Faith Includes Obedience

The fact that genuine faith always includes obedience is a sufficient answer to the sceptic's objection that salvation is made to hinge upon a bare intellectual act, without reference to the character of the agent. It is just the opposite. It is an act of submission to the highest authority in the universe — an act which tends to conserve its moral order, by enthroning the moral law in universal supremacy. A singular confirmation of the truth of these remarks is found in the Greek Testament, where ἀπείθεια, unbelief, is frequently used to signify disobedience and obstinacy. The unbelief for which men are to be everlastingly condemned lies in the rebellious attitude of the will toward Jesus Christ, and not in any supposed innocent intellectual inability to believe the truth of God's word.

The practical bearing of all this upon those who are seeking to be lifted into the higher regions of Christian experience is, that the faith which is the required condition of such a spiritual uplift is possible only to a soul whose obedience has reached the point of entire surrender to the will of God, where there is a willingness to walk to Calvary with the fainting Christ, and to be crucified with Him. Then, and then only, will the Christ-life take the place of the old self-life, enabling the believer to adopt St. Paul's words: "I have been crucified with Christ; alive no longer am I, but alive is Christ within me." [Meyer] Let no one accuse Luther of boasting, when through "the obedience of faith" he reached that deadness to sin, and that conscious fullness of the divine life, which enabled him to say: "If any man knocks at the door of my breast, and says, Who lives here? my answer is, Jesus Christ lives here, not Martin Luther." The great reformer did not stumble into this Christian experience. To reach it he was often closeted with God three hours a day, studying the divine promises, and wrestling with the Lord, as Jacob with the angel. Says Spurgeon: "There is a point in grace as much above the ordinary Christian as the ordinary Christian is above the worldling." Of such he says: "Their place is with the eagle in his eyrie, high aloft. They are rejoicing Christians, holy and devout men, doing service for the Master all over the world, and everywhere conquerors through Him that loved them." The mountain-top is a position men do not slide into but climb up to. Thus these mountain-top saints climbed up the ascent by the stairway of the gospel promises, with the sunlit summit in full view as a definite aim.

Their faith made their obedience spontaneous, free, and gladsome; while their conscious obedience reacted on their faith, making it strong and tenacious of the promise of Jesus: "If ye love Me, KEEP MY COMMANDMENTS, and I will pray the Father, and He shall give you another Comforter, that He may abide with you forever."

"The perfect way is hard to flesh;
It is not hard to love;
If thou wert sick for want of God,
How swiftly wouldst thou move!

"Then keep thy conscience sensitive;
No inward token miss:
And go where grace entices thee: —
PERFECTION LIES IN THIS." 

— Milestone Papers (1878) Part 1, Chapter 9.

Marrying Unbelievers

QUESTION: (1) Has a Christian a right to marry a sinners (2) Has a minister a right to celebrate such a marriage?

ANSWER: There is no human law against it, nor any prohibition in the Decalogue, but an inspired apostle forbids it, "Be not unequally yoked with unbelievers" (II Cor. 6:14-17). "The apostle," says Wesley, "speaks especially of marriage and gives three arguments against it in the context." Many a Christian has made a shipwreck by violating this prohibition, thinking that conversion would be effected by home missionary work. But instead of that the unbelieving husband often perverts the Christian wife by urging her to go with him to the theater, the dance, the card party, and the Sunday excursion. (2) We have always admired the refusal of Spurgeon to celebrate the marriage of any member of his church with an unbeliever, though I have not always followed his example. He illustrates the delusion of the expectation of conversion after marriage on this wise: "It is like one standing on a table trying to lift them up to his level. The one below will almost certainly pull the other down." History proves this. Professedly Christian parents, who prefer for their daughter a rich sinner to a poor saint will have much to answer for in the day of judgment, and. often in this life sorrows follow such a marriage in the shape of divorce, or wicked, sons-in-law or ungodly grandchildren.

— Steele's Answers pp. 189, 190.

The Mountain-top Saints

The faith which is the required condition of being lifted into the higher regions of Christian experience is possible only to a soul whose obedience has reached the point of entire surrender to the will of God, where there is a willingness to walk to Calvary with the fainting Christ, and to be crucified with Him. Then, and then only, will the Christ-life take the place of the old self-life, enabling the believer to adopt St. Paul's words: "I have been crucified with Christ; alive no longer am I, but alive is Christ within me." [Meyer]