If grace is free, why does obedience matter?

If God's grace is truly free, why should I bother obeying Him, loving others, or serving anyone? This is a common question, and a crucial one, that reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of God's grace. The question treats the response to grace as an expectation of grace. In other words, it treats grace as if it demands something in response. But that is not how grace works.

Inherent in the question is a misunderstanding about what grace is that naturally leads to misunderstanding what grace does. Grace doesn't expect anything from those who receive it. Instead, it transforms them. Grace doesn't expect; it produces. But let's not get ahead of ourselves. Before we go any further, we need to understand how the Bible defines grace.

So, what is grace? Grace is God's undeserved, unmerited, and unobligated blessings bestowed on all who come to saving faith in Jesus. 

Now, let's break that down.

• God’s grace is undeserved – In Paul’s letter to the church in Rome, he made clear that “all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23). What everyone deserves is God’s wrath against sin. What everyone deserves is God’s judgment and punishment.  
• God’s grace is unmerited – Later in the same letter, Paul writes, “The wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 6:23). What we can earn or merit on our own is death. Salvation and eternal life must be freely given because we will never earn it. 
• God’s grace is unobligated – Once we realize that we don’t deserve God’s blessings and we can’t earn or pay Him back, it becomes clear. God isn’t obligated in any way to bless, forgive, save, or act in any other favorable way toward any of us.  

This is why we started by saying that grace doesn't expect anything. Grace can't expect anything. The moment we attach expectation to grace it stops being grace and becomes obligation. Expectation doesn’t just distort grace; it cancels it. This brings us to what makes this question so crucial. Without grace we have no access to God or His blessings. We have nothing to offer. The only thing we bring to the table is our need for God to give us grace.

Only when we realize this can we move on to consider what God's grace does.

1. God’s grace meets us where we are but doesn’t leave us there. 

Without Jesus, we are “dead in our trespasses and sins.” We are by nature children of wrath, following the influence of the world, the devil, and the passions of our flesh (Ephesians 2:1-3). Because we are dead, we are powerless to change and only deserve judgment from God and condemnation by God. If that were the end of it, we’d be in trouble; thankfully, the very next verse begins with the words, “But God!” In these words, Paul shows how God’s grace turns what we once were on its head. Let’s take a look.


God met us in our death but didn’t leave us dead. He made us alive! We are no longer what we were because God’s grace saves and transforms. It makes us different than what we used to be. We have new perspectives, new beliefs, new values, and new desires. As a result of all this newness, we live differently. Paul closes this section of Ephesians by summarizing the new life this way: 


In grace, God recreated us. We are the product of His work through Jesus. The result of His work is a whole new “walk.” Instead of death with no ability to do good works, He has transformed us and produced in us the ability to do good. We truly are no longer what we were.

2. God’s grace transforms us for and empowers us to live this new life.

God’s grace doesn’t merely save (transform); it also empowers. The good news is that God didn’t just save you and expect you to figure out then how to obey all of His commands. He makes you able. A quote often attributed to John Bunyan comes to mind. 


God’s grace saves us but doesn’t stop there. It transforms us, it makes us new creations, and it gives us the power necessary to live in obedience to God’s commands. This is why Paul wrote to the church in Corinth, “I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me” (1 Corinthians 15:10).

3. God’s grace doesn’t expect anything of us but produces good works through us. 

The question we started with is the wrong question. If someone feels the weight of expectation when it comes to obedience, love, or service rather than seeing them as joyful response to the Lord, they should ask different why questions: Why do I not want to obey, love, or serve?” Why do I not have a desire to do good to others? Why am I not trying to find ways to extend the grace I have received to others?”

When we have received God’s grace freely given to us, and we begin to understand what it is and does, we won’t be asking why are we expected to obey, love, and serve. We’ll ask how we can obey more faithfully, not because we are expected to, but because we want to obey. When we understand what God’s grace is and does, we‘ll want to know how to better love and serve others, not because we have to, but simply because we have been so abundantly blessed by God’s grace. When we begin to understand what God’s grace is and does, we’ll want to give His grace to others as freely as He has given it to us.