As I close out this series the news stays bad: a Supreme court appointee with an undoubted radical left agenda, bailouts of other countries that can only spell further disaster for our own, oil gushing up into the Gulf bringing with it wildlife sorrows and even worse, fuel for environmentalists’ rhetoric (most of whom scream more loudly for the little fishies of the sea than for the little babies in the womb), Time Square bomb plots (foiled not by security skill, but only by providential mercy), immigration battles that seem strangely lacking in both wisdom and compassion–when solutions are available if only leaders had guts and compassion enough to implement them, and an arrogant President and set of leaders that simply demonstrate no fear of God in anything they do. And on fronts closer to home–neighbors, family members, and friends all continue to choose sin over holiness, garbage over purity, the way of the flesh over the way of God.
In times like these Psalm 37:1-40 remains a good go-to scripture. As we take one last look at this Psalm in which we receive divine guidance for living when thugs and thieves rule, it’s enlightening to note that one of the core commitments we need to make is to simple obedience to God’s Law. Psalm 37:34 exhorts that we “keep his way”. Psalm 37:37 reminds us to observe the blameless and upright, with an implicit challenge to imitate their ways.
In times like these what each of us needs to be and what the world needs to see, is a Christian who lives a simple, straightforward, consistent life of obedience to God, come what may. Thugs and thieves above and around us are not going to pay us any mind when we decry their violation of God’s Law, while all the while we’re consistently and willfully violating it ourselves. Friends, we hear far to little about (and we see even less of) obedience these days. Christians are so obsessively concerned to avoid sounding the least bit legalistic that they are paranoid about proclaiming Law of God, and our call to obey it.
Today’s world needs some radically obedient Christians. Men and women who do what they’re told by God because they have a passion for the holy honor of God. Gutsy, humble, bondslave, do-as-I’m-told obedience is out of fashion, having been replaced by warm and fuzzy ideas about simply “loving God and wanting to be so close to him that I naturally do what he likes.”
Don’t get me wrong: obedience done grudgingly or obedience done in an attempt either to gain or maintain God’s favor is a denial of the gospel and an undermining of the grace of God in Christ. But any notion of Christian faith that does not include a robust commitment to obedience is simply biblically defective. A recent conversation about these matters led me to write the following:
No one believes more firmly and joyfully in the free grace of the gospel than I do, but if by free grace one means that there is no need for moral transformation than I would disagree. And if one thinks that such transformation can come about without a serious commitment to obedience then I disagree. If one wants a faith without Divine law or moral imperatives or consistent spiritual disciplines or rigorous self-denial or sin mortification or strenuous work or pastoral authority or church accountability than one will have to look elsewhere than in the NT. For no such faith exists in the pages of the Scripture.
If you want faith without works, grace without work, holiness without effort, love without obedience, godliness without sweat and tears, strength without exercise and diet, victory over sin without hand-to-hand combat to the death with sin, and/or maturity of character without strenuous self-discipline with endurance over the long haul, then you want something other than New Testament faith. What you want is not biblical Christianity, but spiritual hocus-pocus; a magical sin-disappearing act for the soul.
Christian friend, we have no hope of being light in a dark world unless we are living lives of consistent, principled, deliberate, love-motivated, sweat and tears obedience. Thugs and thieves will mock our righteous indignation over their despising of God’s Law as sheer hypocrisy if we don’t live our own lives under God’s Law, and they’d be right.
It’s shocking: there’s something about hearing indignation from cursing, lusting, lazy, time-stealing, Bible ignoring, God’s name-taking-in-vain, trash-watching, parents-dishonoring, and gossiping, slandering, coveting “Christians” that sounds just a little bit hollow in the world’s ears. Go figure.