But Is This Good News?
God takes great pleasure in obedience, but can we? Is it good news to hear that God is pleased by obedience? Or is this a burden we thought we had escaped when we heard the gospel of forgiveness and justification by faith? I believe it is good news that God delights in obedience. There are at least four reasons.
First, God’s pleasure in obedience is good news because it means he is praiseworthy and reliable. If God did not delight in obedience, he would be a living contradiction. He would love his glory above all things and yet not take pleasure in the acts that make his glory known. He would, in effect, be two-faced and double-tongued. His beauty would vanish and with it all our happy praise! And he would be unreliable because you can’t trust a God whose values are so fickle that he exalts himself one minute and approves of insults the next. If God is praiseworthy and reliable, he must exult in the tribute of obedience. And there is no greater news than the assurance that God is worthy of praise and worthy of trust.
Second, God’s pleasure in obedience is good news because everything God commands is for our good. Jesus is the great physician, not the great dictator. “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick; I have not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance” (Luke 5:31–32). To be sure, Jesus dictates. He commands. But all his commands are like a doctor’s prescription or a physician’s therapy. They are not arbitrary. They are meant to make us well and happy. If they have some painful side effects, it is not because the doctor is unkind or unwise. It is because he has good purposes in the pain and because the disease is so bad that severe medicines may be required. Every command from Jesus is meant for our good.
Discovering the sources of God’s gladness reveals his character and transforms Christians into his likeness. John Piper’s classic searches Scripture to reveal God’s delight in his Son, creation, grace, and prayer, inviting readers to find lasting joy in him.
But not only are the commands of Jesus for our good; so were all the commandments of the law in the Old Testament for the good of Israel. They were not a cruel burden. They were the loving guidelines of an infinitely wise heavenly Father for the good of his people.
The Lord commanded us to do all these statutes, to fear the Lord our God, for our good always, that he might preserve us alive, as at this day. (Deut. 6:24)
And now, Israel, what does the Lord your God require of you, but to fear the Lord your God, to walk in all his ways, to love him, to serve the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, and to keep the commandments and statutes of the Lord, which I command you this day for your good. (Deut. 10:12–13)
When the Bible tells us that God takes pleasure in obedience, we should rejoice because that means the doctor cares whether we get well. His heart is in it. If he took no pleasure in our doing the tasks assigned to make us well, he would not be a God of love. So it is good news indeed not only that he has given us commandments for our good but also that he rejoices to see them done.
Third, God’s pleasure in obedience is good news because his commandments are not too hard for us. Moses said it very clearly in Deuteronomy 30:11: “This commandment which I command you this day is not too hard for you.” The Old Testament law was not the kind of arrangement in which God stood over his people with a scowl and a club waiting for someone to make a tiny slip. At the very birthplace of the law on Mount Sinai, the lawgiver identified himself like this: “The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin” (Ex. 34:6–7). The law had an elaborate provision for forgiveness and restoration rooted in the heart of God. So the law as a whole could be fulfilled even by those who needed repeated forgiveness. The key they so often missed was that the commands were to be obeyed “by faith” (Rom. 9:32). It is not an all-or-nothing demand for perfection. Therefore, it is “not too hard for you.”
Jesus put it this way: “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light” (Matt. 11:28–30). This does not mean that there is no yoke and no burden. It means that there is something about Jesus that makes his demands (even when they sever us from home and wealth and life itself) “light” and “easy.” The apostle John found this to be true in practice for many decades and then wrote, “This is the love of God, that we keep his commandments. And his commandments are not burdensome” (1 John 5:3).
True saving faith is not the kind of belief in the facts of the gospel that leaves the heart and life unchanged.
God’s pleasure in obedience is not like the sadistic pleasure of a heartless coach who likes to see his recruits sweat and strain under impossible conditioning exercises. In fact, he pronounces a curse on such moral taskmasters: “Woe to you teachers of the law! For you load men with burdens hard to bear, and you yourselves do not touch the burdens with one of your fingers” (Luke 11:46). God is not like that. With every command, he lifts not just his finger but all his precious promises and all his omnipotent power and puts them at the service of his child.
No eye has seen a God besides you,
who works for those who wait for him. (Isa. 64:4)
His commands are only as hard to obey as his promises are hard to believe. This leads us to the fourth reason that God’s pleasure in obedience is good news.
Fourth, God’s pleasure in obedience is good news because the obedience he loves is the obedience of faith. This concept is so widely misunderstood today that some people cannot see how faith and obedience are necessarily connected as root and branch or branch and fruit. So you often find in many churches and ministries the cultivation of an implicit two-stage Christianity: a faith stage and then (maybe) an obedience stage. But this is not the way the Bible pictures the life of faith. The separation of faith and obedience, as though faith were necessary for salvation and obedience were optional, is a mistake owing to a misunderstanding of what faith really is. True saving faith is not the kind of belief in the facts of the gospel that leaves the heart and life unchanged. If it were, then God’s pleasure in obedience would indeed be bad news. He would be saying that we are saved by faith, and then, to please him with obedience, we must move beyond faith to something else in order to produce good behavior. This is not good news. The good news is that saving faith is by its nature a life-changing power.1
Notes:
- See John Piper, What Is Saving Faith? Reflections on Receiving Christ as a Treasure (Crossway, 2022), and Future Grace: The Purifying Power of the Promises of God (Multnomah Books, 2012). Both of these books seek to show why the nature of faith is such that it must bring forth fruit. They show why this fruit of obedience can therefore be spoken of in the Bible as the prerequisite of final salvation, even though justification is by faith alone apart from works. The faith that alone justifies never remains alone. In these works I try to explain the dynamics of why justifying faith is also sanctifying faith.
This article is adapted from The Pleasures of God: Meditations on God’s Delight in Being God by John Piper.
