Inform Your 'Faith'

    "Proper Christian obedience is thus as far away as possible from the treadmill negativism of the conscientious conformist, whose main concern is never to put a foot wrong and who conceives the whole Christian life in terms of shunning doubtful things" (JI Packer). Packer couldn't be more on target. This defines the religious rigorist whose pious negativism is paramount. The Pharisee personifies this mentality, for their sole end and emphasis is to ritualistically be staunch adherents to the external law ALONE, fait accompli. Motives and internal quality are noticeably absent from this sort in contradistinction to Christ who made motives and internal disposition primary.

    Indeed, obedience to the law proper comes from the heart upon which God has now placed the law which was formally on external tablets of stone. Christ himself identifies adherence to the law with the inward posture of the heart when elucidating on the two greatest commandments...."You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind" & "you shall love your neighbor as yourself" ...And upon, "these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets" (Matt.27:36-40). In so doing Christ is couching all of the ethical and moral teachings of the Decalogue in the heart. Therefore the consequent movement of all actions for the Christian is to originate from the heart. In effect, as Packer postulates, Jesus was,"focusing positively the two proper overall purposes of actions, which the Decalogue illustrates negatively "

    Ministers and laymen who teach biblical ethics and morality simply as a discipline (empty and vacuous to be sure) put themselves on equal footing with the Pharisee. They turn "obedience" into idolatry and self righteousness. Though they may be technically exercising obedience of some sort they are actually disobeying the law of God thus rendering themselves blind guides and the worst kind of sinners tantamount to the religious Pharisee.  The false piety of the Pharisee is founded upon a paranoid and technical excision of the LAW.

    Obedience to God is grounded in "love" of God and His glory. Paul goes so far as to advance that love is the ground upon which all the law is fulfilled.(Rom.13:8-10)  Genuine biblical love cannot but keep the law for this is the very movement of love. Again elder churchman Packer rightly observes,"The Christian knows that only when their motives are right will his choices, however good in themselves, be the choices of a morally good man, who truly pleases God."  Morality in and of itself is a striving after wind and a symptom of self delusion and religious psychosis.

    Packer goes on to posit,"just as one cannot maintain health on a diet of disinfectants only, so one cannot fully or healthily obey God just by trying to avoid defilement's, evading risks, and omitting to ask what is the most one can do to glorify God." 

    Anyone who fits this mold characteristically espouses submission and obedience without the biblically accurate reason/s and motives.  Paul repudiates this ilk while writing Timothy, "The aim of our charge is love that issues from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith. Certain persons, by swerving from these, have wandered away into vain discussion, desiring to be teachers of the law, without understanding either what they are saying or the things about which they make confident assertions" (I Timothy 1:5-7).