's not an anti-law spirit. That's still a legal spirit. I'm still operating on legal terms with God. If I don't have to fulfill any legal terms, then what the heck?

Why do any of this?

So, biblically, the best place to launch us maybe into the rest of this conversation would be Romans 6, 1 and following. So, when Paul anticipates the objection after he has made the gospel very clear, should we sin all the more that grace may abound, he says, by no means.

And then he doesn't pound people with law. He doesn't give them rules to keep. He doesn't threaten or anything like that. He says, by no means, may it never be, because you've been united to Christ through faith.

And then he goes on to talk about how we have been delivered from the dominion of sin, and we have been set free. We're no longer under law. We're now under grace. And then he says these wonderful words like, thanks be, praise be to God, because you have become obedient from the heart.

So, in one sense, we're answering the question, okay, well, bro, why do I obey? Why obey? Well, because you've been set free and you actually can obey now. So, let's start there. It's good for you. It produces good things in your life, and you actually can now.

So, the question I'm asking is, why would you not obey?

Yeah. The ability that you did not have before, you now have. The ability to obey God from the heart. God has now circumcised your heart, removed the obstinate nature of your flesh, and has given you this ability.

God is producing these things. It's a thing of wonder. It's a.

Thing of glory that God is doing this in you. Well, I think what's hard for the Christian is to not live on a scale-balanced life where we evaluate our intentions, we evaluate our actions. So, if someone feels, and how many of you as pastors over the years have heard, well, I'll get back into church once I what?

Clean up my life.

Right. Clean things up once I'm doing better.

They want to balance out the scales a little bit before they walk into the door, because then they'll say, I don't want God to strike me down. But that's a person not looking in the mirror. That's a person looking down saying, if I just change up my clothes a little bit.

Well, unfortunately, a lot of Christians feel this way, that I don't feel like obeying because I'm so far away. I'm so evil. I'm so wicked. They don't live in gospel. They live in law. So, the motivation is, well, I guess I'll obey once I can clean up these things.

I can fix this bad habit. Then there's a motivation to obey. What we're trying to say is that if you look at the cross, you'll never have the opportunity to look at yourself. You won't live on a scale, and you will just, as much as you possibly can, through the power of the Spirit, you'll say, look, I'm going to obey because it's the right thing to do, even though the scales are tipped in my disfavor.

Assurance, Adoption, and the Ordinary Means of Grace

Yeah. So, I think maybe one of the best passages that's just straight gold when it comes to this question, it speaks to a number of the things we've already raised. Like, why obey at all? Where does the motivation come from?

And it also speaks to this kind of corporate dynamic versus this rugged individualism. So, Hebrews 10, 11 and following, I'm not going to read all these verses, but just kind of a summary. I mean, the writer of the Hebrews is talking about the sufficiency of the sacrifice of Christ.

Like, he made an offering once and for all, and then he sat down because it's over. Like, redemption is done. Verse 14 of Hebrews 10, for by a single offering, he, Jesus, has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified.

So, he has perfected all of us who are being sanctified by the Spirit. And then he goes on to talk about forgiveness and the reality of forgiveness. But then he moves on into this full assurance of faith section where he tells us, because of Jesus and because we have this great high priest and because of the access we have to God, let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith because we've been sprinkled clean and all of these things.

Let's hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering because God is faithful. And here's the thing. Here we go. And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another all the more as you see the day drawing near.

We're motivated by what Christ has done. We're motivated by safety and security and rest and peace. And we do this in the context of the church, seeking to stir.

One another up in love and good works. And so much of this conversation just revolves around the idea of how is it that you relate to God? How is it that we, as Christians, relate to God? And it's not on this legal scheme.

We relate to God on the basis of the blood and righteousness of Christ imputed to us. So there is a little book. I think it might be on our recommended reading site where it's called A Gospel Primer. It's by Milton Vincent.

And there's some little truths in here that are great. And I love one of the things that he writes. So he says this. So how can I come to love God with all of my being? The Bible teaches that genuine love in my heart for God is generated by what?

An awareness of his love for me. And nowhere is the love of God more clearly revealed than in the gospel. So again, to kind of re-drill this in, so much of our posture in this can come from, really, my awareness is God's law for me, what God requires of me.

And this is why you see so clearly in the New Testament these authors, Peter, Paul, the writer of the Hebrews, they are drilling in the sufficiency of Christ, the sufficiency of the sacrifice of Christ on your behalf, because this is where you need to start.

Amen. Yeah, I mean, Jimmy, you're pointing out the reality that we tend to still, even in the church, we tend to still relate to God as judge. Whereas we have been told that in Christ Jesus, by the Holy Spirit, we have been adopted into the family of God, and we now call him Father.

So we've not been given the spirit of fear. We've been given the spirit of adoption by whom, by which we call God Father. So we're not constantly striving and struggling to climb up into our Father's arms.

It's like, no, we're there, man. We are safe and we're secure. And so you're exactly right. Rather than relating to God in these legal terms, we have to understand that God is no longer our judge. He is now our Father,.

And we relate to him in that way. What was recovered, we've said this many times, what was recovered in the Reformation was the doctrine of assurance.

That's right.

You remove assurance. You remove motivation for obedience from delight. And what ends up happening is obedience is to affirm or confirm or assure your salvation. And what we're saying is, no, the Reformation and biblical understanding of Scripture is that the believer is assured by faith in Jesus Christ alone, by God's grace alone, through his power alone, through the regenerating and indwelling of the Holy Spirit.

Once the believer has faith in Jesus Christ, there is absolutely no reason to ever doubt that their sins have been separated as far as the East is from the West, and that our obedience, which is empowered by the Spirit, God looks past all of our sins and sees our affection towards him and sees our desire to love him, which he implanted into us, and the good works which he ordained before the foundations of the world, and uses them for the advancement of the gospel and uses them for the building up of the saints.