On This Day: The Obedience of Faith is Faith that Obeys

   ...and was declared to be the Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord, through whom we have received grace and apostleship to bring about the obedience of faith for the sake of his name among all the nations, (Romans 1:4-5)

   I can still remember the delight I felt when “the obedience of faith” first stood out to me. It was both a sense of surprise (like why people would teach a lesser view of faith when God’s word is that clear!) and of joyful clarity. It was like my mind understood more than my brain could explain, and I love when that happens!

   Because the partnership between faith and obedience is a favorite target of the evil one, let me just emphasize that there is only one view even though churches teach three.

   The churches that teach a legalistic view of religion emphasize obedience without faith. The churches that teach a cheap grace view of churchianity emphasize faith without obedience. Both are equally poisonous!

   How can we tell if we are in a church, a family, or a friend group, that promotes one of the pendulum extremes rather than the plumbline of obedient faith? We simply watch what happens when we come across a Scripture that requires something of us our churches or groups don’t teach and ask them to include it.

   Legalistic churches have no interest in speaking truth in love or expressing faith through love. Their interest is the rules. And, just like the religious elite of Jesus’ day, they turn God’s word into an expanded list of rules that must be obeyed to fit in.

   Cheap grace churches, on the other hand, are all about faith without obedience and love without truth. Everything is a poisonous view of grace that tolerates sin as a no-big-deal issue because God is so amazingly (and unbiblically) gracious.

   Once we see that the apostles were teaching what Jesus himself commanded, a faith that obeys our Savior, we learn to “trust and obey”, as the old hymn has stated for decades. We do not accommodate legalism because it is a denial of the gospel. We do not accommodate cheap grace because it is a denial of the gospel.

   To be clear, the gospel has NEVER been about a faith that doesn’t obey. There is no such thing. It is impossible to trust the head of the church without doing what he says. It is impossible to have faith in “our Father in heaven” and not do what he says.

   Jesus said, that “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven” (Matthew 7:21), and, “Why do you call me ‘Lord, Lord,’ and not do what I tell you?” (Luke 6:46). The three parts of the Great Commission are to make disciples, baptize disciples, and teach disciples to “observe (obey) all that I have commanded you” (Matthew 28:20).

   I have heard too many well-meaning young bucks out there trying so hard to clarify that we are saved by grace through faith “not a result of works, so that no one may boast” (Ephesians 2:8-9) that they teach their own version of faith instead of “the obedience of faith” the apostles taught. Too many people who know what it feels like to be burdened by legalistic churches think the only alternative is the cheap grace Kool-Aid that saves from legalism but kills with kindness.

   My encouragement to anyone who reads this is “Examine yourselves, to see whether you are in the faith” (II Corinthians 13:5). And the “faith” Paul is talking about there is the same one he spoke of to introduce and conclude Romans, “the obedience of faith”.

   It would be far better to recognize today that we have been taught one of the pendulum extremes instead of the plumbline view of the apostles so we can repent (change our minds to line up with the truth) and begin talking with God about how to walk in this “obedience of faith” rather than a deficient teaching that requires ignoring certain scriptures.

   The apostle Paul reached the end of his race declaring “Therefore I testify to you this day that I am innocent of the blood of all, for I did not shrink from declaring to you the whole counsel of God” (Acts 20:26-27), and then warned them about the false teachers who were just waiting for his departure.

   I have met legalistic power-brokers who were very nice church folk until you broke one of their rules. I have met very nice cheap grace folk until you asked them to talk with you about an obedient-faith Scripture and suddenly saw their angry narcissistic side.

   Everything that covers living by “the whole counsel of God” and living “by every word that comes from the mouth of God” can be summarized as “the obedience of faith”. If we will pursue that kind of faith, God will keep us in step with his Spirit in both knowing and doing the will of God in love.

  

© 2026 Monte Vigh ~ Box 517, Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8

Email: in2freedom@gmail.com

Unless otherwise noted, Scriptures are from the English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Text Edition: 2016. Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.)

 

On This Day: The Great Kings of Little Old Bethlehem

   Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God, which he promised beforehand through his prophets in the holy Scriptures, concerning his Son, who was descended from David according to the flesh. (Romans 1:1-3)

   I learned from John Piper that our delight in God is worship. It communicates to God and others that God is our supreme source of joy. This means that sometimes the main focus of my sharing is the delight I get from meditating on the words of God and feeling the weight of their glory minister to my soul.

