"...whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life." - John 4:14 KJV
Over the past couple of years I’ve noticed that there are many professing Christian leaders who downplay Scripture that teaches us about the importance of rules and obedience in the Gospel of Jesus Christ. I have two major points concerning this. First, such teaching ignores or gives short shrift to God’s transcendent moral law and the sin that it defines. Secondly, such teaching neglects the truth that genuine salvation will always be manifested by good works.
The Bible is clear that the only universal human dilemma that has ever faced mankind is sin. This flies in the face of the many worldviews that tell us that the universal human dilemma is death, or evil people, or even bad weather, just to name a few. This is why the Letter to the Romans, the great theological treatise given to us by our Maker through the Apostle Paul, begins with a description of the sinfulness of mankind. Ever since the Fall in the Garden of Eden when the first humans disobeyed God and sinned, people have been subjected to all kinds of evils by their own doing. “Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all men, because all sinned—for before the law was given, sin was in the world” (Rom 5:12-13).
Many of us were taught early on to recite the following verse: “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Rom 3:23). However, we don’t often discuss sin or talk about God’s holiness, which exposes sin. This tendency is not informed by the Bible, but by our own sinful natures. Look at Romans 1 again and at Paul’s lengthy list of sins coupled with an absolute statement that we are all “without excuse” (1:20), subject to God’s judgment. Carried along by the Holy Spirit, the Apostle speaks at length about sin prior to making a single reference to God’s grace through Jesus Christ. When was the last time you heard a preacher in your church preach on Romans 1 or on the evils of sin in general, prior to preaching on the Good News of salvation through Jesus Christ? When was the last time you heard your preacher talk about how dark the human heart really is in light of God’s glory? I think this topic is most often avoided in an effort to not offend people or to not make them feel uncomfortable or worse yet—guilty. I myself tend to tell people what they want to hear rather than what they need to hear.
But the Gospel of Jesus Christ acknowledges the fundamental guilt of all people, fallen since the Garden of Eden, so if we take steps to avoid any possibility that our listeners feel guilty or repentant, then we don’t preach the full Gospel. At the end of Romans 3, in which we find our evangelism verse (3:23) we are told, “Now we know that whatever the law says, it says to those who are under the law, that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God” (3:19). The Apostle is talking about God’s transcendent law that is written into the consciences of Gentiles (2:15), not the ceremonial law that was given to the Israelites on Mount Sinai. Verse 3:19 makes clear that God’s purpose in giving all people consciences instructing them of God’s moral absolutes, and giving the Israelites the ceremonial law, is to convict the whole world of its guilt before Him.
A look at the beginning of the Apostle Peter’s walk with Christ illustrates this timeless truth. Jesus performed a miracle by filling Peter’s nets with fish. “When Simon Peter saw this, he fell at Jesus' knees and said, ‘Go away from me, Lord; I am a sinful man!’” (Luke 5:8) Overcome with guilt for his own sinfulness, Peter repented at the feet of Jesus Christ. Peter was then introduced to the grace of Christ as He asked Peter to follow Him, and Peter’s life was changed forever!
When Peter preached the first recorded Resurrection sermon in the Bible (Acts 2), his listeners were “cut to the heart” and they asked what they must do. They were convicted of their guilt before God for crucifying Jesus. Any doubt about this is eliminated by the response of the Apostle, who said that the people must repent, meaning confess and turn away from their sins against God (see Acts 2:14-38). The core issue facing Peter’s listeners and every individual in the world today is sin against God. Until an individual is convicted of sin and guilt (i.e. lack of excuse), he or she will not understand the Gospel of Jesus Christ!
In Chapter 6 of Luke’s Gospel, Jesus teaches that all people must love their enemies, avoid hypocritical judgment, bear good fruit, and put His words into practice. Of course, failure to do these things is clearly taught to be sin. Jesus Christ impresses upon all of His listeners the transcendent moral law of God. As Romans 3 and the rest of the New Testament make clear, God’s intention is that sin be put on center stage as the problem confronted by every individual who has ever been born, and this is the foundational element of the Gospel of grace.
Am I saying that we are to try and convict our listeners of their sin by what we say? No. That is the job of the Holy Spirit. Speaking of the Holy Spirit, the Gospeler John says, “When He has come, He will convict the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment” (John 16:8). Aside from being a great example of the significance of man’s inherent guilt in the Gospel, this verse tells us that only God can ultimately bring a person to repentance. How else can we explain the difference between the two thieves crucified alongside Jesus other than the fact that the Holy Spirit convicted one of his sin (“We are getting what our deeds deserve”—Luke 23:41) without convicting the other? As Christians, we must be true to the examples given to us by Jesus Christ, Paul, and the other Apostles, in teaching and preaching about God’s transcendent moral law, sin, guilt, and judgment. The Apostle Paul said, “Imitate me, just as I also imitate Christ” (1 Cor 11:1).
Only in the context of one’s own utter guilt before God can an individual grasp the critical significance of the substitutionary sacrifice of His beloved Son, Jesus Christ, and thus have a transformed life. Why did Jesus Christ die? He “bore our sins in His own body on the tree” (1 Peter 2:24). No other explanation of the suffering and death of Jesus Christ makes sense. The deep knowledge that one deserved the wrath of God that was revealed on Calvary is necessary before one will ever grasp the Gospel fully as intended by God.
