The shape of gospel obedience

An essay on christian living

One of the hardest things to reach into our hearts is the shape and logic of gospel obedience. The problem is real - how are people to be motivated to live virtuous lives, pursuing what is good, right, just, true, loving? In fact, the problem is deeper than that - why should people live virtuous lives at all?

I don't have anything new to say today, nothing that hasn't been said by others, said before, said better I dare say. But because this is a stubborn lesson, one that we need to hear again and again, I'm going to say it again. I want to lay out for us the shape or the pattern of gospel obedience, and how it relates to the gospel itself, so that we can see clearly how it avoids the two pitfalls, and how it offers us a genuine way out.

The Gospel: Declaration and Invitation

The gospel, plain and simple, comes to us with a declaration, and an invitation. The declaration is that Jesus is God's own son, who became human and lived the life we ought to have lived. His life was sinless, perfect, and an outpouring of love to those he encountered. He did everything we ought to have done, and fulfilled what Adam and Israel failed to do. He then died the death we ought to have died. As rebels against God, the Creator and Lord of the universe, we deserved death and punishment, but Jesus on the cross died in our place to take our death and punishment, so that we don't have to. He then rose again, demonstrating his defeat of death, and the vindication of his righteousness. In doing so, he has begun to gather forgiven sinners into his kingdom, his gracious reign of blessing and life forever.

That is still a very dense declaration. And it comes with an invitation - that anybody can come to Jesus, place their trust and allegiance in him, and find forgiveness for their sins, be reconciled to God, and dwell in relationship with him forever, with the certain expectation of being raised from death and inhabiting a new physical creation in communion with a loving, personal God for eternity.

Two ways to stuff it up

The problem that Christianity creates for itself, if I can speak this way, is that it demands nothing of its adherents. In fact, you can't, you can't contribute anything to your salvation. It's all Jesus' work, and you just accept that free gift, and you're done. You can see why this creates a problem - if you don't need to do anything, why would you do anything? This is why so often people fall into the following two errors. We find this so problematic and so counter to our instincts, that we intellectually rebel against this.

The first pitfall is that we believe, as we so often do, that a virtuous life is the basis for our acceptance by God. This is a folly in multiple dimensions.

Either we erroneously believe in our righteousness and so falsely rely upon it before God, denying our sin. We think we either can be people living a righteous life, getting our act together, and being good enough for God to accept us. But to think this is to be self-deluded, in the words of 1 John 1:8 "we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us".

Or we recognise our failure to live up to this expectation, and so crush ourselves under the guilt of trying to be perfect that we simply cannot. This is probably more common. We think that having been saved by faith, we now need to live up to this expectation, to be righteous or otherwise we're out.

We continually motivate ourselves with the fear of punishment or the hope of reward and the carrot and the stick are poor, poor motivators. If we're trying to live righteously because we're afraid of divine punishment, we haven't fully grasped the gospel, and we are not living on the basis that the gospel is true. Our confession is the gospel, and our lives are the denial of it.

To try to live a virtuous life in order to be acceptable to God is a denial of the gospel's efficacy.

The second pitfall is that we believe that we are accepted by God on the basis of faith, and so nothing that we do matters. Such a view is easy-believism, cheap grace, and it's the opposite error that runs rampant among Christians. It diminishes the gravity of our moral failures and sins, and so in the process also diminishes the magnitude fo mercy in the Gospel. I think this error is rampant in certain circles. It's a particularly and peculiarly Protestant error. It gets the gospel so right, and then it gets the consequences of the Gospel so profoundly wrong. Why is it wrong though? It's wrong because the shape of the work of the gospel is to profoundly change us. God takes us as we are, welcomes us as we are, forgives and justifies us as we are. But he never leaves us as we are. The acceptance of Jesus' invitation is the beginning of a process of change that actually and effectually transforms us from the sinners we are to the virtuous people we were always meant to be, that is transforms us to be more like Jesus.

The shape of gospel obedience is always that a life changed by the gospel of grace, is a life changed. To receive the mercy of God changes and shapes us to go and live merciful lives in response.

How the Gospel shapes obedience

So, what does this gospel-shaped obedience look like? I think we can say that the gospel, and the life and death of Jesus, provide for us a model, a motivation, and a means.

