The Scope of True Obedience

"Obedience is from the heart, but not restricted to the heart, and it even goes beyond personal conduct." 

Chapter 4 of "By This Standard: The Authority of God's Law Today" is all about the scope of true obedience. In it, Dr. Greg Bahnsen identified the two common ethical mistakes, explained the meaning of "obedience from the heart" and "obedience not restricted to the heart," and elevated the understanding of obedience beyond personal conduct.

Two Common Ethical Mistakes

A number of common moral mistakes are made by believers, even after they come to the realization that God holds them accountable to His revealed commandments. Among those mistakes two can be focused upon here as the root of many other misconceptions. On the one hand, people often fail to see that God's law requires obedience from the heart. On the other hand, people make the mistake of thinking that it is sufficient if their obedience is restricted to matters of the heart. Both of these errors - opposite in character but equal in destructive force - are addressed by God's word, showing us the full dimensions of true obedience to the Lord.

Meaning of Obedience from the Heart

Read Matthew 5:20; 15:7-9; 23:23-24; Galatians 5:22-23; Proverbs 6:16-18,25; Matthew 5: 21-30

In Matthew 5:20 Jesus taught something which must have been shocking to His hearers. He said, "Except your righteousness shall exceed that of the scribes and Pharisees, you shall by no means enter into the kingdom of heaven." The shocking thing about this was that the scribes and Pharisees had a reputation, one which they themselves were anxious to promote, for a deep commitment to obeying even the minor details of the law. But the fact of the matter was that the Pharisees were far from living up to the true demands of God's commandments. They had distorted the law's requirements, reading them in a perverse, self-justifying, and externalistic fashion.

In the Sermon on the Mount Jesus exposed the shallow obedience of the Pharisees for what it was, pointing out that God is not satisfied with anything short of full, heart-felt obedience to His law as comprehensively interpreted. By contrast, the Pharisees had appealed to the law in a way calculated to escape God's true and original demands, placing a hypocritical veneer of "piety" upon all of their actions.

The Pharisees made a religious show of adhering to the law, but Christ saw that it was a mere facade. He said to them, "You hypocrites, Isaiah was right when he prophesied of you, saying 'These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. In vain do they worship me, teaching as their doctrines the precepts of men' "(Matt. 15:7-9). The Pharisees actually overlooked the weightier matters of the law, such as justice, mercy, and faith (Matt. 23:23-24). They were blind guides who trimmed down the requirements of God's law so that it could be made to appear conformable to their cultural traditions. "And He answered and said unto them, 'Why do you also transgress the commandment of God for the sake of your tradition? For God said.... But you say.... So you have made void the word of God for the sake of your tradition'" (Matt. 15:3-6, 14).

So it is quite possible to take an avid interest in the commandments of God and still have a heart that is far from the Lord - still have a lifestyle which is anything but pleasing to God since our attitudes and motives are out of line with the moral guidance of Scripture. We can take a concern for the fine details of the law, and we should, but not in such a way that we miss the main point in it all: namely, the display of such godly attitudes as are mentioned listed in "the fruit of the Spirit" -love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, meekness, and self-control, against which there is no law (Galatians 5:22-23).

Back in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5:20ff.), after Christ declared that only a righteousness exceeding that of the scribes and Pharisees would gain entrance into the kingdom of heaven, He went on to deliver a series of illustrations of how the scribes and Pharisees held to a diminished understanding of God's requirements. He set their approach to various commandments over against His own interpretation of God's demands, thereby restoring the full measure of God's purpose and requirements to the Old Testament law. His illustrations began with words like these: "You have heard it said by those of old ... , but I say unto you." In such sayings Jesus was not personally dissenting from the law of God but from the Pharisaical understanding and undervaluating of the law of God.

After all, if the Pharisees really were living up to the law, and Jesus added to the law's demand, then His ex post facto condemnation of the Pharisees for not living up to His additions would be quite unfair! Rather, Jesus indicted the Pharisees for not living up to what God originally required. "You have heard it said by those of old" refers to the rabbinic interpretations of the law passed down from one generation to another; the scribes commonly appealed to the traditional interpretations of the ancient rabbis as a way of teaching the law. The amazing thing to the crowds who heard Jesus, though, was that he taught as one having authority in Himself, and not as one of the scribes, always appealing to others (Matt. 7:28-29).

The problem with the scribal or Pharisaical understanding of the Old Testament law was that it was trite and externalistic. Jesus had to point out, in accord with Old Testament teaching (for example, Prov. 6:16-18, 25), that hatred and lust were the root sins of murder and adultery (Matt. 5:21-30). When God commanded that His people not kill and not commit adultery, He did not merely require abstaining from the outward acts of assault and fornication; His requirement went to the heart, requiring that our thoughts, plans, and attitudes be free from violence and unchastity as well.