   And so it is today that all the prophecies revolving around Bethlehem have magnified the creative genius of God in weaving promises, prophecies, and fulfillments into his word so the divine tapestry is guaranteed to delight the minds of the child-hearted.

   The reason I ended up traveling down the road to Bethlehem was because of Paul’s introductory statement in Romans that Jesus “was descended from David according to the flesh”. This connected to John’s introduction that told us how Jesus was “the Word” who was “with God” and who “was God” and who “became flesh and dwelt among us.” Jesus “come in the flesh” is a big deal, and it must mesh 100% with everything else said about him.

   Jesus’ connection to David is introduced to us when we first learn of David and his family. After king Saul had been rejected by God,

   The LORD said to Samuel, "How long will you grieve over Saul, since I have rejected him from being king over Israel? Fill your horn with oil, and go. I will send you to Jesse the Bethlehemite, for I have provided for myself a king among his sons." (I Samuel 16:1)

Simply because the Messiah must be a descendant of David, it is so significant that Jesse was a “Bethlehemite”. That means, “Now David was the son of an Ephrathite of Bethlehem in Judah, named Jesse, who had eight sons” (I Samuel 17:12).

   As I did a big of research on this, I was reminded that two well-known figures from the Old Testament, Boaz and Ruth, give us David’s connection to Bethlehem. Boas was from Bethlehem (Ruth 2:4). Boas and Ruth were married in Bethlehem. (Ruth 4:13). Boaz and Ruth’s son, Obed, was the father of Jesse and the grandfather of David. (Ruth 4:17). So, the book of Ruth may not make any huge theological statements about God, but the events described therein lay the foundation for both David and Jesus to be born in Bethlehem, so fulfilling Scripture, and tightly weaving together the tapestry of salvation.

   Micah’s prophecy regarding Bethlehem was,

   But you, O Bethlehem Ephrathah, who are too little to be among the clans of Judah, from you shall come forth for me one who is to be ruler in Israel, whose coming forth is from of old, from ancient days. (Micah 5:2)

And when the religious elite told Herod that the Christ would be born "In Bethlehem of Judea,” it was,

   “for so it is written by the prophet: ‘And you, O Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah; for from you shall come a ruler who will shepherd my people Israel’" (Matthew 2:4-6).

   When we add to this that it was a Roman census that brought Joseph and Mary to Bethlehem in time for Jesus’ birth to fulfill prophecy, and it was an evil Roman ruler who sent them fleeing to Egypt to fulfill the prophecy that “Out of Egypt I called my son” (Matthew 2:15), the children of God have so much reason to delight in the evidence of God’s word that Jesus “was descended from David according to the flesh” just as promised and prophesied.

   For anyone who has never trusted in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, the evidence for his life, death, and resurrection, all in fulfillment of prophecy, gives us the most eyes-wide-open faith in the whole wide world. In repentance and faith we can receive Christ and everything God has given us in his Son.

   For those of us who are already children of God by faith in Jesus Christ, the magnificently woven tapestry of salvation as pictured in the word of God gives us every reason to “Delight yourself in the LORD, and he will give you the desires of your heart” (Psalm 37:4).

 

© 2026 Monte Vigh ~ Box 517, Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8

Email: in2freedom@gmail.com

Unless otherwise noted, Scriptures are from the English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Text Edition: 2016. Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.)

 

 

On This Day: Attaching to the Apostle Paul

   Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God, (Romans 1:1)

   I need to “think outside the box” about this apostle Paul stuff (the box to the left, not the box of Scripture!). There were just too many things to think about in reference to Paul’s calling to “be an apostle” and I don’t want to miss any of them!

   On one side, it’s because I have this new urge to feel relational with Paul on this present journey through Romans.

   On the other side, there’s such a growing trend to criticize Paul, to claim authority to challenge his authority, and to change his God-breathed teachings, that rebuking error and falsehood is a never-ending part of “fight the good fight of the faith”, as Paul described it.

   I think the biggest thing in this, perhaps the most “foundational” thing, is that Paul was called to be “an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God” (Ephesians 1:1). That’s what a call is in the Bible, a calling by God to fulfill some God-designed place in Jesus’ kingdom. Paul was called as “a servant of Christ Jesus” to be “an apostle” by the will of God.

