“Doing” or “Not Doing”

Matthew 7:24-29

“Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock. . . . And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand.” . . . And when Jesus finished these sayings, the crowds were astonished at his teaching, for he was teaching them as one who had authority, and not as their scribes.

Tom Wright, Matthew for Everyone (Vol. 1)

Doing what Jesus says, or not doing it: this makes the difference between a house that stays standing in a storm and a house that alls with a great crash. . . . Are we “doing” Jesus words, or only reading them, hearing them, and thinking how fine they are? (80-81).

A. Orendorff

There’s just no getting around it: obedience matters. “Doing” or “not doing” are what distinguish the wise from the foolish, the stable from the soon to tumble. Much like the law contained within the Mosaic Covenant—to which Matthew likens his gospel by dividing it into five separate parts marked by one variation or another on the phrase “when Jesus finished these sayings” (Matt. 7:28; 11:1; 13:53; 19:1; 26:1)—obedience is not what gets us into God’s family, though it is what marks us as members. What gets us in is God’s redemptive work in Christ, applied by grace and appropriated by faith. Likewise, our obedience flows from that same Spiritual source. Another (more grammatical) way to put this is: Our moral imperatives are empowered by God’s redemptive indicatives. And yet, no matter how much we rightly stress the indicatives—what God has done for us—we dare not turn away from the imperatives—what we must do in response. Obedience, as Jesus plainly illustrates, makes all the difference in the world.