I made a comment in passing about how the language of obedience to the gospel comes naturally to Paul’s pen. Lane picked up on this, and interacted with one of those places, 2 Thessalonians 1:5-8.
[Which is] a manifest token of the righteous judgment of God, that ye may be counted worthy of the kingdom of God, for which ye also suffer: Seeing [it is] a righteous thing with God to recompense tribulation to them that trouble you; And to you who are troubled rest with us, when the Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven with his mighty angels,In flaming fire taking vengeance on them that know not God, and that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ” (2 Thess. 1:5-8).
Some of the commenters at Lane’s blog supplied other examples, not all from Paul.
“But God be thanked, that ye were the servants of sin, but ye have obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine which was delivered you. Being then made free from sin, ye became the servants of righteousness” (Rom. 6:17).
“By whom we have received grace and apostleship, for obedience to the faith among all nations, for his name” (Rom. 1:5).
“And being made perfect, he became the author of eternal salvation unto all them that obey him;” (Heb. 5:9).
“For the time [is come] that judgment must begin at the house of God: and if [it] first [begin] at us, what shall the end [be] of them that obey not the gospel of God?” (1 Pet. 4:17).
Lane struggles unsuccessfully with this kind of thing because he wants to parse it grammatically and dogmatically, pointing out quite unhelpfully that the Thesslonians passage doesn’t specifically mention justification. No, but it mentions the good news, the gospel, which is a gospel of free grace, and which certain people did not respond to with obedience. Romans refers to the obedience of faith, and to an obedience that results in the freedom from sin. Hebrews says that those who obey Christ receive salvation from Him. And Peter mentions obeying the gospel, again, an obedience to good news, and not an obedience to a demand for autonomous good works.
Because of a superstitious avoidance of certain words (obedience reminds some of merit-mongering) we not only find ourselves trifling with the sacred text, but also neglecting the simplest solution in the world, one that should fill every Protestant heart with gladness. “Jesus answered and said unto them, This is the work of God, that ye believe on him whom he hath sent” (John 6:29).
The response of Lane and others to this point is simply a category confusion, and shows a real lack of awareness of certain key differences between different kinds of verbs. To obey is a general verb and can therefore encompass all kinds of actions. To jump is a specific verb and can encompass the action of jumping. Now if I tell one of my grandkids to jump off the porch and he obeys me, which one is he doing? Is he jumping or is he obeying? Because a certain kind of Protestant mind maintains in all seriousness that it has to be one or the other. But of course, he is doing both — he is obeying by jumping, because that is what he was told to do.
Now when God through His preachers tells us that Christ died and rose again, and commands us to repent of our sins and believe this message, is it possible to obey Him by repenting of our sins and believing the message? Of course. When we do as we are told, we are obeying. If we are told to respond to the goodness of God by faith alone, and we do so, are we disobeying? Of course not — we are obeying. If we try to shoehorn in some of our own autonomous works so that we might get some of the credit for our own salvation, are we obeying? No — in the name of works and obedience, we are disobeying.
The motion of believing does not therefore displace the motion of obeying if believing is what we were commanded to do. The action of works-righteousness fails, not because it is obedience and obedience is bad, but rather because it is disobedience and disobedience is bad.
If God offers us the free gift of the righteousness of Jesus Christ, both active and passive, and He insists that we receive it through the instumentality of faith alone, it is not possible to receive that justifying righteousness apart from obeying Him. Is this works? Of course not — we were commanded to repent and believe. We were not commanded to scurry around to establish our own righteousness, for pity’s sake.