There is a teaching pervading many, perhaps even most, churches today, particularly in the West. The teaching is that it is impossible for anyone, even if the person is a believer, to obey God. The reason for this view flows partly from one interpretation of a passage in Romans 7:

I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate... For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do. (Romans 7:15,19)

A common understanding of this passage is that continually falling into sin is inevitable in the Christian life. In fact, those who believe that obedience is impossible naturally maintain that Paul himself was consistently and habitually sinning. Others, as we will see, vehemently disagree; they instead affirm that obedience is not only possible but normative for believers. One's view on this question has so many implications that it practically forms an entire worldview.

As one example of the expression of the view in which obedience is impossible, I can remember sitting in a large, evangelical church service several years ago where a pastor narrated in his sermon the struggles of a young man with pornography. The young man was going through a cyclical pattern of sinning, repenting, not viewing pornography for a while, and then sinning again. The pastor told the young man that this pattern was normal for believers today, similar to Romans 7. In this manner, the pastor propagated the idea to the congregation that as long as a person lived on the earth, he or she will be embroiled in a losing battle with sin.

This belief leads to predictable and profound consequences. Not believing that complete obedience is possible, complacency naturally arises. It establishes an entirely different expectation of what the Christian life should look like. In hearing the words to that young man, I could not help but feel as if the congregation was taught to accept the presence of sin. Also, as we will see, this teaching has implications for assessing one's own salvation. Given the importance of the teaching, we will examine the question of possibility of obedience. A good starting point is to determine how Scripture describes obedience:

For the one who obeys the whole law but fails in one point has become guilty of all of it. For he who said, "Do not commit adultery," also said, "Do not murder." Now if you do not commit adultery but do commit murder, you have become a violator of the law. (James 2:10-11, NET)

The essential idea from this passage is that obedience cannot be partial. If a person sins in one way, he is fully sinning. This conclusion should be evident from plain logic. If God were to ask a person to do ten things, and the person chooses to do nine of them but not the tenth, that person has put himself above God, and is therefore sinning. The husband who respects his wife by speaking kindly to her yet is also secretly sleeping with another woman cannot be said to partially love his wife. Love involves putting another person ahead of oneself, the husband merely loves himself and is using his wife. Human beings, as moral agents, are thus in one of only two states with respect to the condition of their hearts: they are either loving God or sinning against him. There cannot be a middle ground of neutrality (also see Luke 11:23). In God's eyes, a person who obeys him is the same as a person who fully obeys him. Put another way, a person who partially obeys God does not obey God at all. Put still another way, obedience to God is a "binary" condition; at any moment in time, a person is either fully obeying or fully disobeying.

With this crucial understanding, the question at hand may be addressed: is it possible to obey God for some interval of time? While many people may answer no, Scripture clearly teaches otherwise. (Answering yes to this question does not imply that one has to embrace the a more extreme position of perfectionism.)

In the Old Testament, there are many passages that clearly teach the possibility of obedience. When Moses concludes his words to the Israelites, the many commands that he had given seemed taxing, so he says:

This commandment I am giving you today is not too difficult for you, nor is it too remote. It is not in heaven, as though one must say, "Who will go up to heaven to get it for us and proclaim it to us so we may obey it?" And it is not across the sea, as though one must say, "Who will cross over to the other side of the sea and get it for us and proclaim it to us so we may obey it?" For the thing is very near you it is in your mouth and mind so that you can do it. (Deuteronomy 30:11-14, NET)

The Psalms are replete with passages teaching that there are two groups of people: the righteous and the wicked. The righteous are often described as those who obey God's law. Psalm 119 offers strong exhortations on the possibility of obedience such as, "I will keep your law continually, forever and ever" (Psalm 119:44). Many similar statements are distributed throughout the book. Is it remarkable that this kind of language would be frowned upon if spoken by a church member today.

When the New Covenant is promised, most clearly in Jeremiah and Ezekiel, the motivation for the promise is the failure of Israel to keep the law. In the New Covenant, God's people will finally obey him:

The days are surely coming, says the LORD, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah. It will not be like the covenant that I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt -- a covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, says the LORD. But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the LORD: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. (Jeremiah 31:31-33)

The promise of obedience is even more clear in Ezekiel's description of the New Covenant, closely allied with the giving of the Spirit.

I will sprinkle clean water upon you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleannesses, and from all your idols I will cleanse you. A new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you; and I will remove from your body the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. I will put my spirit within you, and make you follow my statutes and be careful to observe my ordinances. (Ezekiel 36:25-27)

In the New Testament, consistent with the promise of the New Covenant, Jesus' birth is connected with salvation from sin, "You are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins" (Matthew 1:21). It should be noted that Jesus is not described as the one who will save his people from hell (which he of course does), but from sins. Jesus' teaching continues in the tradition of the Old Testament by emphasizing the possibility of obedience. To one person whom he healed, Jesus said, "See, you have been made well! Do not sin any more, so that nothing worse happens to you" (John 5:14). To the woman caught in adultery, Jesus sends her away with the words, "Neither do I condemn you. Go your way, and from now on do not sin again" (John 8:11). In that same chapter, Jesus goes on to say, "Very truly, I tell you, everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin...So if the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed." (John 8:34,36) Thus, Christ's work promises freedom from sin to those who receive it.

