As the children of Israel came to the end of their 40 years of wandering in the wilderness and were about to enter Canaan, Joshua, who was leading them, was given the following message from God:

Be strong and very courageous. Be careful to obey all the law my servant Moses gave you; do not turn from it to the right or to the left, that you may be successful wherever you go (Joshua 1:7).

How do you understand this instruction? When you hear calls to be obedient to God’s law, what comes to mind? Do you think of God’s law like our human laws, rules imposed that God polices and enforces through punishments? Or do you think of the laws that the Creator built into the operations of reality—the laws of physics, gravity, health, and the moral laws?

Do you hear God’s call to obedience like a doctor’s call to live healthfully (in harmony with the laws of health), or do you hear God’s call to obedience like a police officer’s warning not to speed?

It is a sad fact of history that much of Christianity has embraced the lie that God’s law functions no differently than human law, made-up rules enforced through inflicted punishment. But let us consider the obedience that comes from law, from rules, from threats of punishment, from law enforcement—versus the obedience that comes from love, trust, also known as faith. And then let us consider how love and trust are instilled in hearts and minds and lead to obedience.

Obedience of Law

Imagine standing at the foot of the cross as Jesus is being crucified. You’re talking to Caiaphas and the other Jewish religious leaders who are mocking, tormenting, and crucifying Christ. What do you think their answers would be to the following questions:

• Is it important to have covenantal obedience to God? “Absolutely!” I imagine them saying, “We live to obey the covenant—we are all properly circumcised exactly as the covenant instructs.” 

• Is it important that we obey God’s law? “Of course it is. And if these criminals don’t die soon, we are going to ask Pilate to accelerate their deaths so we can keep the Sabbath according to the law.”

• Is it important to obey the law that God’s servant Moses gave us? “Certainly! Our whole lives are lived focused on obeying the law.”

And if we asked them, “Why are you crucifying this fellow?” I can imagine them answering:

“Well, you just pointed out why yourself, we must be obedient to the covenant, we must obey God’s law, we must obey the laws God gave us through Moses—and this fellow keeps breaking them. Moses instructed us to stone the adulterer, but this man forgave them. Moses gave us the right to divorce our wives, but this man said we should not. Moses taught us not to work on the Sabbath, but this man healed on the Sabbath and His disciples picked grain on the Sabbath. Moses taught us to wash in a certain way before eating, but this man didn’t direct His disciples to do so. Moses taught us that laws must be enforced and that the evil must be purged from the community, and that is what we are doing because we are children of both Abraham and God, and we are faithful and obedient to the covenant.”

Obedience to the law and law enforcement have no ability to change hearts and minds, to instill love, trust, friendship, loyalty, and devotion. The obedience of the Jewish leadership who crucified Christ was the type that turned them into God’s enemies while they claimed to be His children and doing His work.

The apostle Paul takes up this entire misdirected legal focus to obedience in Romans and contrasts the obedience that comes from law with the obedience that comes from faith or trust. He starts out the book of Romans with:

Through him and for his name’s sake, we received grace and apostleship to call people from among all the Gentiles to the obedience that comes from faith (v. 1:7 NIV84).

Faith or trust is not something that can be ordered, legislated, commanded, or obtained by law and law enforcement. Trust is built upon real-world trustworthiness that requires evidence, which must be understood and experienced. Trust cannot be established by proclamation, claims, edicts, directives, rules, and orders, and it will be undermined by threats and inflicted punishments. Try getting someone’s trust by threatening to harm them, punish them, if they don’t trust you. It is an impossibility! Imposed law and law enforcement cannot win hearts and minds and, ultimately, will turn those who practice such methods as a means of pursuing righteousness into rebels.

Paul, understanding this, after instructing us that he is calling people to an obedience that comes from faith, tells us the basis of this faith. In Romans 1:20, he writes,

For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse (NIV84, emphasis mine).

Our faith in God is not built upon claims, words, edicts, but upon reality, evidence, and truth. God is the Creator, and His laws are the laws that govern the operations of reality. Paul is telling us that God’s kingdom is the kingdom of reality, eternal design laws that govern the operations of nature, and as such, God’s kingdom does not operate upon made-up rules that require the infliction of external punishments like creatures use.

Paul goes on to say that people who have not had the written word of God brought to them but who understand the reality of God’s kingdom of truth, love, and freedom revealed through the design laws built into nature and thereby choose to trust Him, they receive a new heart and right spirit and have God’s law written upon their hearts. They become partakers of the new covenant of salvation (Hebrews 8:10).

All who sin apart from the law will also perish apart from the law, and all who sin under the law will be judged by the law [Torah]. For it is not those who hear the law who are righteous in God’s sight, but it is those who obey the law who will be declared righteous. (Indeed, when Gentiles, who do not have the law, do by nature things required by the law, they are a law for themselves, even though they do not have the law, since they show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness, and their thoughts now accusing, now even defending them.) (Romans 2:12–15 NIV84, emphasis mine).

Paul is describing reality, that the design laws of God are built into the operations of reality, and if no one ever teaches you about them in school, if you never read about them in a book, but you recognize them in nature and live in harmony with them because you value them and choose them, then you are choosing to trust in the Creator, and the Holy Spirit works in your heart to write His law upon you. Via the victory of Christ, the Holy Spirit brings the life of Christ, of truth, love, freedom—the design laws of God—and reproduces them upon your mind, your heart, and that is the new covenant experience. Even if one has not yet heard the name of Jesus, they are still saved by Him because He is the Creator and sustainer of nature. This healing, transformation, restoration of heart and mind cannot be done through external legal means.

