“Through him we received grace and apostleship to call all the Gentiles to the obedience that comes from faith for his name’s sake” (Romans 1:5).

We often see grace and faith connected. Grace is the part of our salvation that God paid for us. We cannot be saved apart from it. Nothing we can do could ever replace Jesus dying in our place. Paul says that even his ministry to Gentiles was given to him by the grace of God. Everything from our salvation to the life that follows it is due to the grace of God. It’s all about Jesus.

What about our part? We do, after all, have a part to play. It is faith. We trust what Jesus did as enough to secure our salvation. Here is the part so many misunderstand. They put obedience before faith and struggle to obey enough in their own strength to please God. That bypasses both grace and faith and will never work.

The reality is that “obedience comes by faith.” Jesus graciously lived a life of perfection we couldn’t live. Our salvation comes with our faith in what he did. Our obedience comes from that same faith. What if we aren’t perfect in our obedience? We’re still saved because the foundation of our relationship with God was and always will be His grace and our faith. And what about our continuing obedience? We will grow and mature into what God saw when He first called us.