Quotes About Obedience To Law

“It is a mistake to reduce every decision about Christian living to a "Heaven-or-Hell issue."
For example, some ask if the Bible specifically says a certain action is a "sin" or will send them to "Hell." If not, they feel free to indulge in that action unreservedly and ignore any scriptural principles involved. But this approach is legalistic, which means living by rules or basing salvation on works. It treats the Bible as a law book, focusing on the letter and looking for loopholes.
By contrast, the Bible tells us that we are saved by grace through faith, not by our works (Ephesians 2:8-9). Grace teaches us how to live righteously, and faith leads us into obedience. (See Titus 2:11-12; Romans1:5; Hebrews 11:7-8.)”

— David K. Bernard

“When God becomes man in Jesus of Nazareth, he not only enters into the finitude of man, but in his death on the cross also enters into the situation of man's godforsakenness. In Jesus he does not die the natural death of a finite being, but the violent death of the criminal on the cross, the death of complete abandonment by God. The suffering in the passion of Jesus is abandonment, rejection by God, his Father. God does not become a religion, so that man participates in him by corresponding religious thoughts and feelings. God does not become a law, so that man participates in him through obedience to a law. God does not become an ideal, so that man achieves community with him through constant striving. He humbles himself and takes upon himself the eternal death of the godless and the godforsaken, so that all the godless and the godforsaken can experience communion with him.”

— Jürgen Moltmann

“Beware of license to the flesh, under the coat of liberty of the Spirit; and let none thinke that law-curses, looseth us from all law-obedience; or that Christ hath cryed down the tenne commandments; and that Gospel-liberty is a dispensation for law-loosenesse; or that free grace is a lawless Pope.”

— Samuel Rutherford

“Struggling against the legalism of simple obedience, we end by setting up the most dangerous law of all, the law of the world and the law of grace. In our effort to combat legalism we land ourselves in the worst kind of legalism. The only way of overcoming this legalism is by real obedience to Christ when he calls us to follow him; for in Jesus the law is at once fulfilled and cancelled.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

“The problem is not covenant theology in general, but covenantal nomism in particular. Wright's primary objection to the imputation of Christ's active obedience is that it's a category mistake: "If we use the language of the law-court, it make no sense whatever to say that the judge imputes, imparts, bequeaths, conveys or otherwise transfers his righteousness to either the plaintiff or the defendant. Righteousness is not an object, a substance or gas which can be passed across the courtroom ... To imagine the defendant somehow receiving the judge's righteousness is simply a category mistake." P.25”

— Michael S. Horton

“However, "the doers of the law" is not quite an empty set since Jesus fulfilled all righteousness on behalf of his coheirs. So we are saved by works after all, but by Christ's rather than by our own. It is not merely verse here and there that will be persuasive on this point, but the broader exegetical conviction that Christ has assumed Adam's representative role, fulfilling all righteousness (i.e., the covenant of works) and dispensing it to his coheirs in a covenant of grace. Otherwise, Christ's active obedience is suspended in midair. In the absence of Christ's active obedience in fulfilling the covenant of works, Wright substitutes the imperfect but Spirit-led faithfulness of the believers' whole life lived. P.28”

— Michael S. Horton

“The European generally submits to a public officer because he represents a superior force; but to an American he represents a right. In America it may be said that no one renders obedience to man, but to justice and to law.”

— Alexis De Tocqueville

“They who plead an absolute right cannot be satisfied with anything short of personal representation, because all natural rights must be the rights of individuals; as by nature there is no such thing as politic or corporate personality; all these things are mere fictions of law, they are creatures of voluntary institution; men as men are individuals, and nothing else. They, therefore, who reject the principle of natural and personal representation, are essentially and eternally at variance with those who claim it. As to the first sort of reformers, it is ridiculous to talk to them of the British constitution upon any or upon all of its bases; for they lay it down that every man ought to govern himself, and that where he cannot go himself he must send his representative; that all other government is usurpation; and is so far from having a claim to our obedience, it is not only our right, but our duty, to resist it.”

