Just a quick response to Scott Clark’s comment about faith and obedience. This is also part of my continued interaction with Lane, since Lane handed this round off to Scott.
There are a number of places there where I could cultivate my differences with Scott, as though they need cultivating, but let me take this space to agree with a few things.
Scott says:
“Yes, both the law and the gospel have conditions and imperatives but they are not the same conditions nor are they the same imperatives.”
“The imperative ‘believe in Christ and in his finished work’ is a gospel imperative.”
“The response to the command ‘believe’ is to trust in the finished work of Christ. The answer to the imperative is to rest in and Christ and to receive him alone for righteousness.”
This is all very good. The first point is one I have made repeatedly. If God commands us to trust in Christ alone apart from any effort of our own, then obedience excludes any attempts on my part at self-justification. Self-justification would not be obedience to the command believe, but rather disobedience. When I obey the command to believe it done, this is very different activity than an attempt to do it myself.
As I said before obedience and believing are not necessarily the same thing at all — that depends on whether we were commanded to believe, which we were. Jumping is not obedience unless I was commanded to. If I was commanded not to, jumping is disobedience.
I agree with the second quotation also. But if we can have a gospel imperative, then why can we not have a gospel obedience? This is why I consistently use phrases like evangelical obedience — not meaning strenuous moral efforts by evangelicals, but rather obedience in complete restful response to the evangel. If we are commanded to rest, then should we not obey?
On the third one, just amen.