Obedience in Faith

This is an excerpt from a Restoration Minister, James Zachary Tyler, whose father was John W. Tyler an early Restoration Minister and from the lineage of President John Tyler (10th).  To read the entire sermon see the link in the Historical Resources section to the right.  Here is a section on obedience and faith.  I found it to be a good reminder that we are not the ones making or creating the pathway but rather our faith is shown by our obedience to the pathway that has already been established.

THE MANIFESTATION OF FAITH

By J. Z. TYLER

4. Faith endeavors to do everything God commands, and to do it exactly as God commands it to be done. This is an important feature of genuine faith. When faith affirms that the will of God is the highest law possible, it teaches, at the same time, by necessary implication at least, that there is no other power or authority in heaven or upon earth which can excuse us from obedience to that will as it is expressed in the very least of all his commandments. If God’s will is supreme and universal law, then, that will, so far as revealed to us, must be supreme law to us, in matters both great and small. If he has right to command that anything be done, then, clearly, he has right to tell exactly how it shall be done, and if he condescends to give the details of the manner in which it shall be done, then faith will, with the same diligence and energy, seek to follow out the details and specific directions, that it employs in accomplishing the general end. Let us recur, for a moment, to the faith of Noah. He was commanded not only to build an ark, but God gave him specific directions as to its size, proportions, and the materials of which it should be made. Now, his faith is shown perhaps more in the exactness with which he followed out all the details than in his obedience to the general command to build an ark. Again, when Moses had received instructions to build the tabernacle, God said, “See that thou make all things according to the pattern showed to thee in the mount.” It was, therefore, as clearly his duty to make it according to the pattern as it was to make it at all. This point must be clear. So, at least, it appears to me.

Before leaving this point, however, let me indicate one or two applications of it. First, its bearing upon the theory of essentials and non-essentials. This distinction arises, I apprehend, from a failure to draw the line accurately which marks the boundary between the province of faith and the province of reason. Reason may be employed in deciding whether God has commanded me to do a certain thing. But it cannot, without being guilty of usurpation, go further and undertake to decide whether it is essential or not, and thus decide whether it is binding or not. A strong and intelligent faith protests against such usurpation and ignores all such classifications of divine law. A second application of this point is to the popular idea of Christian charity. There is certainly great need of charity, and there is a legitimate field for its exercise. But I submit that those cases, in which God clearly tells us both what to do and how to do it, cannot properly be included in this field. In such cases there is no room left for us to be charitable, or uncharitable; liberal or illiberal. The only question is whether we will be faithful or faithless. When once it has been decided that a command has been given to us by divine authority, then whether it be great or small, apparently important or unimportant, in harmony with the dictates of reason or above reason, necessary or apparently unnecessary, a genuine and intelligent faith urges us to obey, and to perform the duty with scrupulous exactness.

Z. T. Sweeney
New Testament Christianity, Vol. II. (1926)