It takes trust

There can be no denying that it takes trust to obey God when He is growing you.  Hebrews 11 tells us of God's heroes of faith, or those He calls the "elders." It is sometimes called the "faith" chapter. I think I may start calling it the "by faith" chapter. 


Heb 11:1-2 tells us what faith is. 

¹ Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. ² For by it the elders obtained a good testimony.

God says that these elders obtained a good testimony BY faith. Does this match what the Lordship Salvation(LS) proponent says about faith? They say that one will persist in good works, in submission to the Lordship of Christ (obedience) and good Christian character if they have true faith. 


One might say that the LS proponent says that one obtains a good testimony IF (or because) they have faith. 


See my previous articles Testing the Test and 'But' Theology for examples of LS proponents saying that IF you have faith you will have a good testimony. In fact they use a person's testimony as a test to determine if the person has faith. 


The question is this: Does God explain faith this way in His chapter on faith? In every example given God states that "by faith" (or through faith) a person (including all believers today in verse 3) DID something amazing. God then closes the chapter (though there were no chapters or verses in the original manuscripts) with these two verses. 


Heb 11:39-40 

³⁹ And all these, having obtained a good testimony through faith, did not receive the promise,⁴⁰ God having provided something better for us, that they should not be made perfect apart from us.

Now it would do the LS proponents some good to study the lives of these people and consider if they are truly good examples of their theology. What is evident is that these people trusted God and obeyed in these instances and that this had amazing results - yet God did not leave us out. He did not simply save them, He also has saved us and will save all who trust Him now. 


I started out by saying that it takes trust to obey God when He's growing you, and it does. But does trust = obedience? Or can you subtract obedience from my life and still have trust remaining? If I have trust will I automatically have obedience? If I don't have trust will I then be unable to obey? 


These are all huge questions!! 


I retired from the Canadian Forces recently. Military service is all about obedience. For a large portion of my career I could find few people in my Chain of Command whom I actually trusted, yet my obedience was full. I had to obey people I didn't really trust because they were in command of my service.  I believe this shows how trust and obedience are not intrinsically linked. I obeyed because of my desire for a paycheck, and because of my fear of punishment. I obeyed out of desire and fear - not out of trust. 


There are some UNSAVED people in the Bible like that you know, read John 6 to see what happened to the people who followed Jesus, obeyed Jesus in many things, feared Jesus, and desired the rewards of following Jesus - they were not saved because they could not put their faith in His broken body and shed blood. They were like hired servants, like slaves- they had no faith or trust but they obeyed. 


When I was a child I trusted my sister deeply. I had faith in her that she would look out for and provide for me. We were tight, and I needed her. However, I didn't seldom obeyed her even when she was caring for me. I didn't obey because I didn't fear her, and she had nothing to offer me for my obedience. I trusted her completely, but I did not often obey her. 


There are some SAVED people like that in the Bible too. Read 1st and 2nd Corinthians for some excellent examples. 


Sometimes my wife, whom I trust completely and whom I am head over heals in love with, will ask me to do something - and yet I won't obey. Usually there is something I would rather do, a competing desire. Sometimes I don't obey because of what other people might say - "look at Kevin, he does whatever his wife tells him heheheh."  Sometimes I just don't think the effort is worth it - I won't be recognized enough.. I won't get that new computer that I want anyway.... whatever it is - I don't obey because I don't value the return, or I have competing desires. 


There are SAVED people in the Bible just like this too! Peter comes to mind prominently. There is also several people who feared what other people would do and say so they only followed Christ in secrete.


It TAKES trust to obey God when He is growing you because God is going to tell you to do things you can't do. This idea that God will never give you more than you can handle is BUNK. It is nothing more than new age religion and man's evil self-glorification at play. Read the "by faith"statements in Hebrews 11 and see how many of those were things that those people could "do for God."

Obedience, when God is calling you to do something you can't do, takes trust and God calls you to do those sorts of things when He is growing you up in the faith - when He is perfecting your faith. James 2:22

But obedience doesn't happen because of faith, it is not the substance of faith. No! God says that faith is the substance of a good testimony, NOT that a good testimony is the substance of faith!

A person can have faith (trust) and yet be distracted by competing desires and so not obey. A person can have faith but not fear and so not obey. A person can have faith and not desire for God's reward and so not obey.

A person who trusts God, and is discipled (taught in the ways of God, corrected, inspired, motivated and empowered and so on..) will obey God when He tells them to do something they can't do. You can't obey God in that situation without first trusting Him - so by faith you obey. But a person may trust God but have some other lacking as detailed above and not obey Him. Not because they don't have faith or trust, not because they have a false profession of faith or trust, but because they have a matter of disobedience going on.

I do not see anywhere in Scripture where God says that one obeys BECAUSE they have faith, but I see in many areas that one must have faith to do the sorts of things that God tells us to do when He is growing us up in the faith.

This is already a long article, but I need to ramble just a bit more. I believe this is why we have such a problem with Evangelism (or the lack there of) in the Church today. Not because people don't love and trust God - but because they don't have the proper motivation. This is the number one task for the Church and it is hardly being done by anyone who believes. The LS proponent must then say that only about 2 - 5 percent of people who claim to believe are actual believers - or they ought to go back and read the Bible again.