One of the greatest evidences and blessings of true redemption is an obedient faith. An obedient faith-life is “walking in the newness of life” in Christ. (Rom. 6:4) The outcome is the assurance of faith. (Heb. 10:22, 6:11-12) Obedience comes first; assurance follows.

We have responsibility to act in what Paul the Apostle calls “the obedience of faith” (Rom. 1:5, 16:26), to demonstrate that we indeed have true faith! Our faith is “acted out” through the voluntary nature of the “new man”. (Col. 3:9-10) God does not make us obey, nor does the Holy Spirit make us do that. (However, we do experience conviction from Him when we are not complying.) In true faith we, ourselves, will voluntarily choose to walk in all the ways and precepts of God. As we do this we see that God is truly present. This indeed is our assurance of faith. Oh, and here is our confidence in Christ!

“Abraham, walk thou before Me and be thou holy.” (Gen. 17:1) The end of this matter is that all true obedience results in faith, which produces a life of obedience to Christ. This is what we herald in this teaching. All true obedience of faith produces a faith that is obedient to Christ. (Eccl. 12:13)

One of the best examples of the outworking of this is found in the New Testament in Hebrews 5. Indeed, our best example is Christ Jesus Himself as He went to the Mount of Olives to pray, to commit Himself to something that was grossly against His own holy nature. He prayed the deepest kind of prayer. He was faithful. He obeyed His Father’s will, though it ran counter to His own flesh. Perfect as He was, it ran directly counter to everything that His flesh wanted to do, yet He knew that what His Father asked Him to do was righteous and just.

Hebrews 5:7-8 reads, “Who in the days of His flesh when He had offered up prayers and supplication with strong crying and tears unto Him that was able to save Him from death, and was heard in that He feared. . .” (He knew the reality of what was being spoken.) “… Though He were a Son, yet learned He obedience by the things which He suffered.” Brethren, what was the great hallmark of our Lord Jesus Christ while in the days of His flesh? He learned obedience through the things He suffered! Do you think it is going to be any different for us? Do you think we can fabricate another way?! If Jesus Christ, the sinless, holy, harmless Lamb of God had to learn this through suffering, as a man in the flesh, we must follow the same course. It was grievous to His flesh, but He was obedient to the will of the Father. “Who in the days of His flesh when He had offered up prayers and supplications with strong crying and tears …” Do you ever have prayer sessions like that? Strong, solid crying out to God, desperate to get right with Him, to get things dealt with? Jesus had to make this decision before Him that was able to save Him from death, “and was heard in that He feared, though He was a Son, yet learned He obedience by the things He suffered. And being made perfect … ” Notice that this does not mean, “having been made sinless.” He was already sinless. But being made a perfect Savior, a sympathizing High Priest, so that in all points He could identify with and enter into our suffering, our temptation, and our pain of sin. And this is why He was grieved in the garden.

Resuming in our text in Hebrews, “and having learned obedience by the things He suffered, being made perfect [a complete Savior for us], He became the author of eternal salvation unto all them that …” make a decision? Is that what the Bible says? No! That is not what the Bible says. And yet if you look closely at our country today, that is the way most people teach this text—“You just have to make a decision, sir.” But that is just not the way the Bible reads! It says, “And being made perfect, He became the author of eternal salvation unto all them that obey Him.” Yes, it is a big condition. Yes, we will be seen for who we are by how we obey or disobey the Lord.

This is what made Jesus our High Priest, brethren. He pursued a course of obedience when it went against the grain of His flesh. Jesus went through the mysterious agony in the garden, and it is almost irreverent to attempt to preach on what He suffered at that time. In human words, we do not believe it is possible. What mere human can describe what it must have meant?—that the incarnate Son of God Himself came down from heaven and was raised as a man for one purpose: to die—to die for all of humanity’s sin, for all generations!