1. In Jesus we see how we ought to live

2. In Jesus we are given motivation for how to live virtuously

3. In Jesus we are also given means for how to live virtuously

1. How we ought to live.

Precisely because Jesus lived the perfect life that you and I ought to have lived, it models for us in many dimensions what our lives ought to look like. Not in all dimensions, granted. We are not generally called to be itinerant preachers, or carpenters, or live in Galilee and Judea, or a thousand other particular things that pertain to Jesus. Nor, because we are not the Messiah, are there specific dimensions of Jesus' ministry that are ours to fulfil. But the pattern of Jesus' life is generally speaking the moral pattern for our own. One way to see this is to see the way the gospel writers re-compile the summary of the OT Law as a pattern for obedience to Jesus. So, Mark 12:28-34, Jesus is asked for the greatest commandment. He gives a double-barrel response, Deut 6.4 and Lev 19.18. Love God and Love your neighbour as yourself. Elsewhere, love your neighbour is re-oriented in two separate ways that amount to the same thing. In Luke 10:25-37 the parable of the Good Samaritan redefines the neighbour not in terms of who is my neighbour, but to whom I am to be a neighbour - even my enemy; similarly but from a different angle matt 5:43-47 expands love from 'neighbours' to even our enemies. John's gospel terms it a "new commandment" to "love one another. As I have loved you, as you must love one another" (13.34), explicitly making Jesus love for us, the pattern of our love for others. And how do we know the pattern of Jesus' love? It is most evident in the cross: "Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends" (John 15:13) and, in fact, at the time that Jesus dies for us we are not his friends but his enemies. It is his death that makes us his friends. (Rom 5.8, 10).

2. Motivation for how to live virtuously.

The gospel calls us to respond to the love shown to us in kind. That's how it motivates us. I think there's a few ways to try to illustrate this, but my basic principle is that if you have received mercy, you are then motivated to show mercy, and this same principle plays out in lots of dimensions of life. This plays out in Matthew's gospel when you put two separate motifs together. Firstly, the principle of reciprocity. In Matthew 5:7 it is the merciful who will be shown mercy. In 6.14-15 it is those who forgive who will receive forgiveness. In 7.12 we are called to treat others the way we wish to be treated. That is, the way we act towards others is an expression of how we should expect God to treat us. That, by itself, is actually a terrifying idea, because it would surely mean that God would judge us by our own standards, standards we have failed to keep. Secondly, the motif of divine mercy runs throughout Matthew as well. One way to see this is how often those who come to Jesus beg for him to show mercy to them.¹ It is the Father and the Son who take the initiative of divine mercy, not just in Matthew's gospel, but throughout the New Testament and indeed in the Gospel itself. That transformative mercy is what motivates us to extend mercy. This is the key to understanding the motivation in the parable of the unforgiving servant - Matthew 18.25-35 - the servant is censured (and punished) precisely because he should have been motivated by the mercy he had received, to extend it to others (18.33).

3. Means to live virtuously

If the gospel simply gave us a pattern for how to live, and inspired or motivated us to live that way, we would not be much better off than we were before - sinners who know what we ought to do, and have some motivation to do it, and find ourselves dismally failing and not making any progress at all. However I think the Gospel goes deeper than that, and actually transforms us from the inside out to be capable of living virtuously. On the one hand, this is the work of the Holy Spirit in sanctifying us, in making us truly and actually and effectually holy and righteous. That is a profound gift - the gift of God himself dwelling in us. But it's not what I'm talking about today. It is absolutely vital and connected to what I am talking about.

What I have in mind is that as we experientially and existentially take the Gospel in its manifold dimensions into our heart, and truly 'grasp' it, it works on our hearts and turns us into people capable of living grace-changed lives. If, for example, I know that I am truly accepted by God on the basis of what Jesus has done for me, and to the extent I believe that, the more I will cease striving to justify myself before God and before other people. The more I accept that my reputation before God is secured, the less I care about my reputation before other people. The more I realise how generous God has been to me, that all that I have comes from him, belongs to him, and is only mine for a short time to choose to utilise and distribute, the more generous I can become and will freely give his good gifts to others for their benefit. The more I grasp that Jesus has been utterly faithful in place of my unfaithfulness, the more I can grow in being faithful; this plays itself out over and over again in every area of Christian living.

We're going to go on and look at how this applies and works itself out in four areas in a moment, but before we do that I want to consider how these three elements relate to the two pitfalls mentioned above, and what the contrast looks like. Between someone who has trusted in Jesus, accepted the gospel, and is living this out, and someone who is attempting to self-justify themselves on the basis of their works, there can often be little external difference. This is why Jesus is so hard on hypocrites! Hypocrisy in Jesus’ context is not “I say X, but secretly I am doing Y”, it’s “I do all the right things, but deep down in my heart I have all the wrong motives”. A religious, moralist life that is motivated not by a response to God’s gracious love, is a great danger to oneself, and not true Christianity. On the other side, a life that claims to follow Jesus and persistently and obstinately refuses to obey his commandments, is in great danger of showing that this person has never really grasped the Gospel at all.

Applying the gospel shape of obedience

So, let's now turn and apply this gospel-shaped obedience in four areas, as examples of what I mean.

