Embracing Grace: Obedience

I’ve been wrestling. Really wrestling – for a while now. Maybe something akin to the circular analysis of the chicken-and-egg metaphor. Which comes first – obedience or spiritual growth?

Maybe because I’m human, and specifically an American human, I’ve had to wrestle more than I felt should be necessary. But laying pride aside, I’ve dug deeply. And it turns out Scripture makes it pretty clear: We obey because of our belief and trust in God – because our hearts are being transformed by Him (see: Hebrews 5:8; Romans 1:5). And, somehow that comes as a surprise to me! For some reason I’ve operated under the assumption that we must first obey so that we can grow as Christ followers.

God has really shown up in my ponderings and questioning. In His quiet way, He has put people – men and women who have done a lot of this wrestling themselves – in my path to deliver His message and help me find my way toward the truth about what biblical, Christ-like obedience looks like.

It’s wild to me how I’ve never paid much attention to the place of obedience in our sanctification journey with Jesus. I’ve always just assumed.

Well. Now’s the time to tease out what biblical obedience is and its place in our spiritual growth. Amazingly enough, all that we’ve been exploring over the last many weeks leads us to this very place. And isn’t that just a picture of God’s grace in action?

Obedience as the Outcome

In his book, Renovation of the Heart, Dr. Dallas Willard wrote something a pastor friend recently spoke aloud – all of which amped up all my wrestling in earnest. 

Dr. Willard says the goal of spiritual formation “is an obedience or conformity to Christ that arises out of an inner transformation accomplished through purposive interaction with the grace of God in Christ. Obedience is an essential outcome of Christian spiritual formation.”¹ 

“Obedience is an essential outcome of Christian spiritual formation.” Full stop! In my mind, I’ve thought of obedience as the step before formation. We obey; we become. Then I hear myself and realize how transactional my subconscious thoughts have been. In fact, God’s been teaching me for a while now that we behold and become. There’s no ‘obey’ in that! 

Yet my wrestling thoughts war within me – don’t we have to obey (ie: have the right behaviors/practices) before we can be changed? 

To answer that, let’s go to the beginning. I have rightly understood that faith – the moment of justification when we put our hope in Jesus – doesn’t come from earning our way. Jesus has paid the price. We are forgiven by grace and saved by faith in our Savior (Ephesians 2:8-9).

Now, I’m discovering the same is true for our sanctification – that lifelong journey of spiritual growth, the path full of grace that helps us transform from the inside-out. It’s why Dr. Willard says obedience is not about outward conformity to a set of rules but a natural outflow of a heart that is being transformed.¹

And light dawns in me. I think of the Pharisees who were so rule-oriented that they missed the heart of the Law. All their energy was so focused on obeying 613 laws that they missed GOD!

I think of Christians I’ve met over the years who were so unbending on rules – ie: don’t drink; don’t smoke; don’t dance; don’t hang out with those people; don’t, don’t, don’t – that they missed grace. They missed the heart of the gospel that Jesus died for.

I think of my own walk with Jesus and how motivated I have been by my perfectionistic ways. For years I did not fully grasp that the grace of faith applied to my daily life in Christ. I didn’t have to play a part or dress for the occasion or keep a perfect prayer journal or check every box. Grace spills over into all of that! 

Grace is as much the source of our spiritual formation as our initial salvation.

So years later, here I am, humbled at my need to ‘renovate’ my own heart – again. And it begins with recognizing the role of obedience. Obeying God is not the first step toward inner transformation. It’s the outcome. In Dr. Willard’s words, when we become like Jesus on the inside, our outer life becomes an expression of His teachings.¹ 

Dr. Willard says it another way – more emphatically – obedience is an “essential outcome” of our spiritual formation. Obedience is necessary, and it flows from an inner work of grace rather than external endeavors.¹ As we embrace the fact that this abiding life is not about our outward focus, our striving, or our legalistic leanings, but about grace, we are able to make an important shift – that the outflow of our ever-transforming interior life leads to the outcome of obedience.

Obedience of Faith

Paul helps us make this shift by expounding on the Gospel’s core message in Romans one – that through Christ “we have received grace and apostleship to bring about the obedience of faith for the sake of his name among all the nations” (v.5 ESV). By grace we are called to pass on the Gospel to all who will listen (MSG). And such grace brings about the obedience of faith. I’m letting that soak in. Obedience doesn’t come first. Faith does (NIV). Trust does (MSG).