A related theme undergirds the Pauline epistles: the believer's being united to Christ, particularly in his death and resurrection. In so doing, the flesh is put to the death and the power of the resurrection provides victory over sin. The scope and depth of this promise are on nearly every page of the epistles. "So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!" (2 Corinthians 5:17). See also Romans 6:6-18 and Titus 2:11-14.

But what about the widespread interpretation of Romans 7? Is Paul teaching that sinning is inevitable? The history of interpretation of this passage sheds light on this question. In fact, no church father from the first three centuries held that Paul was describing his own experience. Instead, two other views were embraced. The first was that Paul was describing his pre-Christian experience. This interpretation come primarily from the description of victory over sin in the previous chapter:

But thanks be to God that you, having once been slaves of sin, have become obedient from the heart to the form of teaching to which you were entrusted, and that you, having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness. (Romans 6:17-18)

Moreover, in chapter 8, Paul again clearly describes that believers no longer walk in the flesh:

There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death. For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do: by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and to deal with sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, so that the just requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit. (Romans 8:1-5)

Thus some church fathers read Romans 7 as Paul narrating his pre-Christian example of the sin-entrenched life before God's salvation. Other church fathers thought that Paul was speaking using "I" (in Greek, ego) in a metaphorical way, to describe the experience of Adam. This interpretation accords nicely with verses 9 and 10, "And I was once alive apart from the law, but with the coming of the commandment sin became alive and I died. So I found that the very commandment that was intended to bring life brought death!" It is most unlikely that Paul would have ever thought that he was "alive apart from the law." (Interpretations that Paul autobiographically narrates his bar mitzvah in Romans 7 remain unconvincing.)

The twentieth century gave added weight to the ancient interpretation of Paul using "I" in a representative fashion, though not necessarily in the place of Adam. The seminal work of Kummel on the use of ego in Hellenic literature supports a representative use of "I" wherein the pronoun does not refer to a single individual but to Israel itself. N.T. Wright makes a convincing case that Paul is speaking on behalf of Israel, as the nation groans under the weight of the law, continually failing to meet its demands. This interpretation coheres beautifully with larger themes of the book.

To summarize, the case for Paul describing his present experience in Romans 7 fails to adequately account for the context of the passage, does not congrue with specific verses in the text itself, and neglects internal and external evidence that the word "I" (ego) in this passage has a more complex sense. Many devout and learned believers throughout church history have agreed that Paul was either describing his pre-Christian experience, or speaking in a historical-representative fashion for either Adam or Israel. Corroborating this, the view against Paul describing his present experience is so dominant amongst modern commentators that it is sometimes called "the majority position." (See here or here, for more about the majority interpretation of Romans 7.) Sadly, in this case the majority interpretation of commentators is not the popular interpretation of church-goers; most professing Christians are not even aware that any other readings exist other than the trite and oversimplistic view that Romans 7 was Paul's current experience.

As Paul taught that we have died to sin, so John too teaches the necessity of obedience. These verses deserve careful scrutiny:

No one who abides in him sins; no one who sins has either seen him or known him... Those who have been born of God do not sin, because God's seed abides in them; they cannot sin, because they have been born of God. (1 John 3:6,9)

John therefore states that the believer is free from the power and the practice of sin. For John, obedience is not only possible, but expected. Why is this doctrine so important? For while we are saved by faith alone through grace alone, works demonstrate the presence of saving faith. Ongoing defeat by sin is evidence of a lack of saving faith. John also writes, "Now by this we may be sure that we know him, if we obey his commandments" (1 John 2:3). The litmus test to determine whether we are a believer is clearly obedience.

It is critical that we embrace a doctrine that victory over sin is not only possible, but normative for the true Christian. The consequences of not doing so are dire indeed:

Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter into the kingdom of heaven only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven. On that day, many will say to me, 'Lord, Lord, didn't we prophesy in your name, and in your name cast out demons and do many powerful deeds?' Then I will declare to them, 'I never knew you. Go away from me, you lawbreakers!' (Matthew 7:21-23, NET) [It is a curious fact that many modern translations render the Greek in v. 23 translated here as "lawbreakers" as something quite different, such as "evildoers."]

Understanding the possibility and expectation of obedience explains why Peter could treat the already baptized Simon so harshly after Simon sins (see Acts 8). It also explains why Paul urges the Corinthian church to expel a person who calls himself a believer yet is "sexually immoral or greedy, or is an idolater, reviler, drunkard, or robber" (1 Corinthians 5:11).

Finally, there are many warnings that teachers will come who provide doctrine to please their audience. "For the time is coming when people will not put up with sound doctrine, but having itching ears, they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own desires" (2 Timothy 4:3). Surely the fleshly nature would delight in any theological system wherein it is taught that victory over sin is not expected. We, however, must embrace the full obedience to which the Scriptures call us. This obedience must include all sins, lest we be regarded in the group of "lawbreakers" that are sent away by Jesus on the last day.

Quotations designated (NET) are from the NET Bible ®. Scripture quoted by permission. Copyright © 2003 by Biblical Studies Press, L.L.C. www.netbible.com All rights reserved.)

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.

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