   I am finding that parallels from Ephesians are happily joining me on this journey through Romans. Ephesians 2 contains an architectural diagram of the church Jesus said he would build. So many people seem to know the teaching that, 

   “by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast” (Ephesians 2:8-9),

but not the teaching that follows describing what we have been saved by grace through faith INTO!

   In short, Paul is telling both Jewish and Gentile believers in Jesus Christ that Jesus’ work was to “create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace” (Ephesians 2:15-16). It was never his design to make Jewish churches for Jewish believers and Gentile churches for Gentile believers. Neither did he ever intend that Gentiles would become Jewish or Jews would become Gentilish. This “one new man” is “in place of the two”.

   That’s why Paul, being as Jewish as they come, was appointed as “an apostle to the Gentiles” (Romans 11:13). Jesus was showing that “There is neither Jew nor Greek” in his church (Galatians 3:28) even though there are still Jews and Greeks among the believers. The “one new man” gives us a new identity that supersedes any earthly identities.

   The thing that most relates to us today about Paul and the other 11 apostles is that Jesus’ church is “built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets”. That means that what we have in the apostles’ letters to the churches has foundational authority. Whatever is built on that foundation is to express what is in the “rock” of that foundation.

   What this means is that anyone who tampers with what Paul has written in his letters as Scripture (Peter said so in II Peter 3:16) is one of those Paul warned about who “practice cunning or to tamper with God's word” (II Corinthians 4:2). For Paul to be in our lives as “a servant of Christ Jesus”, and writing to us as “called to be an apostle” by God’s will, means what Jesus told the apostles, 

   “Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever receives the one I send receives me, and whoever receives me receives the one who sent me” (John 13:20).

   Do you feel the “serious business” of reading Paul’s letter to the Romans? And not just reading it, but receiving it, meditating on it, believing it, applying it, and living in “the obedience of faith” it talks about. How we respond to Paul and his letters is how we are responding to Jesus and the Father.

   It is a huge comfort to me that there are no apostles today. Why? Because God’s “breathed-out” words are already in the Scriptures. No one today has apostolic authority to continue adding to the foundation that Jesus, the Cornerstone, already built through the 12 apostles. We already have “the whole counsel of God” (Acts 20:27). The apostles’ teaching through the whole book of Acts is referred to as “the word of God,”¹ and since it is God’s word, it has authority over Jesus’ whole church all through these end times.

   Considering how necessary Paul’s letters are to us understanding who we are in Christ, and who we are in Jesus’ church, it is no wonder that Satan is stirring up church folk to denigrate his writings. Popular speakers are claiming they have a new story about Paul because the one Jesus gave us isn’t good enough.

   Paul himself warned about this when he told the Ephesian elders, 

   “I know that after my departure fierce wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock; and from among your own selves will arise men speaking twisted things, to draw away the disciples after them” (Acts 20:29-30).

If he knew it would happen in the years immediately following his departure, how much more now that we have had a couple of millennia of battles over the authority of God’s word, the Bible.

   And the whole while we have an apostle Jesus himself chose to go to us Gentiles with the message of the gospel, the message of Jesus’ kingdom, and the message of how to be the church, the one body of Christ, so that we could live “by every word that comes from the mouth of God” today, just as Paul and the other apostles were leading the church to live by God’s word in the beginning.

   Folks, whatever you’re reading in the Bible is Scripture. All Scripture is breathed-out by God. Its authority is in God our Creator, Savior, and Lord. So, even if you are not presently meditating your way through one of Paul’s letters, let the apostolic authority of those letters remind you how to apply anything else you are hearing from God’s word so that your “obedience of faith” is all to the glory of God.

 

© 2026 Monte Vigh ~ Box 517, Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8

Email: in2freedom@gmail.com

Unless otherwise noted, Scriptures are from the English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Text Edition: 2016. Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.)