Jesus, ever our role model, lived the same way. Hebrews explains, “Son though he was, he learned obedience from what he suffered” (5:8). Jesus, the Son of God, “learned trusting-obdience” (v.8 MSG). Jesus didn’t first obey and then learn. He learned obedience as He suffered. Obedience resulted from His faith in His Father.

Dr. Willard assists our understanding of these necessary truths by showing us that we pursue Jesus, not obedience. We worship the Teacher, not His teachings. We ‘apprentice’ ourselves to Jesus so that by Him we learn to live a life that relies on God’s grace – not our own striving.¹ This is the abundant life Jesus promises us: a grace-anchored life leading toward obedience.¹ 

Paul gives us language to hang our hats on – “obedience of faith.” Dr. Willard helps us see how obedience flows out of such growing, deepening faith, and John Piper offers practical direction for living out such a life: “focus on Christ, know Christ, delight in Christ, meditate on Christ; get the whole Christ before you. Faith will rise because grace would be coming through it, and then obedience flows out from it.”² 

Obedience and Effort

There’s another Dallas Willard quote that I’ve been coming back to for a few years now:

“Grace is not opposed to effort; it is opposed to earning. Earning is an attitude. Effort is an action.”³ 

I admit that I didn’t go looking for the context of this quote. I’d made another assumption – that Dr. Willard was only talking about grace as our means of salvation. But, it turns out, the context of this quote expands its meaning as Dr. Willard immediately goes on to say, “Grace does not just have to do with forgiveness of sins alone.”³ Oh. He was speaking more holistically. All grace – justifying, sanctifying, glorifying grace.

So, if all grace isn’t opposed to effort, then what action is needed when it comes to our lifelong pursuit toward becoming like Jesus? What do we do when it comes to Christ-like obedience?

Dr. Willard answered these questions very simply: “Lead a holy life.”³ Then he elaborated with, “Become the kind of person who routinely does what Jesus did and said.”³ 

Living the abiding life does take effort – effort that is action. Action that is motivated not by an earning attitude or a striving mentality but by delight in Jesus, by our love of Jesus.*

Therefore, ‘leading a holy life’ happens when we live sourced by God’s love. Jesus says, “Those who accept my commandments and obey them are the ones who love me” (John 14:21 NLT). Jesus’ words explain that the ones who love Him are the ones who obey Him. We obey Him because we love Him. Our love for Jesus is our motivation for obedience; it’s what makes a life of discipline possible.¹ And discipline takes effort. May we remember that when we live from the love we have for Jesus, our obedience – and all spiritual discipline effort* – naturally flow from our hearts that are being transformed.¹ 

One action – soak in Scripture. There we can learn the ways of Jesus. We can observe His responses and reactions. We will wake up to the ways He moved through this world with compassion and hard work. He went to people. He served. He loved. He didn’t sit around spewing off all the rules and demanding people come to Him. He didn’t slap people around for breaking the rules; He met them in their brokenness and extended a grace-filled way toward wholeness. 

And that’s exactly how every Jesus follower is meant to live. There’s all this intermingling of grace and love, of effort and attitude. The more we know Jesus, the more we trust Him – and the better we obey Him. Dr. Kenneth Collins puts it all together nicely:

“This relationship of obedience and trust, evidence of a lively faith, characterizes the life of Jesus…, who as a true human being submitted his will to that of the Father.”⁴  

It’s in our living like Jesus – by the grace of God and the power of the Spirit – that we are transformed. Our inner way of feeling and thinking and believing begins to change the way we live in the world. And that is leading a holy life. That is living from grace and love. That is the obedience of faith. 

My friends, we are in the family of Jesus because of grace – and grace still leads us. I love that Dr. Willard says we can think of grace like jet fuel – that “every holy act [we] do will have to be upheld by the grace of God. And that upholding is totally the unmerited favor of God in action.”³ Living holy, living by grace burns a lot of fuel! It’s why we need to go out and get refilled every single day!

May we put more energy into gathering the grace we need for each day than in checking boxes.
May we live sourced by God’s grace and the love we have for Jesus rather than our need for acceptance or our attitudes of earning
May we be willing to put forth the effort to live disciplined lives for Jesus, willing to check our motives at every turn. 
May we trust that such holy living is fueled by God’s grace and leads to the obedience we desire to give our Father.
May we believe that the outcome of true inner transformation toward Christ-likeness is Spirit-led obedience of faith. 

