Faith Is Obedience

The Apostle Paul on trial before the Roman governor Porcius Festus and King Agrippa:

Acts 26:9-23 (NIV):
“I too was convinced that I ought to do all that was possible to oppose the name of Jesus of Nazareth.
And that is just what I did in Jerusalem. On the authority of the chief priests I put many of the saints in prison, and when they were put to death, I cast my vote against them.  Many a time I went from one synagogue to another to have them punished, and I tried to force them to blaspheme. In my obsession against them, I even went to foreign cities to persecute them.

“On one of these journeys I was going to Damascus with the authority and commission of the chief priests.  About noon, O king, as I was on the road, I saw a light from heaven, brighter than the sun, blazing around me and my companions.  We all fell to the ground, and I heard a voice saying to me in Aramaic,‘Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me? It is hard for you to kick against the goads.’

“Then I asked, ‘Who are you, Lord?’ “ ‘I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting,’ the Lord replied.
‘Now get up and stand on your feet. I have appeared to you to appoint you as a servant and as a witness of what you have seen of me and what I will show you.  I will rescue you from your own people and from the Gentiles. I am sending you to them to open their eyes and turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan to God, so that they may receive forgiveness of sins and a place among those who are sanctified by faith in me.’

“So then, King Agrippa, I was not disobedient to the vision from heaven.
First to those in Damascus, then to those in Jerusalem and in all Judea, and to the Gentiles also, I preached that they should repent and turn to God and prove their repentance by their deeds.
That is why the Jews seized me in the temple courts and tried to kill me.

But I have had God’s help to this very day, and so I stand here and testify to small and great alike. I am saying nothing beyond what the prophets and Moses said would happen—  that the Christ would suffer and, as the first to rise from the dead, would proclaim light to his own people and to the Gentiles.”


In this portion of Scripture Paul is on trial and giving his defense, explaining to the court his innocence of being guilty of any crime deserving death.

In true Christian fashion, Paul turns this opportunity to address a crowd into an opportunity to witness to the Glory of Jesus Christ and His power to change human hearts.

Paul started out as an enemy of Christ.  He was totally convinced in His mind that he should do everything that he could to destroy this new cult (as he saw it) that had popped up around the executed (and some say raised to life) Jew named Yeshua (in the Greek: "Iesous", in English: "Jesus").

And in true Pauline fashion, he acted upon his conviction with a passion - hunting down followers of Christ wherever he was given the authority to find them - even to foreign cities.  As Paul testified about himself in his letter to his young charge Timothy:

1Ti 1:13 Even though I was once a blasphemer and a persecutor and a violent man, I was shown mercy because I acted in ignorance and unbelief.

Paul remained a blasphemer, a persecutor, and a violent man until one very special day in his life.  On a road trip to exercise this ungodly trinity of conviction and action he had taken upon himself, he encountered the creator God of the universe - and it turned out to be Jesus Christ Himself.  Can you imagine Paul's amazement, embarrassment, and fear?

He felt He was serving God truthfully by handing over to death the followers of Jesus Christ.  But there on the road to Damascus Paul is shown that Jesus Christ, whom he was fighting against, is the very God he thought he was serving.

• Paul thought he was pursuing holiness, but instead was shown he was a blasphemer.  In the light of God's truth, his "holiness" was shown to be unholy.  
• Paul thought he was an earnest protector of God's word and plan, but instead he was shown he was persecuting the very God he claimed to serve.  In the light of God's truth, Paul's "defense" of God, was shown instead to be animosity and persecution towards God.
• Paul thought he was giving God loyal and faithful service, but instead he was shown that he was doing violence to the very relationship he claimed was his very life.  In the light of God's truth, the "peace" that Paul felt he enjoyed with God,  was instead shown to be a relationship defined by violence and disobedience.

How horrible!  How did Paul get it so wrong?

Here's how:  any and all of us will get these points wrong if we form our convictions, our beliefs, from an incomplete view of God's revelation to mankind.  When we choose to take this slice, or that slice of the message God has delivered to us and ignore the whole, it is inevitable that we will end up believing things about God that aren't true.  We will hold to things about God that He hasn't claimed about Himself.

In essence, we will descend into idolatry because we will have taken the bits and pieces of God's revelation that we like, and out of those scraps of the divine truth we proceed to fashion an idol for ourselves.

God says He made us in His image.  We turn that upside down, as we do with everything, and seek to return the favor:  making a god in our own image because it suits our purposes.

The remedy for Paul was a fresh perspective on God's revelation to mankind.  That is the remedy for all of us too.

This glorious, radiant figure in the vision knew who Paul was.  The figure called out to Paul by his aramaic name Saul, asking him:  "why do you persecute Me?".


This completely unexpected, completely shocking moment - where the eternal and divine reveals itself to the temporal and mundane, shook Paul down to the very core of his being and it impelled him to ask the question he should have asked long ago:


Ac 26:15a “Then I asked, ‘Who are you, Lord?’ 

Paul thought he knew God.  Out of all of the people he knew, Paul was convinced that he truly knew God and was serving God correctly.  But this vision of the Lord Himself, asking Paul why he was persecuting Him, turned Paul's worldview upside down in an instant, and he reached out in confusion and wonder to find anew who God really was.

The answer Paul no doubt was fearing, came back:


Ac 26:15b: “ ‘I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting,’ the Lord replied. 


At this point, God gave Paul His marching orders to replace the ones Paul had provided for himself.


