The Obedience of Faith

We come now to the last verse of Part One. It speaks not of walls, nails, shadows, or dates, but of faith.

The claim goes like this. “A crowd once asked Yeshua what they had to do to work the works of God. He answered with one thing: believe in Him whom God has sent. That is the work of God, and that is all. Nothing is required beyond faith.”

Something at the heart of this claim is right, and it should be said first. The beginning is faith. A sinner is justified by grace through faith, not by works. This whole series has held to that, and this chapter will not move from it.

But the claim adds three words of its own: “that is all.” To see whether those words belong there, we have to ask the same John who wrote this verse what he means by “believe.”

The Question and the Answer

John 6:28-29 Therefore they said to Him, "What shall we do, so that we may work the works of God?" Yeshua answered and said to them, "This is the work of God, that you believe in Him whom He has sent."

The crowd asked about “the works of God,” in the plural. Yeshua answered with “the work of God,” in the singular: “that you believe in Him whom He has sent.” The word for work is ergon ἔργον er'-gon, a deed, something done. Yeshua calls believing in Him a work of God.

That answer is true, and it comes first; everything else grows from it. The question, then, is not whether faith comes first but what faith is.

What John Sets Against Believing

A word is often best understood by its opposite. If you want to know what someone means by “hot,” it helps to know what he calls “cold.” What, then, does John set against believing?

John 3:36 He who believes in the Son has eternal zoe ζωή dzo-ay'(life); but he who does not obey the Son will not see zoe(life), but the orge ὀργή or-gay'(wrath) of God abides on him.

Set the two halves side by side. On one side stands “He who believes in the Son has eternal zoe(life).” On the other stands “he who does not obey the Son will not see zoe(life).”

John does not write “he who does not believe.” He writes “he who does not obey.” The Greek word is apeitheo ἀπειθέω ap-i-theh'-o, to refuse to be persuaded, to disobey. John sets disobeying opposite believing, and if the opposite of faith is disobedience, then obedience is already inside the word faith.

Think of hiring a mountain guide to take you over a pass you do not know. You tell him, “I trust you completely.” Yet at the first fork in the trail, when he says, “This way,” you take the other path, and at the next fork you do the same. You said that you trusted him, but your feet tell a different story. To trust a guide is to follow him, and a trust that never takes the path he points to is only a word.

What Yeshua Said to Those Who Believed

John goes further and records what Yeshua said to people who had already believed.

John 8:31 So Yeshua was saying to those Jews who had believed Him, "If you continue in My logos λόγος log'-os(word), you are alethos ἀληθῶς al-ay-thoce'(truly) disciples of Mine;

These hearers had already believed, and believing was their start. What would show them to be truly His disciples was continuing in His word. The word behind “continue” is meno μένω men'-o, to remain, to abide.

John 15:14 You are My philos φίλος fee'-los(friends) if you do what I command you.

Yeshua does not separate friendship with Him from doing what He commands. He joins the two with a single word, “if.”

Faith and Love in One Commandment

John says the same thing in his first letter, and he puts it into one sentence.

1 John 3:23 And this is His commandment: that we believe in the name of His Son Yeshua Messiah and love one another, just as He has commanded us.

What John calls “His commandment” has two parts: “that we believe in the name of His Son Yeshua Messiah” and “love one another.” Faith stands inside the commandment, and it stands in the same sentence as love.

For John, then, believing is not an alternative to keeping the commandments. Believing is itself what God commanded, and it walks together with love, as Book 2 showed in reading Romans 13, where love sums up the commandments.

The Obedience of Faith

Paul says the same thing in the opening lines of his letter to the Romans, where he tells them what his apostleship was for.

Romans 1:5 through whom we received charis χάρις khar'-ece(grace) and apostleship for the obedience of faith among all the nations for the sake of His name,

Paul speaks neither of obedience instead of faith nor of faith without obedience, but of “the obedience of faith.” That was the aim of his apostleship “among all the nations.”

James, for his part, shows what a faith that is faith alone looks like: “You believe that God is one — you do well; the demons(individual evil spirits to be expelled) also believe and shudder” (James 2:19). The demons know that God is one, and they are not mistaken about the facts. Yet their believing does not lead them to obey. It leads them only to shudder.

The Whole Picture

“Believing is the work of God” is true. Yeshua said it, and we hold to it. And the faith He meant is a faith that abides in His word and does what He commands. A faith that does not is what John calls “does not obey,” and what James describes when he says that the demons also believe.

The End of Part One

We have now opened, one at a time, the verses of Part One that are used to say that the law was abolished.

In every one, the verse was true, and in every one it said something smaller and more precise than the claim built on it. It spoke of decrees of men, not the commandments of God; of a record of debt, not what is holy and righteous and good; and of a goal, not an ending. What ended or changed was the prophesying, the paidagogos παιδαγωγός pahee-dag-o-gos', and the sacrifices for sin, never the law itself. It spoke of grace upon grace, not grace instead of law. It spoke of a law laid down against the Torah-less, not a law the righteous can do without. It set each commandment in its own place and in its own appointed hands rather than making it all or nothing, with sacrifice only at the place the LORD chose and circumcision never a road to justification. It spoke of a court, not the believer’s hand. And last of all, it spoke of faith that obeys, not faith instead of obedience.

Now look at where this last conversation began. The crowd had crossed the sea to find Yeshua the day after He fed them, and He told them why they had come: “because you ate of the loaves and were filled.” Then He said, “Do not work for the food which perishes, but for the food which endures to eternal zoe(life)” (John 6:26-27). Only then did they ask about the works of God.

The last verse of Part One, then, was spoken in a conversation about food, and the next verses come from that very subject: Mark 7, Peter’s vision, and Romans 14. Those verses need a part of their own.

Part Three gives them that room. Before we come to them, Part Two takes up claims of another kind. They do not quote a verse that says “abolished.” They draw a line between two kinds of people, and the first of those lines runs through a verse from the Sermon on the Mount: “depart from Me, you who work the anomia ἀνομία an-om-ee'-ah(Torah-lessness).”