Role of Obedience in Salvation and Blessing

Hey, thanks again for sending in questions related to our recent sermons. As we’ve been going through the Gospel of Mark this last week, we came to the account of Jesus with the Cyro Phoenician woman, and we focused heavily on grace. The entrance into the kingdom, the blessed of the kingdom, getting food off the table is by grace alone, not by any works on our part, not by any law keeping. It has to do with who Jesus is and what he has done. It doesn’t have to do with who we are or what we have failed to do.

We receive the benefits of the kingdom by grace alone. And so the question this week, if entrance into the kingdom and blessings of the kingdom come by grace alone, what is the role of obedience? We place a large emphasis on behaviors that please the Lord. And why would we do that if we can enter the kingdom and have the blessings of the kingdom without any law keeping, if it’s all by grace? And the answer which we’ve talked about this various times throughout the last many years, is obedience is fruit of being accepted.

Obedience is fruit of receiving the blessings of the kingdom. We don’t obey in order to get blessings. We obey because we already have blessings. I mean, you imagine this Cyro Phoenician woman who has just received everything without any cost at all, and what is her life going to look like after that?

Is she going to faithfully love Jesus from there on out? I bet so, right? It’s the same question of the woman caught in adultery. Jesus first says, I do not condemn you. Right.

She’s accepted. And now therefore leave your life of sin. That order is very important. If you switch that order, you lose Christianity, you lose grace. Everything is granted on the front end.

Jesus does not say, leave your life of sin and then I won’t condemn you. I don’t condemn you. You’re free and clear now, how do you respond to that? Or Jude four? It talks about we can’t use the grace of God as a license for immorality.

Right. If we say, oh great, he loves me, I’ll just go do whatever I want and sin as much as I can conceive. We’ve missed something about His Grace. We’ll talk more about this in the week ahead. But if Jesus has poured out everything for us and our reaction isn’t just appreciation and love for him, then we’ve missed something about what he’s done for us.

So that’s the role of obedience. We obey as a response to being completely accepted. And if we have no desire to obey, then we’ve missed something. So thanks for the question. Hope that’s helpful.

And we will see you next time. Bye.