In order to not be misunderstood, I want to be clear that I’m not talking about the ceremonial law that includes circumcision, the sacrifice of animals, and special days and weeks that were given to the Israelites. These commands of God were nailed to the cross when Christ was crucified (see Col 2:14). I’m talking about God’s eternal, transcendent moral law, which existed before the ceremonial law was given. For example, as early as at the time of the Great Flood, the Bible tells us, “The LORD saw how great man's wickedness on the earth had become, and that every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all the time” (Gen 6:5). The wickedness that God saw was evident against this absolute law. What were people doing then? They were not loving their enemies. They were being hypocrites. They were murdering, lying, stealing, coveting, yes, they were doing all that we know to be sinful today. When Cain killed Abel, he committed murder and thus broke God’s law. The Ten Commandments give us a very distinct picture of God’s transcendent law. During Christ’s ministry, we are reminded of the law in the Sermon on the Mount, to which I refer above. After Christ, God continues to reveal His transcendent absolutes to mankind through Paul, who describes mankind as follows: “They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice, gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; they are senseless, faithless, heartless, ruthless” (Rom 1:29-31). Paul wrote this after Christ was crucified and the “written code” and requirements of the ceremonial law given to the Israelites were abolished. As we are reminded in Romans 5, sin was in the world from the time of Adam onward.
Sin was and is and will always be defined as disobeying God’s law. I’m not advocating that we follow the “written code” of religious rituals and teach others to do the same; I’m advocating that we follow the examples given to us in the New Testament by teaching about God's transcendent law and about sin and judgment, each and every time we present the Gospel of Jesus Christ and His saving grace.
A good summary of the importance of discussion of God’s transcendent law in the presentation of the Gospel is given to us in Scripture, in Paul’s first letter to Timothy:
We know that the law is good if one uses it properly. We also know that law is made not for the righteous but for lawbreakers and rebels, the ungodly and sinful, the unholy and irreligious; for those who kill their fathers or mothers, for murderers, for adulterers and perverts, for slave traders and liars and perjurers—and for whatever else is contrary to the sound doctrine that conforms to the glorious gospel of the blessed God, which he entrusted to me. (1 Tim 1:8-11)
Paul is not talking about the laws concerning circumcision or animal sacrifice or religious ritual. He’s talking about God’s transcendent law, and we should too, when we tell others about Jesus Christ and Him crucified.
The issue remains of the importance of rules and obedience for the Christian, who has been convicted of his guilt, repented, and trusted in the sacrifice of the Lord Jesus Christ for atonement of his sins.
Well, Scripture is clear: we are set free from our prison of sin in order to enable us to obey God (1 John 2:3) and repentance is proven by our deeds (Acts 26:20). The apostles called their listeners to “obedience that comes from faith” (Rom 1:5) and Paul concluded his letter to Romans with the statement that God brought about the new covenant “so that all nations might believe and obey Him.” For his part, James summed this truth up with his well-known statement that, “Faith without deeds is dead” (James 2:26). Our Lord Himself said, “For whoever does the will of God is My brother and My sister and mother” (Mark 3:35).
Jesus and the Apostles whom Jesus taught make clear to us that Christians will be known by their obedience to God.
What seems to be lacking today in all of the talk about the grace of God is recognition of the result of genuine, saving grace: obedience. For example, some teachers profess to focus on “relationship over rules” and “grace over obedience.” However, such partial focus is not Biblical, for it is clear in Scripture that the very purpose of the Gospel of grace, by which we are saved through faith, is to enable the individual to obey God’s commands and, by doing so, bring God glory. To put it another way, there is no such thing as an individual who has been saved through faith who has no deeds to show for it. There should be some clear differences for the person who was once blind, but now can see. This is not to say that the new Christian should be glorified and live a perfect life on day one of his Christian life—we know this will never happen for any Christian—only that there should be a clear “before” and “after” in the life of every Christian.
Consider this: Paul tells the church at Corinth to “aim for perfection” (2 Cor 13:11). Of course, Paul defines perfection as absence of sin, and the Bible clearly defines sin with many “do’s” and “don’t’s” (as discussed above). This is clearly a call to all Christians to obey God’s absolute and timeless commands. But Paul does not leave it at that, because the Gospel is not just about obedience, it’s also about relationship. Immediately after Paul exhorts his readers to aim for perfection (sinlessness), he appeals to the necessity of relationship and community, as he exhorts his readers to “be of one mind, live in peace.” Rather than couch his teaching in terms of personal relationships trumping rules, Paul combines these two important elements of the Christian’s walk and emphasizes both. There’s no question that this teaching is more challenging than that of “relationships trumping rules”. However, it’s Biblical, so all Christians have to pray and be able to live it out, guided by the Holy Spirit.
The problem is that people will never be able to obey God as God intends through His Gospel of grace unless they have been taught about God’s transcendent moral absolutes. The following Scripture illustrates this point.
For this very reason, make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge; and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness; and to godliness, brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness, love. For if you possess these qualities in increasing measure, they will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. But if anyone does not have them, he is nearsighted and blind, and has forgotten that he has been cleansed from his past sins. (2 Peter 1:5-9)
The reason that a Christian lacks self-control, perseverance, godliness, brotherly kindness and love is that such person is “nearsighted and blind, and has forgotten that he has been cleansed from his past sins.” A person fails to obey God when he has forgotten, or worse yet, never really understood that he has been cleansed from his past sins. If we accept a gospel that does not talk about God’s absolute laws (to which God holds all of mankind accountable), then Jesus Christ and Him crucified would be meaningless to us, as we would not be compelled to give thanks and to show gratitude for His forgiveness of our sins (and “all have sinned”) by obeying Him and His laws—we would be nearsighted and blind.
In sum, God’s rules are not only important for the Christian who seeks to repay God a “debt of love”, but also for the unbeliever who, before he can even grasp the meaning of the Gospel that Christ was punished in his place, must come to terms with how sinful he is in the face of God’s moral absolutes. If you take out the rules, you cripple the Gospel of Jesus Christ and you stymie Christian growth.
Ryan George
Originally published in The Living Water Letter , August 2004,
by Living Water of Washington DC.
Last revised: August 3, 2004.