Nathan
Member
Obedience is necessary as an evidence of one's salvation, but not the cause of it. The only obedience that is the condition and cause of ones being made righteous is Christ alone, the obedience of ONE..rom 5:
19For as by one man's disobedience many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous.
Right. We could never be made righteous in our own stance. We must be IN Christ to receive His righteousness. However, once in Christ obedience must take place, but there is a choice given;
Rom 6:11-18 So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, to make you obey its passions. Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments for righteousness. For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace. What then? Are we to sin because we are not under law but under grace? By no means! Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness? But thanks be to God, that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed, and, having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness.
If this was a 'natural' outcome of being one of the ones of "exception", then these would not be commands as given so. It would not be an option. Obedience takes an act of the will to perform. Otherwise it is not obedience. Obedience LEADS to righteousness. It does not create it, but leads to it.