If you want to be an obedient person and live the Christian life the way Paul conceives it,

then work on your faith. Don't try to work on your works because you'll wind up being a legalist.

Why did God set it up so that obedience flows from faith and Christ rather than from our own

efforts? That's the question John Piper answers from Romans 1.5 in this episode of Light and Truth.

The sermon was originally preached at Bethlehem Baptist Church on May 10, 1998.

Through the living son of God, risen with power, we have received grace and apostleship.

To bring about the obedience of faith. So grace is given for a calling like a apostleship or

motherhood, for a particular effect in the lives of children, you could say, or in the lives of the

Gentiles, and the effect here is described as the obedience of faith. Now what is it? What's that phrase

referring to? Now there are two possibilities here. Those of you who have the NIV already see one of

them because they chose to translate it to exclude the other and to choose the one, namely the

obedience which comes from faith. That's one possible meaning. Another meaning is the obedience which

is faith or faith which is obedience. See that word of in English is real ambiguous just like the

Greek construction here is ambiguous. When you say acts of courage, acts of courage, you mean acts

which come from courage in your heart like acts come out. Or if you say block of wood,

block of wood, it's very different use of the word of. The block is made of wood.

Now which is it here? Is it obedience which comes from faith? Faith gives rise to

acts of obedience or is it faith which is what makes up obedience? Obedience is faith because when

the gospel comes it says believe and you believe you're obeying. So faith is obedience. Which is it?

And the commentaries and the scholars here just they split right down the middle on this and

there's almost no way to be sure given the phrase itself. But I'll tell you which way I lean

and why and you ponder it yourself. I am very moved by Leon Morris's question in his commentary.

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