PERFECTION AND SALVATION ARE ROOTED IN THE "OBEDIENCE OF FAITH"

 

The statement “you are to be perfect” (Mathew 5:48) is in the imperative mood, indicating a command. Hence it has to do with salvation, for obedience to God is essential for salvation.

Paul’s letter to the Romans is the only systematic exposition on salvation in the New Testament. Significantly, Romans has the phrase “the obedience of faith” at its beginning and its conclusion (Romans 1:5; 16:26). Faith is not saving faith unless there is obedience. To address God as Lord and yet refuse to obey Him is to make a mockery of professed faith.

Perfection as it concerns us in the present time is primarily an attitude of the heart (the second type of perfection mentioned in Philippians 3). That is precisely what the obedience of faith is. Romans 6:17 says “you became obedient from the heart” to God’s word, so you were set free from sin and became slaves of righteousness (v.18).

Let us look at the whole passage and note the repeated occurrence of the words obedience or obey, and slave:

Do you not know that when you present yourselves to someone as slaves for obedience, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin resulting in death, or of obedience resulting in righteousness? But thanks be to God that though you were slaves to sin, you became obedient from the heart to that form of teaching to which you were committed, and having been freed from sin, you became slaves of righteousness. (Romans 6:16-18)

This passage shows that obedience is the basic character of the spiritual life because the hard reality is that everyone in this world, without exception, is a slave to something. But the good news is that God has given us the freedom to choose whose slave we will be; slaves don’t normally have such a choice. We can choose to be enslaved to sin or to righteousness in Christ, to obey the one or the other. Paul also puts this as a choice beteen life and death. If we acknowledge Christ as lord and we as his slaves, we would gladly obey his commands, not least because he loved us and gave himself for us to deliver us from sin.

Written by: Chang, Eric H.H.Chang: Becoming a New Person - Volume 2: What the Bible Teaches About Regeneration, Renewal, and Christ-Likeness.

I highly recommend that it would be of great value to the read both volume 1 and volume 2, of Eric H.H. Chang's "Becoming a New Person" If you read and apply all that is written in both volumes, you will indeed become a new person! Bruce Lyon