— Edmund Burke

“Jesus didn't come to earth to establish a new religion. He came to restore a broken relationship. He came to make the primary, primary again. The secondary activity of obedience to the law of God was always intended to serve the primary activity: to love God and enjoy Him forever. When that is primary, the secondary becomes a labor of love, a joyful, and "easy" burden to bear. (Matthew 11:28-30”

— Charles R. Swindoll

“God revealed himself through the Law, which pointed to Christ as its end and goal, commanded the obedience that comes from faith, increased transgressions, and shut the mouths of all humans because no one has performed the righteousness of the Law so as not to need a substitute.”

— John Piper

“But there were other forces at work in the cub, the greatest of which was growth. Instinct and law demanded of him obedience. But growth demanded disobedience ... In the end, one day, fear and obedience were swept away by the rush of life, and the cub straddled and sprawled toward the entrance.”

— Jack London

“If men would as fervently seek after love and righteousness as they do after opinions, there would be no strife on earth, and we should be as children of one father, and should need no law or ordinance. For God is not served by any law, but only by obedience.”

— Jakob Bohme

“All men who give up themselves in obedience unto God, they are received in Christ's obedience, viz. in the fulfilling of the obedience, the Jew and the Christian, and so likewise the heathen who has neither the law nor Gospel.”

— Jakob Bohme

“Government is defined as a right manner of disposing things so as to lead not to the form of the common good, as the jurists' texts would have said, but to an end which is 'convenient' for each of the things that are to governed. This implies a plurality of specific aims: for instance, government will have t ensure that the greatest possible quantity of wealth is produced, that the people are provided with sufficient means of subsistence, that the population in enabled to multiply, etc. There is a whole series of specific finalities, then, which become the objective of government as such. In order to achieve these various finalities, things be disposed - and this term, [i] dispose [/i], is important because with sovereignity the instrument that allowed it to achieve its aim - that is to say, obedience to the laws - was the law itself; law and sovereignity were absolutely inseparable.”

— Michel Foucault

“Obedience to the law of chastity will increase our happiness in mortality and make possible our progress in eternity.”

— David A. Bednar

“No more money, no more fancy dress
This other Kingdom seems by far the best until its other jaw reveals incest & loose obedience to a vegetable law
I will not go
Prefer a Feast of Friends
To the Giant family”

— Jim Morrison

“[T]he mere impulse of appetite is slavery, while obedience to a law which we prescribe to ourselves is liberty.”

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

“It is not the law, and not the book, not the knowledge of what is right, that works obedience, but the personal influence of God and His living fellowship. And even so it is not the knowledge of what God has promised, but the presence of God Himself as the Promiser, that awakens faith and trust in prayer.”

— Andrew Murray

“Obedience of the law is demanded; not asked as a favor.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

“What is a Rechtsstaat? It is obedience to the existing law.”

— Vladimir Putin

“Satan represents God's law of love as a law of selfishness. He declares that it is impossible for us to obey its precepts. The fall of our first parents, with all the woe that has resulted, he charges upon the Creator, leading men to look upon God as the author of sin, and suffering, and death. Jesus was to unveil this deception. As one of us He was to give an example of obedience. For this He took upon Himself our nature, and passed through our experiences. "In all things it behooved Him to be made like unto His brethren." Hebrews 2:17. If we had to bear anything which Jesus did not endure, then upon this point Satan would represent the power of God as insufficient for us. Therefore Jesus was "in all points tempted like as we are." Hebrews 4:15.”

— Ellen G. White

“See we not plainly that obedience of creatures unto the law of nature is the stay of the whole world?”

— Richard Hooker

“The severest prosecutions have never been followed by revelations changing a divine law, obedience to which brought imprisonment or martyrdom. Though I go to prison, God will not change his law of celestial marriage.”

— Lorenzo Snow

“Christianity is not a law of bondage; and if it respect the hand of God which sometimes raises up tyrants, it draws up where obedience degenerates into guilty cowardice.”

— Jean-Baptiste Henri Lacordaire

“Moral education, as I understand it, is not about inculcating obedience to law or cultivating self-virtue, it is rather about finding within us an ever-increasing sense of the worth of creation. It is about how we can develop and deepen our intuitive sense of beauty and creativity.”

