“The Right Motivation for Obedience: From Gospel Indicatives to Godly Imperatives”
“The Christian pursues practical holiness not to enter a relationship with God or to earn his love; he pursues practical holiness because he has already entered a relationship with God by grace through faith in Christ and because he is already the recipient of God’s love and favor in Christ.”
- John MacArthur
Key terms to know below:
Indicatives: What God has done for us in Christ. (example: You are no longer a slave to sin.)
Imperatives: What God commands. (example: Therefore, do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its lusts.)
How you pursue obedience to the commandments of God matters. To put it another way, not all obedience is helpful to the soul in the long term. That may seem like an odd statement to make or even an unnecessarily scrupulous one. But I am convinced that it is biblically informed (Matthew 15:8). I believe there are ways that we can and do pursue obedience to the commandments of God that are not helpful to our souls.
For example, when we pursue obedience to God’s commands, for God to continue loving us, we’ve missed it.
When we pursue obedience to God’s commands to pay God back for sending His Son to the cross to pay for our sins, we’ve missed it.
When we pursue obedience to God’s commands to be noticed by others, we’ve missed it.
When we pursue obedience to God’s commandments with the motives above and others like them, our pursuit of obedience becomes burdensome (contra 1 John 5:3) rather than joy-filled. And so, what does joy-filled obedience look like? One significant component is pursuing obedience with the right motivation.
The Apostle Paul was a man who understood the importance of proper motivation when pursuing obedience. When I say proper motivation, it’s worth defining what I mean. I am referring to the indicatives and imperatives of our faith.
Sinclair Ferguson put it this way in a recent article written for Ligonier Ministries titled “Gospel Indicatives and Imperatives.”
“God’s indicatives are always the basis for God’s imperatives. This is why we often find the word therefore in the New Testament. It’s because of who God is and what He has done for us in Christ that we should therefore respond in a certain way. What God does in His grace, the indicative, is the foundation for what we do in our response of faith and obedience, responding to His imperative.”
Paul’s epistles bear this significance all over the place, and we see this specifically in the book of Ephesians. As Paul transitions from the indicatives to the imperatives, he says, “Therefore I, the prisoner of the Lord, implore you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling with which you have been called,” (Ephesians 4:1).
Paul makes clear here in verse 1 that obeying God’s commands (i.e., walking in a manner worthy) is to be pursued because God has called us to Himself. We are those who have been called and thus made the recipients of every spiritual blessing (1:3-14). We have been made alive (2:8-9), and we are now the workmanship of God created in Christ for good works (2:10).
Paul is saying very simply: because of what God has accomplished through the finished work of Jesus Christ, we can and are to go on and live for Him.
What motivates your obedience? Is it the finished work of Christ (i.e., the indicatives) or something else? How we pursue obedience to the commandments of God matters.
Below are some verses to memorize and meditate on that will help you to pursue obedience with the gospel motivation that the Lord intends.
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11 So you too, consider yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus. 12 Therefore sin is not to reign in your mortal body so that you obey its lusts, 13 and do not go on presenting the parts of your body to sin as instruments of unrighteousness; but present yourselves to God as those who are alive from the dead, and your body’s parts as instruments of righteousness for God.
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1 Therefore I urge you, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship. 2 And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect.
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19 We love, because He first loved us.