True obedience to the law, then, stems from a heart that is right with God, a heart that seeks to please the Lord - not simply by outward conformity but by pure attitudes as well. We see, then, why the "obedience" of the Pharisees was not acceptable in God's eyes. They were not truly obeying the law in its comprehensive demand, inward as well as outward. Any obedience which we are to render to God's law today which is going to be pleasing to God, therefore, must be better than externalistic, hypocritical, self-righteous Pharisaism. It must be obedience from the heart.

Meaning of Obedience not Restricted to the Heart

Read Romans 8:5-10; Jeremiah 31:33; Ezekiel 11:19-20; 36:26-27; Matthew 23:23

A man who refrains from physical adultery while cherishing lustful thoughts is self-deceived if he thinks that he has obeyed the Lord's commandment. On the other hand, a man who thinks that he has a pure attitude and motive, even though he engages outwardly in an act which transgresses God's law, is just as self-deceived. God's law does not place a premium upon inwardness and attitudes of the heart at the expense of overt obedience to His requirements! When it comes to obeying the Lord, it is not simply "the thought that counts."

Situational ethicists, who say a man can act out of love to God and love to his neighbor when he commits adultery with his neighbor's wife, still stand condemned by God and His word on the final day. This should be obvious to most born-again Christians. They know that "walking by the Spirit" means that, unlike those in "the flesh" (in the sinful nature), they can keep the law ofGod (Rom. 8:5-10); it is "the ordinance of the law" which is "fulfilled in us who walk not after the flesh but after the Spirit" (v. 4).

Those who have hearts made right with God, those who have been given a new heart by God, those who wish from the heart to please God, will seek to walk according to God's commandments (Jer. 31:33; Ezek. 11:19-20; 36:26-27). A proper heart attitude should lead to proper outward conduct as well. Obedience cannot be restricted to the heart. Jesus not only wanted the Pharisees to realize the inward values of mercy and faith; He did not want them to leave undone the minor outward matters of tithing garden vegetables (Matt. 23:23).

Obedience Beyond Personal Conduct 

Obedience goes beyond personal conduct to personal responsibility to exhort, to teach, and to promote obedience to the law of God on the part of others. 

Read Psalm 51:13; 119:53; Matthew 5:14-15; 28:18-20; Romans 15:14; Ephesians 5:11

Just as obedience cannot be restricted to the heart in the sense of forgetting the need for outward conformity to God's stipulations, it can likewise be said that obedience - if it is genuine Biblical obedience - cannot be restricted to a concern for our own personal conduct. Full obedience embraces an interest in the obedience of those around me to the laws of God. The Christian must assume the responsibility to exhort those in his home, church, society, etc. to keep the commandments of the Lord. David wrote, "restore unto me the joy of thy salvation, and uphold me with thy free Spirit. Then will I teach transgressors thy ways, and sinners will be converted unto thee" (Ps. 51:13). The Great Commission laid upon the church by Christ calls for us to teach the nations whatsoever Christ has commanded (Matt. 28:18-20). Anything less than this concern for the obedience of those around us is disloyalty to the Lord and fails to qualify as true obedience to his law. John Murray wrote:

"The least of God's commandments, if they bind us, bind others. We must resist the virulent poison of individualism which tolerates in others the indifference and disobedience which we cannot justify in ourselves. . . . The moment we become complacent to the sins of others then we have begun to relax our own grip on the sanctity of the commandments of God, and we are on the way to condoning the same sin in ourselves."

Heart-felt obedience to God's law will lead us to promote obedience to that same law on the part of others.

True saints have indignation for those who break God's law (Ps. 119:53), and they are not ashamed to promote that law publicly (v. 13). If they would keep silent in the face of disobedience, then they would become culpable for the sins they witness. As Psalm 50:18 says, "When you saw a thief, then you consented with him" by keeping your peace. Ephesians 5:11 exhorts the believer to reprove the unfruitful works of darkness. Scripture, then, is quite clear in teaching that the requirement of full obedience to God's commands extends to the active promoting of obedience to those commands in others.

The Scripture-guided believer is in a position to offer genuine counsel and help to others and to his society; he knows the purity of God's law. He is "able to admonish" (Rom. 15:14), and so to be quiet in the face of transgressions would be a guilty silence. Christ directed His followers that they were to be "the light of the world" -which is impossible if our light is placed under a basket (Matt. 5:14-15). Consequently, true Christian obedience to the law of God will take us beyond a concern for ourselves to a concern for the obedience of those around us. Churches which preach (either intentionally or by default) "moral individualism" are failing to proclaim the whole counsel of God. The sins of our society cannot be ignored or swept under the church carpet.

Conclusion

This article does not by any means touch upon every facet of obedience to God's commandments, but it does point out two very important aspects of genuine obedience. We see how far-reaching God's demands are when we keep in mind that obedience must be from the heart, and yet that obedience must not be restricted to the heart.

Source: Bahnsen, G. L. (1985). By This Standard: The Authority of God's Law Today. Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian Economics.