Father God, how gracious You are to meet us in our wonderings and wrestlings. We marvel at the ways You extend grace to us in our misunderstandings and our prideful, perfectionistic, human ways of moving through this world. Thank You for giving us what we don’t deserve. Thank You for the blessing of your Word and Spirit so that we not only know your will but your way – and that we are empowered to live your way. Lord Jesus, we desire to live more like You. We decide, in this moment, to seek You out in your Word so that we might model our lives after yours. We lay down our human tendencies to sanctify ourselves through our striving and stubborn will. And we pick up the grace You died to give us so that we might live sourced by it and be changed by You. Holy Spirit, help us to live from the love we have for Jesus. Help us to be willing to dig deeply in our hearts to uncover all the assumptions we carry within us – and to give them proper perspective and place – so that we might live from grace and the obedience of faith. In Jesus’ name we pray, amen.
(inspired by Romans 1:5; Hebrews 5:8; John 14:21; Ephesians 2:8-9)

*The “spiritual discipline effort” needed can be defined as spiritual practices or abiding rhythms. We won’t know Jesus and be able to live like Him if we aren’t in His Word. We won’t know His voice and be able to follow where He leads if we don’t get still or aren’t in holy conversation with Him. There are no ‘magical’ steps to follow, and we must guard against striving in our own strength. But we also don’t move through life without putting forth any effort in our spiritual formation. 

Resources: I love sharing with you the books, podcasts, articles, and anything else that has inspired, encouraged, or taught me. These are humble offerings with no expectations.

• 1 – Dr. Dallas Willard in Renovation of the Heart^
• 2 – Dr. John Piper in this article. 
• 3 – Dr. Dallas Willard’s Facebook quote that comes from his book The Great Omission.^
• 4 – Dr. Kenneth Collins’ quote from his book, Jesus the Stranger^ (and his 3/7/25 post on The Wake Up Call)
• On our newest playlist, Embracing Grace, I’ve included the hymn that always comes to mind when I think of what it means to obey. The title, “Trust and Obey” gives us the right order of it all! Tiffany Hudson’s song, “Obey,” also hits the heart of godly obedience. It’s a song-prayer that helps us keep the right perspective and heart posture:
  • Keep me tender and tethered to Your decrees
    Let my love be a covenant that I keep
    I will obey
    I will obey
    Not because I have to
    But because I love You
• Each Wednesday I upload a “Teacup” teaching video that carries on the topic here. You can find all the videos on my Facebook Author Page, Instagram, and YouTube.
• Many of you have found me on Substack. Thank you so much! And, if you’d like to listen to (rather than read) these weekly posts, you can do so on Substack, as well. It’s easy to see and use the audio bar across the top of each post. While you’re on Substack, check out the ministry I’m blessed to be part of, the Devoted Collective.
• My monthly newsletter, The Abiding Life, goes to email inboxes the first week of each month to those who have subscribed on my website. I also post them on Substack. My most recent edition can be found there, and you can subscribe for future newsletters on Substack, here.

Rhythms: As my newsletter’s title infers, we seek to develop an abiding life in this space — a place where we can get informed but also be transformed as we learn to abide in God’s presence throughout our days. I like to think that developing rhythms is one way to aid us in our desire to become more Christlike. There’s nowhere better to know Christ than in His Word, so throughout this series, we’ll grab hold of one passage each week and embrace the rhythm of starting our day with God and His Word every morning.

• This week our passage is Romans 1:5. This verse in the ESV gives us the language of “obedience of faith” — and in the NIV, it spells it out even more clearly. May we put all our effort into pursuing Christ and becoming like Him rather than chasing rules and checking lists. May we receive His grace and call by “the obedience that comes from faith” —
  
  “Through him we received grace and apostleship to call all the Gentiles to the obedience that comes from faith for his name’s sake.” –Romans 1:5 NIV
• We’re all called to share the truths about the work of Jesus. One way you can do that is by sharing this site and telling others your own stories of faith experiences. Believe it or not, we worship God each time we share our stories of faith! We use our whole selves to tell about our holy God!!

Featured Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash. “All the Bits and Pieces” Photo by Arjun Kapoor on Unsplash.
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