Paul was to now be a true servant of God, and a witness to the fact that Jesus is God, and that He was truly raised from the dead.  As we will see, what had just happened to Paul is what must happen to all of us if we are to be saved.  Paul was promised protection for this task that was to accomplish three things:

• To open the eyes of the blind.  In other words, to lift the veil of sin that blocks human perception so that God's message can be recognized and received. 
• To turn people from darkness to light.  Blind people can see no distinction between darkness and light.  That is the very definition of being blind.  But when the eyes of the blind are open, they then have the restored ability to see the difference, and make their choice. 
• And lastly, to be turned from the power of Satan, to the power of God.  Satan is the father of lies and his modus operandi is deceit.  God is Himself the complete embodiment of truth.  He is only truth and defines by His nature what truth is.
• These three things are to accomplish specific goals:
• That they may receive forgiveness of sin
• And a place among those that are sanctified (the journey of being made Holy) by faith in the Lord, Jesus Christ.

Paul then explained to King Agrippa:

Ac 26:19 “So then, King Agrippa, I was not disobedient to the vision from heaven.

As far as human perception and action, verse 19 is the key to this entire passage.

Some closing points:

1. What God demands from us is obedience.  There is no other way to interpret Scripture.  In v. 19 the word rendered "disobient" is the Greek word "apeithes".  It has a very, very specific meaning.  In Robson's "A Greek Lexicon To The New Testament", "apeithes" is defined as:
• "unwilling to be persuaded, refusing belief and obedience, contumacious"
2. In the use of this very specific word, the Holy Spirit is showing us how one is saved.  It isn't God forcing us to do one thing or the other.  It isn't God twiddling with our heads and overriding our wills so that we will believe in Him.
3. Rather, it is God removing the veil of blindness from our eyes, which He does by saturating us with His light, and then appealing to our wills to make the right choice.  This revelation is not without command - God has commanded everyone to repent and have faith in Christ (Acts 17:30), but God does not force.  As I say when I am being more forceful myself, "God is not a spiritual rapist".  And indeed He is not.
4. In using the word "apeithes", Paul is saying that he was not disobedient.  Removing the double negatives ('not', and 'dis'), we find that Paul is saying, "I was obedient".  He words it with the negatives to hammer home the point that disobedience was indeed an option for him, even in light of this extreme and magnificent revelation from God.  What Paul is telling Agrippa, is that he turned.  He wasn't some sort of a robot that just got reprogrammed.  He repented.  He decided to turn from his former rebellion to God and instead to render obedience.
5. Obedience and faith are things that, by their very nature, can only be produced by a will.  They are choices.  Only a will can make a choice.  That is the very definition and purpose of a will - to make choices!  In Paul's use of the word "apeithes" we see this so clearly if we are willing to see as we look again at what that word means:  
• "unwilling to be persuaded" - removing the negative it means "willing to be persuaded".  This is what God's revelation to us is all about.  Removing that veil and giving us a different perspective on who and what God and truth are so that our wills can function as God intended and we can choose Him.  So that the veil of our sin can be moved and we can be "willing to be persuaded".
• "refusing belief and obedience" - removing the negative it means "choosing belief and obedience".  This also is what God's revelation to us is all about.  God takes fallen men and women, dead and blind in their sin, and through the act of showing us Himself, He provides to us again the option we had in the Garden:  the choice to exercise belief and obedience, or the choice to refuse.
• "contumacious" - This is an extremely obscure English word, but it's definition drives all of these points home.  It means:  "stubbornly disobedient" - in short:  "rebellious".  It is the portrait of a will that, in light of all the evidence, refuses to bend the knee and bow low.  And indeed, it shows that the evidence has truly and faithfully been communicated.  Rebellion cannot rebel against nothing.  Rebellion can only truly be exercised against something that has been received.  One cannot reject nothing, but only something.
6. Paul is clearly making the point that God's revelation restored to him a choice that had been lost.  The opportunity to bend the knee and submit to God in obedience and faith, or to continue in his willful rebellion with the image of god he had formed for himself.

This is the same choice that you now have because of what you have read.

Some of you reading this are very religious people, but you are convinced because of what you have been taught that there is no part of salvation that is up to you.  "It's all up to God", you would say.

Others, also very religious people, believe that salvation is accomplished (in full or in part) by some kind of ritual:  some physical acts you must perform to be saved.  For some this is the Eucharist, for some varying kinds of baptisms.  For others it's the recitation of a creed in the presence of certain people.

My I suggest to you in the kindest and tenderest words that I can, that you are wrong.  Not because I say so, but because God says so.

God has laid the responsibility of the obedience of faith upon you, and the obedience He requires is faith and faith alone.  In the Garden of Eden mankind broke trust with God.  He wants that trust back from each and every one of us.

He has done everything necessary to both provide for your forgiveness (on the cross), and for your new life (at the resurrection of Jesus Christ), and He has communicated these facts as well as His nature and character to you through His word.

The ball, as they say, is now in your court.  What will you do with God's message to you about Himself and what He desires from you?  Will you believe that exercising the faith God has provided for you is really your task, or will you choose another road?

Will you travel the path God has made, or with machete and pickax in hand will you seek to carve out a road to God of your own manufacture?

If you want to have God's salvation, in your heart simply call out to Jesus and ask Him to save you - to make His sacrifice on the cross your only basis for forgiveness and a right-standing before God.  Tell Him you know you don't know everything, but you know you that must turn from your sin and to Him in faith.

If you do that, God will save you.

Then find a Bible preaching church and get yourself baptized in the name of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.

Trust me, your life will never be the same.