What Kind Of Obedience?
Too often, when the word obedience is used, it triggers notions of keeping the law. But in the New Covenant, that is not what it is meant to do.
Instead, under the New Covenant, obedience is about aligning ourselves with the gospel. The New Covenant invites us to live in obedience to the gospel.
2Thessalonians 1:6 since it is a righteous thing with God to repay with tribulation those who trouble you, 7 and to give you who are troubled rest with us when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven with His mighty angels, 8 in flaming fire taking vengeance on those who do not know God, and on those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. 9 These shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of His power, 10 when He comes, in that Day, to be glorified in His saints and to be admired among all those who believe, because our testimony among you was believed.
The obedience we are called to in the New Covenant is to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ!
We are to believe on the One the Father sent. This idea of believing is pervasive, too. It is not merely initially believe. It is continuing belief that brings us to a place of trust in Him. It is a relational belief that keeps us connected with Him in an active sense.
Believing the good news of Jesus Christ is our obedience. We maintain obedience by rejecting the notion that we must do something to assist His completed work on our behalf as if He failed in some way to do all that was required of Him.
Our confidence and rest in Him is a display of faith in His finished work on our behalf. Resting from our own works is the greater display of real faith. It is what the letter of Hebrews speaks of, and it is what Israel failed to do when He desired to bring them into the promised land. They would not believe He could give them vineyards they did not plant and homes they did not build. He wanted to give them something wonderful out of His goodness and abundance, and all they could see was hindrance and opposition in the natural, and thus, they believed their own eyes and measured themselves according to their own natural stature and ability. They could not possess in faith what He promised out of His goodness towards them. Therefore, they wandered in the wilderness.
Our greatest act of obedience is to believe Him. Believing Him produces the fruit of being empowered to accomplish His will for our lives according to the working of His mighty power, which works in us who believe. Being at rest in His finished work gives Him glory. Trusting in the good news and believing it so completely that it produces great confidence in our relationship with Him honors Him.
Knowing His love and receiving the bounty of His goodness revealed in Jesus Christ is a testimony of His glory on this earth. Trying harder on our own to merit His affection and favor is an insult to Him. He desires the obedience of a confident belief in the good news of the New Covenant that magnifies Jesus in every way possible.
