What is obedient faith

Have a wonderfully blessed week, stay safe, get involved in righting the wrongs of social injustice, and never leave home without Him! Anna Bright is a minister and educator in Walterboro. She can be reached at abrightcolumn lowcountry.

No comments on this item Please log in to comment by clicking here. Friday, November 12, Toggle navigation Main menu. Newsletter signup. About us. Flip back through your Bible and look at his letters. Read the salutation he uses in every letter. That is until he gets to Titus. That might not seem significant to you, but hear me out. In every single letter he uses it repeatedly.

The Lordship of Jesus is constantly on his lips. Fully half of those occur in his letter to Titus. Jesus is the Savior, the Savior, the Savior, the Savior. Why the emphasis? Great question. The answer can be found in key number two. Before you continue reading this, read over Titus and see if you can find it.

Do what is good, do what is good, do what is good. Titus was the pastor of the church on Crete. Crete was a nasty place. Paul knew that on that dark island the Gospel would shine brightly in the lives of the redeemed. Thus the repeated calls to do what is good. Paul also knew that it was important not only that they live righteous lives, but that they did so from the right motivation.

Some mistakenly believe that we are to obey Jesus simply because He is the Lord. That is, they believe the proper motivation for obedience is fear of the punishment He has the authority to bring.

While he is of course the Lord and ruler of all, it is not His lordship that motivates us to obedience. Rather, it is His grace that He offers us as Savior, that moves us to obey. We are to do what is good, do what is good, do what is good, because Jesus is the Savior, the Savior, the Savior, the Savior. It is critical to understand these two keys and thereby the point of Titus. Jesus wants His people to be different, but not just different: better.

All that we might need in order to be obedient is given to us, in and through Jesus Christ, and is available for us both day and night. God be praised! They are crystal clear! Can faith save him? Surely nobody has the slightest doubt about what this means? Without obedience, it is useless, absolutely useless!

You can think what you want, say what you want and believe what you want — obedience is what counts! No salvation without it. No further progress without a deeper obedience. Not a single step further on the way of life without obedience. God gives grace, but for what purpose? Precisely for this one reason: obedience! If we imagine anything else, then we are only deceiving ourselves and will come to regret it bitterly one day. Support for this view is seen in many passages.

See also, John ; ; 1 Pet , 22; ; and Acts Jesus called for people to believe in Him. Thus whenever anyone believes in Him, he is obeying Him. Saving faith is an act of obedience. The obedience of faith spoken of in Rom and does not refer to obeying all that God has commanded.