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Gospel-Oriented Obedience

by Joe Thorn on July 28, 2010

Our Reformed fathers focused heavily on holy living. The volume of teachings they devoted to sanctification in their confessions and catechisms is striking. The Heidelberg Catechism devotes forty-four of its 129 questions and answers, more than one-third of its material, to sanctification, while the Westminster Larger Catechism devotes an impressive eighty-two of 196 questions and answers (42 percent) to this subject. By this emphasis, the Reformed churches declared that Calvinism is no mere religion of “head knowledge,” and we cannot live as if it makes us the “frozen chosen,” as we are sometimes derisively known. It is a religion of head and heart.

In their focus on sanctification, the Reformed churches sought to reorient the mind-set of Christians from thinking of godly living as legal to evangelical. This means that they saw obedience to God as not about guilt and legalism but as gospel-oriented. We see this in the fact that the writers of the Heidelberg and Westminster Larger catechisms placed the Ten Commandments and Lord’s Prayer at the end of their respective catechisms to show us that obedience is a response to the wonder of the gospel.

Welcome to a Reformed Church, Daniel R Hyde

About Joe Thorn

I am the Lead Pastor of Redeemer Fellowship in Saint Charles, IL, and author of Note to Self: The Discipline of Preaching to Yourself. Jen is my wife, and Katherine, Elias, Madeline and Kilian are my kids.

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  • Ryan

    I find as I get older here that after the gospel and salvation, a “relationship” with our Father is the most vital and important thing we can have. Keeping the commandments, going to church and holy living without that important real relationship with God just makes Chrisitanity another useless and worthless religion and the person just religous.

    When you have a relationship going with God Almighty, the holy living just falls into place as a life style and all those common sence commands something you don’t feel as something held over your head being your not breaking them. They only come into play during short points of temptation to remind you of what not to do.

    When you get a taste of the blessing of a close relation with God you bend over backwards not to mess anything up because life just goes so much better when your trusting in God than in yourself.

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