Lane has responded to my post on “jumping and obeying,” and confesses himself a bit puzzled. And I, speaking for myself, am puzzled also.
Lane took me as objecting to grammatical and dogmatic parsing generally, when I was only objecting to it as a means of solving non-existent problems. Just for the record, I am very grateful when detailed lexical or grammatical study solves problems in the text. My suspicions are aroused, however, when this device is resorted to as a means of solving problems for our dogmatic theology created by the text.
Lane’s entire follow-up discussion of this is a case in point. I quite agree that the Thessalonians passage is talking about the contrast between the course of life displayed by unbelievers and by believers. I also agree that “obey the gospel” can be readily applied to the Christian life in a way that encompasses our sanctification. So? How does that somehow exempt the very beginning of this process? If a bride and groom promise to love each throughout the entire course of their marriage, does this start ten days after the wedding? Is it “til death do us part,” except where restrictions apply?
Certain dogmatic commitments require special pleading, and this is a plain instance of it. Because obedience reminds us of works, being a worksy-sounding word, and we know that works are not the instrumentality of justification, we deny (lest anyone free associate in jesuitical ways) that obedience has anything to do with justification. But in our zeal to avoid jesuitical casuistry, we have become parsing jesuits. I mean, look at this. I can’t believe Lane actually wrote it. “No implication, therefore, is made of whether coming to faith itself is an act of obedience.” That means that believing in Jesus must be disobedient. And all God’s people said, “Jeepers.”
Here is a good place for some good and necessary consequence. A command can only be disobeyed or obeyed. Ignoring it is disobedience. Pretending not to hear is disobedience. Given the authority and legitimacy of the command, there are no other options. If someone wants to maintain a third possibility, I am open to hearing what it might possibly be. Now, does God command men to believe the gospel? Sure, and it would be tedious to reproduce all the instances of such commands here. But if this point is not granted in about ten minutes, I will be happy to do so. Let one example suffice for now. “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand: repent ye, and believe the gospel” (Mark 1:15).
So if God has commanded us to believe, then that command must either be obeyed or disobeyed. And if the act of believing, in response to this gospel command, is the sole instrumentality of justification, which it is, then how can Lane deny the implication? So we are therefore justified by the instrumentality of obedience (SeanG and MarkT can do the snip quote thing here), but remember that obedience is defined and restricted by the command. If God said to believe, to do anything else of a merit-mongering nature is disobedience. Obedience does nothing other than believe with an evangelical and God-given faith. Obedience is doing what we are told, and we were told to believe. This shouldn’t be hard.