 

Note 1: references in Acts to the preaching of the gospel as the word of God:

Summary: 

·         Acts 2:22 - “these words” (5:24)

·         Acts 2:40 – “with many other words”

·         Acts 2:41 - “So those who received his word” (Peter’s word)

·         Acts 4:4 - “the word” (6:4; 8:4; 10:44; 11:19; 14:25; 16:6; 17:11; 18:5)

·         Acts 4:29 - “your word”

·         Acts 4:31 - “the word of God” (6:2,7; 8:14; 11:1; 12:24; 13:5; 13:7; 13:46; 17:13; 18:11)

·         Acts 5:20 - “all the words of this Life”

·         Acts 8:25 - “the word of the Lord” (13:44,48,49; 15:35,36; 16:32; 19:10,20)

·         Acts 9:25 – “preaching the gospel” (15:7)

·         Acts 14:3 - “the word of his grace” (20:32)

 

 

On This Day: To Glory in Seeing Jesus’ Glory

   The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me. Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory that you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world. (John 17:22-24)

   I was in grade 8 when my dad came home from work with a box of ice skates for all us kids. I quickly fell in love with skating (after the embarrassment of knocking some cute girls over while learning to skate!). The next year I joined hockey and was hooked.

   At the same time (coincidentally) my uncle had opened a sports’ shop with a special focus on hockey. I was able to take my full $114.00 from strawberry picking and buy all my hockey equipment, skates included! I never did learn what kind of “family deal” my dad got, or whether he paid anything extra behind the scenes. All I knew is that hockey was now my favorite activity.

   As a promotional opportunity for his store, my uncle bought 4 season tickets to Vancouver Canucks’ games, and I had a couple of opportunities to attend games in the early 70’s while the Canucks were in their infancy. I know what it felt like to be absolutely fascinated with the on-ice play, the feeling of glory whenever the Canucks put the puck in the net, and particularly when they won a game.

   All that to say that Jesus talking about glory is not a foreign concept. People have no problem feeling glory, expressing glory, delighting in the glory of their favorite people or teams. The ONLY problem they have with glory is attaching to Jesus’ glory even though he is our Creator, and the only Savior of the world.

   What gripped my heart this morning is that Jesus had a “desire”. It isn’t that this brings him down to my level, since desires have been the wreck of me on one side, and a driving force on the other. So, to think of Jesus having pure desire, holy desire, righteous desire, good desire, is fascinating.

   QUESTION: Do I have a right to put myself in the picture? When Jesus expresses to the Father his desire “that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am,” do I really have the right to include myself in this?

   ANSWER: Absolutely! We are still in the paragraph Jesus introduced with, “I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word”. I am one of the people who have come to believe in Jesus through “their word”. Their word is the New Testament. The four gospel accounts. The history of the book of Acts. The instructional leadership of the letters to the churches. The apostles’ writings have been guiding and directing me for six decades.

   This means that Jesus’ “desire” is for me “also”. I have been given to Jesus by the Father. And Jesus’ desire, even before going to the cross, was that I would be included in that great numberless multitude that will be with him in glory glorying in his glory!

   Over my decades, I have watched so many people either fall away from the church, or slink back to the safety of institutional religion, because they believe they were failed by other “Christians”. 

   At the same time, even as I have been failed by so many church-folk (including the first pastor I worked under who got so angry at me for asking questions that he wouldn’t talk to me and was later caught in adultery!), it has all fallen into the “for those who love God all things work together for good” reality that brings me to today’s viewpoint of Jesus wanting me to be with him enjoying the overflowing joy of his glory.

   My primary reason for sharing this is to encourage anyone who has been hurt by the church, discouraged by people who don’t want to be with you, heartbroken by sinful actions from people you thought were loved ones, however any of us would describe anything that entices us to stop following Jesus, to keep before you what Jesus himself said:

   “Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory that you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world.”

   How do we know if we are one of the people Jesus’ is speaking of? By examining whether we have responded to the command of the gospel to repent and believe in Jesus. If we have confessed with our mouths that “Jesus is Lord”, and believed in our hearts that God raised him from the dead (meaning all that these things mean in the New Testament), we are saved. We have eternal life. We will be with Jesus forever in the new heavens and the new earth.

   If you are one of those people, “the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the GLORY THAT IS TO BE REVEALED TO US” (Romans 8:18). 

   So, instead of turning from Jesus because of hurts or disappointments, turn to Jesus WITH those hurts and disappointments, admit and confess how inglorious they are, and tell Jesus how much it fills your heart with wonder that he “desires” to have you with him in his eternal home to rejoice in the constant glory of his glory.

 

© 2026 Monte Vigh ~ Box 517, Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8

Email: in2freedom@gmail.com

Unless otherwise noted, Scriptures are from the English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Text Edition: 2016. Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.)