— Andrew Linzey

“We are His children in Very deed, having been born of Him in the spirit, and we have inherited the very attributes which he possesses. They are in us, and they make us God's embryo, We believe that as we are now God once was, and by the practice of virtue and righteousness, by obedience unto law and authority, He has become what He is, and as He is, man may become, on the same principle.”

— George F. Richards

“The gospel is saying that, what man cannot do in order to be accepted with God, this God Himself has done for us in the person of Jesus Christ. To be acceptable to God we must present to God a life of perfect and unceasing obedience to his will. The gospel declares that Jesus has done this for us. For God to be righteous he must deal with our sin. This also he has done for us in Jesus. The holy law of God was lived out perfectly for us by Christ, and its penalty was paid perfectly for us by Christ. The living and dying of Christ for us, and this alone is the basis of our acceptance with God”

— Graeme Goldsworthy

“The law of God cannot be fulfilled by external obedience.”

— Martin Luther

“The full flower of divine love and our greatest blessings from that love are conditional-predicated upon our obedience to eternal law. I pray that we may qualify for those blessings and rejoice forever.”

— Russell M. Nelson

“1. Fidelity & Allegiance sworn to ye King is only such a fidelity and obedience as is due to him by ye law of ye land; for were that faith and allegiance more than what the law requires, we would swear ourselves slaves, and ye King absolute; whereas, by the law, we are free men, notwithstanding those Oaths. 2. When, therefore, the obligation by the law to fidelity and allegiance ceases, that by the Oath also ceases ...”

— Isaac Newton

“You must learn to understand the secret of gratitude. It is more than just so-called virtue. It is revealed to you as a mysterious law of existence. In obedience to it we have to fulfill our destiny.”

— Albert Schweitzer

“The first law that ever God gave to man was a law of pure obedience; it was a commandment naked and simple, wherein man had nothing to inquire after, or to dispute, forasmuch as to obey is the proper office of a rational soul, acknowledging a heavenly superior and benefactor. From obedience and submission spring all other virtues, as all sin does from self-opinion.”

— Michel De Montaigne

“In all well-attempered governments there is nothing which should be more jealously maintained than the spirit of obedience to law, more especially in small matters; for transgression creeps in unperceived and at last ruins the state, just as the constant recurrence of small expenses in time eats up a fortune.”

— Aristotle

“I think that what I was talking about was that as a woman growing up in a Mormon tradition in Salt Lake City, Utah, we were taught - and we are still led to believe - that the most important value is obedience. But that obedience in the name of religion or patriotism ultimately takes our souls. So I think it's this larger issue of what is acceptable and what is not; where do we maintain obedience and law and where do we engage in civil disobedience - where we can cross the line physically and metaphorically and say, "No, this is no longer appropriate behavior."”

— Terry Tempest Williams

“If you are too weak to give yourselves your own law, then a tyrant shall lay his yoke upon you and say: "Obey! Clench your teeth and obey!" And all good and evil shall be drowned in obedience to him.”

— Friedrich Nietzsche

“We have made covenants so to do solemn, sacred, holy covenants, pledging ourselves before gods and angels. We are under covenant to live the law of obedience. We are under covenant to live the law of sacrifice. We are under covenant to live the law of consecration. It is our privilege to consecrate our time, talents, and means to build up his kingdom. We are called upon to sacrifice, in one degree or another, for the furtherance of his work. Obedience is essential to salvation; so, also, is service; and so, also, are consecration and sacrifice.”

— Bruce R. McConkie

“By such literalism, fundamentalism, religions betrayed the best intentions of their founders. Reducing thought to formula, replacing choice by obedience, these preachers turned the living word into dead law.”

— Ursula K. Le Guin

“Nonviolence is the law of our species as violence is the law of the brute. The spirit lies dormant in the brute, and he knows no law but that of physical might. The dignity of man requires obedience to a higher laws - to the strength of the spirit.”

— Mahatma Gandhi

“There are times when you have to obey a call which is the highest of all, i.e. the voice of conscience even though such obedience may cost many a bitter tear, and even more, separation from friends, from family, from the state, to which you may belong, from all that you have held as dear as life itself. For this obedience is the law of our being.”

— Mahatma Gandhi