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January 31, 2025 |
Love, Faith, and Obedience
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by Nathan Davy |
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“I can do nothing on My own. As I hear, I judge, and My judgment is just, because I seek not My own will but the will of Him who sent Me. If I alone bear witness about Myself, My testimony is not true. There is another who bears witness about Me, and I know that the testimony that He bears about Me is true. You sent to John, and he has borne witness to the truth. Not that the testimony that I receive is from man, but I say these things so that you may be saved. He was a burning and shining lamp, and you were willing to rejoice for a while in his light. But the testimony that I have is greater than that of John. For the works that the Father has given Me to accomplish, the very works that I am doing, bear witness about Me that the Father has sent Me. And the Father who sent Me has Himself borne witness about Me. His voice you have never heard, His form you have never seen, and you do not have His word abiding in you, for you do not believe the One whom He has sent. You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about Me, yet you refuse to come to Me that you may have life. I do not receive glory from people. But I know that you do not have the love of God within you. I have come in My Father’s name, and you do not receive Me. If another comes in his own name, you will receive him. How can you believe, when you receive glory from one another and do not seek the glory that comes from the only God? Do not think that I will accuse you to the Father. There is one who accuses you: Moses, on whom you have set your hope. For if you believed Moses, you would believe Me; for he wrote of Me. But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe My words?”
John 5:30-47
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Pastor Goebel preached on Sunday from John 5:30-47, with the theme of the Jews refusing to believe in Jesus, rejecting the testimony about Jesus that He was the Son of God – the fourfold testimony of John the Baptist, the miracles of Jesus, the voice of God the Father speaking from heaven at Jesus’ baptism, and finally the testimony of Scripture itself. I want to focus more narrowly on one thing that Pastor Goebel said: that faith in Christ requires love for Him, and that the Pharisees’ ultimate problem was that they attempted to obey the Scriptures without love. To this end, let’s revisit just a single verse from this past Sunday’s passage, “yet you refuse to come to Me that you may have life” (John 5:40).
A more literal version of this verse would be, “but you do not wish to come to Me so that you may have life.” Jesus is saying that because their hearts are not inclined towards Him, they do not come to Him for life, even though they have the revealed word of God in the Scriptures of the Old Testament (v. 38-39). The 19th century English evangelical pastor J. C. Ryle put it this way in his commentary on John: “The plain truth is that the chief seat of unbelief is the heart.” He also wrote in the same commentary, “True faith does not depend merely on the state of man’s head and understanding, but on the state of his heart…so long as there is anything the man is secretly loving more than God, there will be no true faith” (J. C. Ryle, Expository Thoughts on John). This is not a good place to be! But it is a place that we can find ourselves. As Calvin famously wrote, “the human heart is a perpetual factory of idols.” Faith in Jesus is not an intellectual assent to what the Bible says about Him. Faith in Jesus is love for Him, which manifests itself as obedience to Him.
Love, faith, and obedience are interconnected. It is impossible to separate them completely from each other. For example, though we might think we have encountered an intellectual obstacle to belief in something that the word of God plainly teaches, what we have done is rather simply refuse to submit our hearts to Christ in obedience, because, as Ryle puts it, there is something that we are “secretly loving more than God” (compare Romans 1:18-32). But also, we can experience difficulty in obedience because we have not given ourselves fully over in love for Him. Sometimes even when we find our love for God lacking in zeal, it would help if we were simply to try obeying Him.
What this means is that whenever we find ourselves deficient in any one of these – love, faith, and obedience – after we pray to the Holy Spirit to give us more of what we lack, though we fail in one way, God may make it easier for us to persevere in another. If we struggle to believe, we may find that we can attempt the obedience of love and leave it to God to increase our faith. If we find ourselves struggling to obey, we can meditate on the surpassing worth and work of Christ and entreat the Lord to increase our love through faith in Him, removing all idols from our hearts, and obedience will follow.
But whatever our struggle may be, Jesus says in John 5:24, “Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever hears My Word and believes Him who sent Me has eternal life. He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life.” New life in Christ is not a promise for “sometime,” it’s a promise for now. “Whoever hears and believes has eternal life.” If we seek Christ in faith, we have passed from death to life already. |
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About the Author |
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NATHAN DAVY |
ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR OF MUSIC AND ORGANIST |
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Nathan Davy is the Associate Director of Music and Organist at Park Cities Presbyterian Church. He is married to Laura Davy, and they have five children. When not making music he enjoys running, reading, gardening, and playing chess. |
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