Tuesday, February 1, 2011

Obedience of Faith

When Paul writes his letter to the Christians in Rome, he uses in an interesting phrase both at the beginning and the end. In his introduction, he states that his purpose is "to bring about the obedience of faith among all the Gentiles for His name's sake." In closing, he indicates that the message of Jesus has been revealed to all, "leading to the obedience of faith." What does Paul mean when he uses this phrase, "obedience of faith?" What was Paul trying to bring about with the Gentiles and what exactly did he believe the message of Jesus lead to?

I would suggest that Paul is talking about the same thing that another Biblical author, James, says when he declares, "faith without works is dead." James explains himself: "But someone may well say, 'You have faith and I have works; show me your faith without the works, and I will show you my faith by my works.'" He goes on to offer an example of Abraham demonstrating his faith by offering to sacrifice Iassic when God had promised that his descendents would come through Iassic. Abraham's faith, James indicates, is manifest in his behavior. When you believe something, James is saying, you behave in such a way that validates that belief. That is the same thing Paul is saying when he says, "obedience of faith." If you truly believe in the message of Jesus, you will follow his teachings. You will obey him. Your behavior follows your beliefs.

Have I gotten lost in the wrong blog? No, this is still consumer psychology. I think the Bible offers a potent example here applicable to all aspects of life. The decisions we make in every part of life demonstrate our underlying beliefs. No matter what we claim to believe or what we tell ourselves we believe, we don't really believe it unless we act like we do. You can't say that you don't believe in gravity and yet panic when you fall. You can't say that you do believe in a political candidate and then not vote for him. The decisions we make proof our underlying beliefs. We may want to believe something else, but our behavior tells us what we actually do believe.

What do you spend your money on? What is important to you? If you've answered these questions in two different ways, there is a logical inconsistency. Your 'faith' is not followed by 'works.' There is no 'obedience' in your faith. Maybe you say you believe in eating healthy, but how many bags of potato chips are in your cabinet? Maybe you say you believe too much TV is bad for you, but how much is your cable bill? Now, I understand there are things we value that are not necessarily monetary, but whenever we do spend money, we are casting our dollar vote. We are placing value on the purchase in a very real way. We are saying, 'this purchase is worth x amount of dollars to me.' We are demonstrating what we value by what we spend our money on. We are living out what our beliefs really are.

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