Notice what Paul writes next:

Now you, if you call yourself a Jew; if you rely on the law and brag about your relationship to God; if you know his will and approve of what is superior because you are instructed by the law; if you are convinced that you are a guide for the blind, a light for those who are in the dark, an instructor of the foolish, a teacher of infants, because you have in the law the embodiment of knowledge and truth—you, then, who teach others, do you not teach yourself? You who preach against stealing, do you steal? You who say that people should not commit adultery, do you commit adultery? You who abhor idols, do you rob temples? You who brag about the law, do you dishonor God by breaking the law? As it is written: “God’s name is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you” (Romans 2:17–24 NIV84).

Paul is confronting the imposed-law, legal, rule-keeping method of obedience. This is analogous to saying to doctors:

“You who call yourself healthcare leaders and who rely on the knowledge in your medical textbooks and brag that you are more educated and know more about medicine and health because you went to med school and got educated in medicine; if you are convinced in your own mind that you are a guide to the sick, a teacher to the infirmed, because you have the medical textbook, why don’t you teach yourselves how do live healthfully? Why don’t you stop smoking? Why don’t you stop drinking? Why don’t you get eight hours of sleep per night? You who abhor sickness in others, who brag about your medical expertise, why do you dishonor God by breaking His laws of health in how you live? As it is written, God is misrepresented among people because of you.”

After Paul chastises them for having a legal, rule-oriented approach to religion while they live in violation of God’s design laws, he then writes:

In fact, uncircumcised Gentiles who keep God’s law will condemn you Jews who are circumcised and possess God’s law but don’t obey it (Romans 2:27 NLT).

Paul is saying that those who have never been to medical school but who live in harmony with God’s laws of health will condemn the doctors who have the medical text but break the laws of health.

He then goes on to write how circumcision is not legal, behavioral, or external, but circumcision of the heart by the Spirit, which is reality, cutting away the spirit of fear and selfishness and establishing our identity upon God’s Holy Spirit, life of Christ, the life or spirit of love and trust, which restores us into harmony with God’s design laws for life.

Paul continues to make his case that imposed law, legal religion, and external performance have no saving power. He makes the point that salvation is the reality of Jesus restoring His living law of love into humanity. We read in Romans 3:

But now God has revealed a healthy state of being — a character that is right and perfect in every way — that did not come from the written code, but is exactly what the Scriptures and the Ten Commandments were pointing your minds toward. This perfect state of being comes from Christ and is created within us by God when we place our trust in him. Our trust in him is established by the evidence given through Jesus Christ of his supreme trustworthiness. There is no difference among any ethnic groups, for all humanity is infected with the same disease — of distrust, fear and selfishness — and is deformed in character and falls far short of God’s glorious ideal for humanity. Yet all who are willing are healed freely by God’s gracious Remedy which has been provided by Jesus Christ. God presented Jesus as the way and the means of restoration. Now, through the trust established by the evidence of God’s character revealed when Christ died, we may partake of the Remedy procured by Christ. God did this to demonstrate that he is right and good — because in his forbearance he suspended, for a time, the ultimate consequence of us being out of harmony with his design for life — yet he has been falsely accused of being unfair. He did it to demonstrate at the present time how right and good he is, so that he would also be seen as being right when he heals those who trust in Jesus (vv. 21–26 REM).

Paul continues this thread throughout Romans, but skipping down to chapter 14, he sums up the core problem of sin:

Everything that does not come from faith is sin (v. 23 NIV84).

This is the issue, the relevant question, the operational point, the key to salvation. At its core, sin is distrust of God. Adam and Eve in Eden distrusted God, and their distrust caused their spirit to change from love and trust to fear and selfishness. And fear and selfishness cause people to act in ways to protect and advance self, i.e., selfishness, which is antagonistic to love.

Because of Adam’s sin, we are born with the spirit of fear and selfishness, and salvation requires that we be reborn with the Spirit/life of Jesus, the Spirit of love and trust. And this cannot be accomplished through imposed law and law enforcement. In fact, imposed law causes more fear and less trust and love. The lie that God’s law functions like human law leads to legal religions like the one practiced by the Jews who crucified Christ, but salvation requires rebirth.

The obedience God longs for is not behavioral conformity of rule-keeping, but that of loving friends whose hearts have been transformed from distrust, fear, and selfishness to truth, love, and trust. This is only accomplished through God’s methods of truth and love, which is why the Bible says,

“Not by might nor by power, but by my Spirit,” says the LORD Almighty (Zechariah 4:6 NIV84).

God cannot win, cannot restore love and trust into hearts and minds, by using His might and power, only by His Spirit of truth and love.

Real obedience is the obedience that springs from love and trust in God and stems from a heart that has been reborn and is motivated by the Spirit of Christ.

I encourage you to reject the lie that God’s law functions like human law and to return to worshiping God as Creator, realizing that all of God’s laws are design laws built into the operations of reality. Then, if you haven’t already done so, open your heart to Him and be reborn to the abundant life in which real obedience is possible, the obedience of love and trust!