Romans Chapter 1
Paul's Gospel, Paul's Testimony Part 5
Faith and Obedience (v. 5-6)
Romans 1:5-6 ...Christ our Lord, 5 through whom we have received grace and apostleship to bring about the obedience of faith for the sake of his name among all the nations, 6 including you who are called to belong to Jesus Christ...
When we come to the subject of sanctification in later chapters, this topic will be greatly expanded upon. Like some haunting theme in the first movement of one of Beethoven’s symphonies, and which will be expanded, developed and resolved throughout the whole piece, we are given the first taste of the coming explanation of faith and obedience (v 5). One without the other is absolutely meaningless. We look at Christ Who had perfect faith and we see perfect obedience. He came not to do His own will but the will of the Father. Perfect obedience. This is the Christ we have received, if we are truly His, and His is the character we will display if we abide in Him. If we love Him we will keep His commandments. If we say we love Him and we do not do as he says we are liars and the truth (which is Christ) is not in us.
But if we say we believe – that we have walked the aisle, prayed the prayer or committed our lives to Him - and yet we still walk as we did when we were pagans then we deceive ourselves. The purpose of faith is to bring about obedience and, by it, holiness. If there is no obedience we need to ask if we truly have saving faith. We need to face this as a people, as a church body and as individual saints.
The doctrine of sanctification (through the obedience of faith) has been all but lost in many of today’s churches – both the traditional and the charismatic churches. It has been replaced with a doctrine that contemplates only God’s love, that tacitly preaches a false security, happiness without holiness and regeneration without true repentance. We will attempt to recover the proper doctrine as Paul develops his gospel in later chapters.
Romans 1:5-6 ...Christ our Lord, 5 through whom we have received grace and apostleship to bring about the obedience of faith for the sake of his name among all the nations, 6 including you who are called to belong to Jesus Christ...
When we come to the subject of sanctification in later chapters, this topic will be greatly expanded upon. Like some haunting theme in the first movement of one of Beethoven’s symphonies, and which will be expanded, developed and resolved throughout the whole piece, we are given the first taste of the coming explanation of faith and obedience (v 5). One without the other is absolutely meaningless. We look at Christ Who had perfect faith and we see perfect obedience. He came not to do His own will but the will of the Father. Perfect obedience. This is the Christ we have received, if we are truly His, and His is the character we will display if we abide in Him. If we love Him we will keep His commandments. If we say we love Him and we do not do as he says we are liars and the truth (which is Christ) is not in us.
And by this we may be sure that we know him, if we keep his commandments. He who says "I know him" but disobeys his commandments is a liar, and the truth is not in him; but whoever keeps his word, in him truly love for God is perfected. By this we may be sure that we are in him: he who says he abides in him ought to walk in the same way in which he walked. {1John 2:3-6}There is no point in beating around the bush. If you aren’t in Christ wouldn’t you like to know right up front so that you can get it put right? We must talk plainly, both inside and outside the church. We speak the truth in love. Speaking in love can mean being gentle, but it never means being equivocal or evasive. The purpose of faith is obedience. Why? Because when we obey God then His will is being done in us and we are vessels of the Living God Himself, given to accomplish His purposes, and invested with all the power of His Spirit, through faith.
But if we say we believe – that we have walked the aisle, prayed the prayer or committed our lives to Him - and yet we still walk as we did when we were pagans then we deceive ourselves. The purpose of faith is to bring about obedience and, by it, holiness. If there is no obedience we need to ask if we truly have saving faith. We need to face this as a people, as a church body and as individual saints.
The doctrine of sanctification (through the obedience of faith) has been all but lost in many of today’s churches – both the traditional and the charismatic churches. It has been replaced with a doctrine that contemplates only God’s love, that tacitly preaches a false security, happiness without holiness and regeneration without true repentance. We will attempt to recover the proper doctrine as Paul develops his gospel in later chapters.
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