Faith is Obedience

My children are out of school, which means they are now bouncing around my house. I work from home, so this means my children are bouncing around me.

In order to help them (and me) through their bouncing days, I find things for them to do. I grant them direction for their copious amounts of free-time. When children act bored in my house, or get too irritating to others, they find themselves doing work.

“Go trim all the grass around the house and the trees.”
“Go clean the porch.”
“Clean your room.”
“Do the dishes.”

How do I know if my kids heard me? Not if they say “Oh, ok dad, I will wash the dishes.” After 13 years of parenting, words from children mean next to nothing to me. I know they heard me when the dishes are done (click here to see that Jesus felt the same way about children’s words!).

I don’t care about a momentary statement made from the mouth, I care about acting on what you heard.

Faith is all about hearing. How do you know if someone heard you? When they do what you said. This obvious point shouldn’t need to be made, but in our day it needs to be.

Too many have the notion that faith is something you did one time when you nodded your head to the facts of the Gospel. But faith is a living reality. “The just shall live by faith.” Paul several times brings up the idea of salvation being contingent upon continuing.

Saving faith is a living faith, it continues and perseveres. It is no temporal, one-time event.

Now, this “faith is obedience” thing is not my theory, this is the testimony of Scripture. Again, from Romans 10 we see it said, “But they have not all obeyed the gospel. For Esaias saith, Lord, who hath believed our report?”

Paul equates obedience with faith. Isaiah did not say, “Who hath obeyed our report” but “believed our report.” This quote backs up his point “have they not all obeyed the Gospel.”

Paul makes this same point a couple other times in Romans when he talks about the “obedience of faith.”

To say you have faith in Jesus Christ means you obey Jesus Christ. This seems all too obvious, but in our day the obvious is under attack by the muddied. Don’t get muddy: hear, believe and obey. Trust me, this is what you will be judged on at Judgment Day.