The importance of obedience in salvation

What does your church teach about the importance of obedience in salvation?

Listen to what Jesus says in John 3:36 about the disobedient: “He who believes in the Son has eternal life; but he who does not obey the Son will not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him.” (NAS)

And the NLT: “And all who believe in God’s Son have eternal life. Those who don’t obey the Son will never experience eternal life, but the wrath of God remains upon them.”

If you wonder why they translated ‘believe’ in the first part and ‘disobey’ in the second, it’s because they are two different words. The first is pisteuô, and we do a bad enough job of explaining what that means. The idea of obedience is inextricably bound up in the notion of trusting.

But if that isn’t enough, the second word is apeitheô, a compound that means “to disobey” and whose root is translated variously: confident, convinced,  listen, obey, persuaded, relied, and trust.

If you claim to be believing but aren’t obeying, you aren’t believing.