Jesus entered the garden and the Father held the cup full of sin and handed it to Him, full of wrath, full of destruction. God was asking Him to die for our sin and as the Father held the cup to His lips, He said, in effect, “This is the cup that You must drink. This is what You must do to be a perfect Savior.” Everything in Jesus, the Son of God, recoiled at having to do this. He said, “Oh, My Father, if it be possible, please remove this cup from Me.” He realized that the wrath of God would mean separation from the Father—‘Father, all of My life, My eternity has been spent in true communion and holy fellowship with You. Even in these past 33 years I have enjoyed sweet fellowship with You. My Father! Oh, My Father, if there be any other way. I cannot stand the pangs of hell upon My soul, being separated from You. Oh, My Father, My communion with You has been My delight from all eternity! How can I bear the thought of Your face being turned away from Me? I have never experienced that before! No! There must be another way! If there be any other way, Lord, if it be possible, take this cup from Me! Nevertheless, not My will but Thine be done. I will obey, Father. I know We have agreed to this in eternity. Before the foundations of the earth, the Lamb was slain.’

We know that in doing things that run against the grain of our flesh—so that we might be found obeying the ways of the Lord—there is strong temptation not to do them. Whether in a large thing or small thing, there is the flesh hammering away saying, “Don’t do it!” And there is Christ saying, “I did it. For you! I poured out a life of obedience for you in order that you might have continuous, unbroken fellowship with Me eternally in holiness.” Hallelujah! Oh, saints, if Jesus did this for us, we cannot live any other way if we are to have true redemption!

By this one hallmark we can see that the obedience of faith is non-negotiable. Jesus Christ demonstrated the obedience of faith. While Jesus was in prayer, He sweat great drops of blood, as it were, with full concentration. Then He rose up and went as a prince, allowed Himself to be captured, and went all the way through the cross as the innocent Lamb of God in all humility. The real work was accomplished in the Garden in prayer. Those who pray also know that the real work is done in prayer. The rest is just follow-through as they take hold upon the grace of God available for that task.

There Jesus hung, stuck to a cross, nailed for our sin, between two thieves from the sixth to the ninth hour in utter darkness! God had turned away His face and the heavens were as black, deep and dark as the plague in Egypt. At that point, Jesus was tasting “outer darkness” for you and for me. Jesus took our hell, brethren, at the cross, in those three hours of darkness when He experienced the grief of His Father turning His face away from Him because He had taken upon Himself our sin. That was the only time He cried out: “Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani. My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” Yes, He experienced something He had never experienced in all eternity: separation from God. It was the pain of separation, brethren, the penalty of death that we all will have if we do not receive His testimony and His redemption His way on His terms. We hear a lot about coming to the Lord on our terms, but, it must be on His terms! And what is the great evidence that we have truly come to Him in His way? It is the obedience of faith—“Though He were a Son, yet learned He obedience by the things which He suffered; and being made perfect, He became the Author of eternal salvation unto all them that obey Him.”—Heb. 5:8-9

Through all that Jesus did He alone became the author of eternal life. He, and He alone, is the constant mediator. Christ became the author of eternal life, not to everyone who just raises a hand, prays a prayer, gets a feeling, goes through a ritual, or who says “I trust in Jesus.” You cannot decide on your terms that you are saved. No, no. He became the author of eternal salvation unto everyone who, forsaking his sinful, wicked ways and his life of rebellion and self-will now trusts only in the merits of the Lord Jesus credited to his account. And when we disobey, brethren, it is a failure to obey Him. It is a failure to receive. We cannot afford that! We must continue to stay upon the ready blood of Christ Jesus in His righteousness—that is, His way of living, put to our account—a life of voluntary obedience. There is never salvation without obedience. May we make that crystal clear. There is never salvation without an obedient life. He became the author of salvation unto all them that obey Him.

This means, children, that when you disobey your parents, you are disobeying God in the fifth commandment. It means that when you disobey the church you are disobeying Christ Jesus speaking and walking through His church. (Your leaders have oversight over your soul.—Heb. 13:17) But when God the Father sees the effectual working of Christ Jesus in you as you take up the grace to be obedient as He was obedient, when He sees that He is being glorified and magnified in the earth, then the Lord says, “This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased.” Who is He looking at? You? Me? He is looking at Christ Jesus working through us! There should be no difference, brethren! It is not because of our effort, our self-will and our self-strength. No. We are simply obeying by taking up the grace of Christ Jesus to walk through any and every situation which He sovereignly knows about. We are without excuse! “This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased.” This is “the obedience of faith” that Paul the Apostle talked about.

