The Obedience of Faith

"The obedience of faith." That's a phrase Paul uses in the opening paragraph of his epsitle to the Roman Christians. [Rom 1:5] He says that he was given grace and apostleship to bring about the obedience of faith. I looked the verse up in Douglas Moo's commentary: Moo says that for Paul faith always involves obedience and obedience always involves faith. He writes:

Paul called men and women to a faith that was always inseparable from obedience--for the Savior in whom we believe is nothing less than our Lord -- and to an obedience that could never be divorced from faith -- for we can obey Jesus as Lord only when we have given ourselves to him in faith.

I looked it up also in good old Matthew Henry. He says this:

The act of faith is the obedience of the understanding to God revealing, and the product of that is the obedience of the will to God commanding. To anticipate the ill use which might be made of the doctrine of justification by faith without the works of the law, which he was to explain in the following epistle, he here speaks of Christianity as an obedience. Christ has a yoke.

I just thought I'd share these with you this morning. On a not unrelated note, check out Brad Huston's brief post this morning. It's called "The Little Sins," and seems to be the start of a series or something. Food for thought.