Not a thorny issue

No one who is actually living an obedient Christian life ever wrestles with the philosophical question of the role of obedience versus faith. It would seem a strange and manufactured debate to such a person. To live the life that Christ calls us to is to experience no puzzlement or paradox on that score. If you meet a person who knows experientially what it is to wrestle to the ground and kill unholy desire, you have met a person who is not confused about the relationship of faith and obedience. That person killed the temptation through faith.

That doesn’t stop the “issue” of the respective place of obedience and faith in the Christian’s salvation from being endlessly warmed over and hotly debated in Christian circles and academies, as if it were deep, thorny, controversial, and something we may never hope to get right in this lifetime. We pretend we really want to know answers, but C.S. Lewis, writing in The Great Divorce, showed little patience with such protracted intellectual inquiries that never arrive at conclusions and resolution:

“Once you knew what inquiry was for. There was a time when you asked questions because you wanted answers, and were glad when you had found them. … Thirst was made for water; inquiry for truth. … We know nothing of religion here: we think only of Christ.”

Focus on “Christ” and not on “religion” is the answer. To live conscious of God moment by moment is to cut through the folderol and begin to “walk in newness of life” rather than just talking about it. If you love and fear God, you will want to obey Him. You don’t need to spend another moment wondering which faction is right in the posse non peccare vs. non posse non peccare debate. It doesn’t matter. Each time you are tempted in the course of a day—to say a cutting remark, to retaliate, or to lie or cheat out of fear or self-serving motives—you can think, “I trust God enough to not do that,” and you can refrain. That’s all you need to know. As Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote in The Cost of Discipleship:

“The cross is there, right from the beginning, he has only got to pick it up: there is no need for him to go out and look for a cross for himself. …”

There is no philosophical difficulty in the issue of faith and obedience. The Apostle Paul found faith and obedience easy to talk about in the same breath. He began and ended his letter to the Romans exhorting his Christian readers to “the obedience of faith” (Romans 1:5; 16:26). He didn’t feel that this required a lot of explanation. If you are forever bogged down with the question of how much obedience is possible, you are not thinking about the right things, and you are already defeated before you set out. It is not God’s will that you try to figure out how much sanctification is possible or not; it is His will that you obey and believe.

Let us think like the psalmist in his childlike declaration to God:

“I will give thanks to the LORD with my whole heart; I will recount all your wonderful deeds. I will be glad and exult in you; I will sing praise to your name, O Most High” (Psalm 9:1-2).