Now let’s examine Exodus 25, beginning with verse 17, looking at an Old Testament example of our subject. This passage describes the making of the ark of the covenant with the instructions that were given by God to Moses.

“Then make the ark’s cover [the mercy seat]—the place of atonement—out of pure gold. It must be 3 3/4 feet long and 2 1/4 feet wide.” A box that small cannot contain a man. It is interesting to note that the Lord, in making a place for His habitation, made it smaller than a man. He may have done this for at least two reasons: (1) It shows His humility, and (2) Man cannot get in. God gets all the glory, praise His name!

Verse 18: “Then use hammered gold to make two cherubim, and place them at the two ends of the atonement cover [the mercy seat]. Attach the cherubim to each end of the atonement cover, making it all one piece. The cherubim will face each other, looking down on the atonement cover with their wings spread out above it. Place inside the Ark the stone tablets inscribed with the terms of the covenant, which I will give to you. Then put the atonement cover on top of the Ark. I will meet with you there and talk to you from above the atonement cover [the mercy seat, the place where the Paschal lamb’s blood is put to receive atonement to God] between the gold cherubim that hover over the Ark of the Covenant [or, the Ark of Testimony].”

Here, we have a picture of where God meets us. It is on top of the atonement, the blood that has been shed. If the Lord looked all the way straight down through the Ark, without the blood of Christ, what would He see? He would see the Ten Commandments. He would look down upon that and see the Law and our sin, because of our failure to obey. But when the blood is there, when Christ has given His full sacrifice, He looks down and cannot see the Law anymore! He sees the atonement! The law has been fulfilled because of Christ’s obedience in fulfilling the whole of the Law. It is covered! HALLELUJAH!!! Brethren, get excited over that!! Because that is where God meets us. He meets us in that place where the law is fulfilled and our sins are covered by the blood of the Lamb.

Now, what do we see? We are under the covering of the blood atonement. We are looking up to God through the blood. Through the blood atonement of Christ Jesus we may behold the Lord and have communion with Him! He does not see our offenses; He sees the finished product of Christ. He can say, “This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased.”—as if we had kept the whole of the commandments perfectly. Oh, brethren, that is THE salvation we have been offered! May He get eternal praise for that.

Exodus 25:17-22 correlates to what Jesus said in John 14:21, “He that hath My commandments, and keepeth them, he it is that loveth Me: and he that loveth Me shall be loved of My Father and I will love him, and will manifest Myself to him.” God reveals Himself to those who are obedient. John 14:23 tells us about where the Lord will build His home. “If a man love Me, he will keep (obey) My words and My Father will love him and We will come unto Him and make Our abode with him.” With whom? With that one who keeps, who obeys, His Word.

Hearing truth without obedience is voluntary ignorance! If you examine the root word of ignorance—“ignore”—you will see that this is rebellion. If you look it up in the dictionary and notice the synonyms and antonyms, you will see that this means someone that is saying “No! I’m going to ignore this. No!” It does not just mean being uninformed. We must dash that from our thinking. Our society is sloppy with certain words, but this is one that we must focus on very carefully. A voluntary ignorance describes those who disobey. The new nature is a voluntary obedience.

Brethren, we shall one day give an account before God for all the means given to us to know and to obey Him—our parents, Bible studies, the many devotions, home schooling, the church, all the sermons we have heard, and the Bible that we have. In light of all this, God will hold us accountable—for our stewardship of resources, of time, of helping the lost and poor, and for the exercise of our nobler faculties of mind, will, conscience, memory, serious reflection and diligent application in sober, honest resolve.

Every day we live, brethren, our own eternal interests are at issue. Having been granted such abundant means of instruction—grace, mercy, the Gospel, and the printed page—how great must be the guilt, how awful the punishment, of voluntary ignorance of young or old, saved or unsaved. May we this day be roused to voluntary exertion, steady perseverance and diligence! The new man receives the new relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ, but with corresponding duties. Brethren, we must have an obedient faith. “He that has My commandments, and keeps them, he it is that loves Me …”