Meaningful belief leads to obedience. Some insist: “I believe, therefore I am saved.” When questioned about the need for obedience to be saved, many only repeat: “I am saved! I believe in Jesus and The Bible.”
Many Protestants, mostly farther on the fringes of the 45,000 Marketing Plan Denominations, have almost an allergic reaction to the necessity of obedience in being saved. “Obedience is not necessary. The important thing is to believe in Jesus and The Bible.”
This passage makes it clear: Meaningful belief leads to obedience. Heb 4:1-5 shows how important obedience is:
“Let us be on our guard while the promise of entering into His rest remains, that none of you seem to have failed. For in fact we have received the Good News just as our ancestors did. But the word that they heard did not profit them, for they were not united in faith with those who listened. (They were early Protestants!) For we who believed enter into that rest, just as He has said:
As I swore in my wrath, ‘They shall not enter into my rest,’ and yet His works were accomplished at the foundation of the world. For He has spoken somewhere about the seventh day in this manner, And God rested on the seventh day from all His works; and again, in the previously mentioned place, They shall not enter into my rest.
Therefore, let us strive to enter into that rest, so that no one may fall after the same example of disobedience.”
St. Paul, a Catholic priest/bishop began the passage with the importance of obedience in The Old Testament. He ends with the importance of obedience in The New Testament that he helped to write.
He provided Catholic Sacraments to the early Catholics in the first Catholic Churches of Asia Minor and Greece . Those Churches were “so Catholic” that they sent representatives to Catholic Councils called by Catholic Successors of Peter for hundreds of years! He did more than merely encourage them to “obedience”.
He made it clear that we be must be obedient “. . so that no one may fall after the same example of disobedience.”
The road to obedience began for St. Paul, and for us, with obeying The Decree of Jesus:
“Verily, verily I say unto you thou art Peter and on this rock I build My Church and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. I give you the keys to The Kingdom of Heaven.”
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