“Obey” Becomes “Believe”
The “obey” of the Old Covenant has become in the New Covenant “believe.” The responsibility for obedience has been taken entirely by Christ, and man’s part is to believe that astounding fact. Christians are still urged to obey, but always the spelling of that word is “believe.”
“Seeing ye have purified your souls in your obedience to the truth... having been begotten again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, through the word of God.... But the word of the Lord abideth for ever. And this is the word of good tidings which was preached unto you.... For you therefore that believe is the preciousness: but for such as disbelieve,... A stone of stumbling, and a rock of offence; for they stumble at the word, being disobedient.”
These scattered verses in the first and second chapters of First Peter present the new spelling of the old “obey.” Obedience to the truth is simply believing the word of good tidings, and they who stumbled at the word were disobedient because they did not believe the word of good tidings. It is a striking commentary that the King James Version uses “disobedient” in 1 Peter 2:7, where the Revised Version reads “disbelieve.”
If this change from law to Grace is simply a different putting of the matter, leaving man’s responsibility the same, then indeed there is no good tidings for the Christian in the matter of freedom from sin, and the Victorious Life teaching is a myth. If telling us to believe is just another way of asking us to obey, then are we no better off than before, and we must await our resurrection bodies in order to enjoy freedom from the law of sin against which we have been struggling. For with all our mind and heart we may want to obey, but there is that “different law in our members” preventing us from doing the things that we would. What is the new factor in Grace that changes everything? Is it something real, or something that I must produce by my own understanding, just a new attitude to the law?