Let us now trace other parts of Scripture. In Exodus the word of the Lord to Moses is, “Thus shalt thou say, Ye have seen what I did unto the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagles' wings, and brought you unto Myself; now therefore, if ye will obey My voice indeed,” etc. And all the people answered together, “All that the LORD hath spoken we will do.” I speak not here of their competency to fulfill their undertaking, but of the principle of obedience—the only principle on which God could deal with man, or man walk with God.
So, in the blessing of Abraham in Genesis 22, the Lord closes with this— “Because thou hast obeyed My voice.” And Jeremiah (chap. 7:22) takes up the word of the Lord to Israel by Moses, “For I spake not unto your fathers, nor commanded them in the day that I brought them out of the land of Egypt, concerning burnt offerings and sacrifices; but this thing commanded I them, saying, Obey My voice, and I will be your God, and ye shall be My people; and walk ye in all the ways that I have commanded you, that it may be well with you.”
Such is the tenor of the covenant on which the existing comforts of the land were held, as detailed in Deut. 28, after they had broken the former. Such is the principle of the restoration—covenants of faith, when they had lost the fruits of the former, as given in Deut. 30, “thou shalt return, and shalt obey His voice, according to all that I shall command thee this day.”
So, in the apostasy of Saul, in 1 Samuel 15, we find the same hinge of judgment—"Why didst thou not obey the voice of the LORD? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice;” even as we find its principle and its perfection in our Lord's constant walk. It is the character of the believer's sanctification—sanctified unto obedience and the blood of sprinkling (1 Peter 1:22Elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through sanctification of the Spirit, unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ: Grace unto you, and peace, be multiplied. (1 Peter 1:2)). This is that to which the believer is sanctified; this the purpose, the object of his sanctification: so, where the contrary state is spoken of in Ephesians 2: “Wherein in times past ye walked according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience.”
Nor does anything ever affect this essential principle: nothing but sin can ever draw a man out of it. The doing our own will is always sin, always the acting of the old man, not subject to God (or it would do His will, not its own)—the nature which does not bring in God, but acts for itself. The object of obedience may be in question, but self-will is always wrong. Thus Peter, when charged before the high priest's council with disobedience to its behests, does not plead a right to do his own will—a right to do what he pleased; he had no such right. As towards God it would have been the expression of self-will; he would not have been honoring God therein. His word was not “I have a right to do what I like without reference to you;” but, “We ought to obey God rather than men.” It would have been really disobedience to have obeyed them. God would have been disobeyed in the result: Peter would have acquiesced, yea, taken a leading part in disobedience, as far as he was concerned.
Thus we find how the principle is preserved in all the trying circumstances of refusing subjection to human authority. It can be swerved from in no instance without breaking through the first and only principle of accepted relationship to God; it is the only exercise, save praise, of life to God.
It appears to me that this principle is greatly lost sight of and abused by all religious parties. As to this, they are divided into two great classes—those who plead obedience, and those who plead liberty. Peter's answer, it seems to me, meets both. The dissenters, as a body, plead liberty rights—the title to do, as regards men, what they please. The churchmen claim obedience, and plead frequently the principle; but it is still to men, and not to God. “We ought to obey God” is the Christian's answer to both. “We ought to obey,” I say to the dissenter, who claims right; “We ought to obey God,” to the churchman, who pleads the principle of obedience in the defense of all the corruptions which rest merely on the authority of man and his ways. “We ought to obey God rather than men.” How perfect is scripture in setting in order the ways of men, the narrow path which no other power detects, as revealing the principles of the human mind, and judging them! Self-will is never right. Obedience to man is often wrong—disobedience to God.
The next thing in connection with this is, that the commands of God, though the literal circumstances of blessing associated with them may be gone, never lose their power; for they are always, unless as concerned with these blessings in detail, moral in their character, exhibiting and expressive of God, on which relationship to Him is necessarily founded. This is what the word in Deuteronomy, quoted by the apostle, means, “It is not in heaven that thou shouldest say, Who shall go up for us to heaven and bring it unto us, that we may hear and do it.... But the word is very nigh unto thee in thy mouth and in thy heart, that thou mightest do all the words of this law.” Now the apostle calls this the righteousness of faith (Romans 10: 6), the force of which we shall see in a moment, if we examine the place where it occurs in Deuteronomy, and learn also the accuracy of scripture quotation; and that this quotation in Romans, like everything else in scripture, is the mind of the Spirit of God.
The statement of Moses in Deuteronomy was not the covenant on which, in literal obedience, they held the land; this would not have been the righteousness of faith, but the principle of Do, and then the blessing. It was besides the covenant that was with them at Horeb (29:1), and proceeds upon the ground of the total loss of the literal blessings, which bore the result of literal obedience in the land— “And it shall come to pass when all these things are come upon thee, the blessing and the curse which I have set before thee, and thou shalt call them to mind, among all the nations whither the LORD thy God hath driven thee, and shalt return unto the LORD thy God, and shalt obey,” etc. That is, after the covenant of literal obedience has been so broken that they had lost the fruits of it in the possession of the land, and were driven out (at once the evidence that it was broken, and constituting the impossibility, in that exclusion from the land, of such literal obedience), thereon the Lord says, “For this commandment which I command thee this day, it is not hidden from thee, neither is it far off. It is not in heaven,” &c. But it was nigh them, that which faith recognized in its power and principles, although, in exclusion from the land, its literal observance was impracticable.
Here the apostle took up the Jews, and planted them on the principle of the obedience or righteousness of faith (to them still “Lo-ammi”); that is, the confession of Messiah, at any time the great hope and comfort of their law to them, but especially while they were thus in bondage and sorrow. No other but a basis of faith could be available to them. This was its strength and surest object; while the obedience of faith for His name was withal spread to the nations also. The obedience of faith, however apostacy is undermining the church, is still, and so much the more, the principle of all righteous individual conversation.
It is not the exactitude of literal observance which is here imposed—that may be impossible. It was so with the Jews when there was the highest exemplification of faithful obedience, as in Daniel for example; neither is the oldness of the letter the character of the Christian dispensation; that is not the obedience of faith. But the obedience of faith, in the newness of the Spirit, is always open, and finds its path according to the spirituality, and therefore spiritual discernment, of the persons seeking it; and upon this God rests it. Exact conformity to His mind may be, and surely was, accompanied by direct and immediate witness of blessing, such as we have not now, and could not have, because it would be the recognition of inconsistency which God could not sanction, whatever be His individual prerogative of mercy. It was God's testimony and sanction to that which was His moral witness in the world.
It is precisely in these circumstances that the obedience of faith comes in on which the blessing turns, as may be seen in Deut. 30; not the alliteration of literal ordinance, but the power of moral consistency, according to the expressed mind of God. Nothing can be more important than the position which this passage in the book of Deuteronomy holds in this respect, nor than the principle which it affords. The privileges attached to the dispensation were gone. Obedience, in the literal sense was impossible. The ark was gone; the Urim and Thummim were gone. The temple, where literal services could be accomplished, was desolate and burned with fire, where their prescriptive services alone could be performed; and they were captives moving to and fro. What then could be done? The word was nigh them, in their heart and in their mouth, that they might do it. Here was the principle of conduct which assured God's accepting favor; here is the principle on which alone, in darkness, men can walk acceptably with God. Compare Isa. 1; 51, where we have the application of this—the progressive triple link of obedience; and then, “Awake, put on thy strength, O arm of the Lord!”