1. Mercy for those in need

2. Forgiveness for those who wrong us

3. Justice for the oppressed

4. Faithfulness when it costs

Mercy for those in need

I’ve already spoken about the theme of mercy in Matthew’s gospel, but I think the place to go to see this is Matthew 25:31-46. Here Jesus speaks in very stark terms about the final judgment. There the sheep and goats are gathered, and they are divided, sheep to the right, goats to the left. Those who are about to enter eternal life are commended because “³⁵ For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, ³⁶ I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’ (NIV)

Jesus explains that when they so treated a brother or sister, they so treated him. Now, that does sound like it only matters how you treat fellow believers, so let’s just drop in Galatians 6.10 for a moment, “Therefore, as we have opportunity, let us do good to all people, especially to those who belong to the family of believers”. There is a kind of priority in that as one body and one family, believers should especially care for other believers, but it is not exclusive.

Anyway, back to the parable. It sounds very much, by the end, that the way you treat those in need is the basis for judgment, and so aren’t we back to works? Have we done enough? I don’t think this is the right reading, because we need to read the New Testament as a whole, and the message of forgiveness on the basis of faith in Jesus alone is resoundingly clear. So we need to read these together.

The best explanation is that failure to love those in need is a sign you have failed to grasp the Gospel. And what that is meant to look like is a recognition that Jesus came to you when you were hungry, thirsty, a stranger, naked, sick, and imprisoned, and he showed mercy to you first. Then, we are to go and do likewise.

Forgiveness for those who wrong us

I have thought a lot about the dynamics of forgiveness in the last two years, and much of my thinking is shaped by Timothy Keller and Miroslav Volf.² In both authors you see a very clear expression that human forgiveness is modelled on and empowered by divine forgiveness. Scripture itself makes that very explicit in Col 3.13:

“Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you.” (NIV)

And this, likewise, the key to understanding the parable of the unforgiving servant in Matthew 18, and the two strong warnings in Mt 18.35, 6.14-15. Precisely because we are sinners forgiven much by the grace of God, we are to forgive others. That forgiveness is model, motivation, and means. If I have been forgiven everything by God, who am I to hold others liable to me?

Justice for the oppressed

It seems perhaps easy to speak of mercy and forgiveness as being extensions of the mercy and forgiveness we have received, especially if we think of mercy in terms of ‘charity’, but mercy and justice go together, and when we turn to ‘justice’ we need to recognise the same pattern at work. However, to do so we need to reorient our understanding of justice from “doling out punishment” to “setting things right”. And, indeed, “setting things right” can involve punishment, but it does not have to. It is about restoration of the way things are to the way things ought to be. When we look at it in this light, we can see that God is in the business of doing justice. The cross is a cosmic act of right-setting, of the world that has gone wrong, and a foretaste and foreshadowing of his end of time setting all things right. If God, then, is about setting wrongs right, then we too are called to the work of setting particular wrongs right - racism, slavery, sexism, oppression, exploitation, past crimes, present inequalities. Precisely because Jesus died to set all things right, forever, at great cost to himself.

Faithfulness when it costs

Perhaps the first three examples seem to you like relatively easy pickings. In this fourth one I want to pick up a line from Psalm 15:4 “[the one] who keeps an oath even when it hurts, and does not change their mind”. How does the gospel shape a commitment to both truth-telling, and promise-keeping, in a way that emanates out from Jesus’ death and resurrection? In Jesus we find someone who, not only fulfils Psalm 15, but in the words of Isaiah 53.9 “in whom no deceit was found”; in Jesus we find someone who came in fulfilment to God’s own promises, to carry them out, bring them to their fulfilment in his death on the cross. That is why the New Testament is full of language describing it as the fulfilment of the Scriptures. It is at great personal cost - the anguished death of the immortal Son of the Father in his mortal human nature.

In doing so, he secures us. He forgives us the broken promises and the uttered untruths, and makes it possible for us to speak the truth, not knowing the consequences, because we know that no consequence can rob us of what he has won for us. Because that future is secure, fear is removed. The more we are transformed by that grasp of our gospel assurance, the more freedom we will have to speak the truth, and the more like him we will become in keeping our word.

Photo by Matthew Rumph on Unsplash

A final word

If you’ve made it this far, well done. It hasn’t been a short essay today! I want to close with this. Gospel-shaped obedience is actually very simple. It’s about an arrow. Here’s what it isn’t:

I do good —> I am saved

Here’s what it is:

I am saved —> I do good.

That’s it. The virtuous life flows forth from Jesus’ gospel. It’s fruit from a fruit-tree. If there is no fruit, then check the tree. If the tree is flourishing, the fruit will be abundant.

1. Given the preponderance of ‘mercy’ as the LXX translation of hesed, I wonder if they are asking for him to show loving-kindness to them.

2. Timothy Keller, Forgive (2022). Miroslav Volf, Free of Charge (2006) and Exclusion and Embrace (1996).