When Action Must Come Before Understanding

When Action Must Come Before Understanding

by | Aug 15, 2025 | Obedience

There are some areas of life where understanding needs to precede action. When we visit a doctor or other medical professional, for example, we want them to understand what the situation is and what is needed before they take any action in prescribing medications or treatments.  In cases like that, understanding obviously has to come before action. 
     
But in other areas of life we find situations where this “normal” way of things is reversed, and we simply have to act before we understand, counterintuitive as that may sound.  Falling in love might be a good example – we have to experience love before we can really understand it.  Following God’s instructions is often one of these situations. No amount of philosophizing can help us understand why it really is more blessed to give than to receive, for example – it is only when we do give that we begin to understand how we are blessed in giving. But it is easy to forget that sometimes action has to come before understanding. We may make the mistake of not acting on what we see in the word of God because we don’t understand why we should do or not do a certain thing.

Yet the Bible is very clear about the reality of “action before understanding” when applied to its teachings.   Notice, for example, how David expressed this fact in the Psalms: “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom; all who follow his precepts have good understanding” (Psalm 111:10). This is not saying that if you have good understanding you will follow God’s ways (though that is true, of course), but that following God’s instructions leads to understanding them.  Another verse that makes this same point is found in the book of Exodus.

According to many translations, directly after God gave the Ten Commandments and other laws to ancient Israel the people said: “All that the Lord has said we will do, and be obedient” (Exodus 24:7 NKJV). But the Hebrew literally says “we will do and we will hear” or “we will do and we will understand.”  Here again, as in many other instances, doing comes before “hearing” – action before understanding.

In the New Testament the principle is spelled out even more clearly. The Gospel of John records Jesus saying: “Whoever has my commands and keeps them is the one who loves me. The one who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I too will love them and show myself to them” (John 14:21).  This does not mean something esoteric and mystical – by “showing” himself to those who are obedient, Christ simply meant that they would come to understand and know him, just as we say “Ah! I see it now” when we come to understand something. But once again, the order is action before understanding.

In fact, this principle lies at the very heart of much of what the New Testament tells us. Compare these two very important verses in the book of Acts: “Repent, and let every one of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins; and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit” (Acts 2:38); “And we are His witnesses to these things, and so also is the Holy Spirit which God has given to those who obey Him” (Acts 5:32).   

Now the apostle Paul taught very clearly that: “The person without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God but considers them foolishness, and cannot understand them because they are discerned only through the Spirit” (1 Corinthians 2:14).  When we put these verses together we see that we cannot understand spiritual things until we receive the Spirit of God, and we have to act – to follow God’s instruction for repentance – before we can receive the Spirit.  So action must come before full understanding even from the very beginning of the Christian life.

The important thing for us to remember is that this principle does not only apply to us as new Christians – it applies to us every time we see some new guidance in God’s word.  The instruction may be clear as to what we must do, but we may only understand the guidance once we follow it – that is simply the way God often teaches us.  

Many of the individuals mentioned in Hebrews’ great “Faith Hall of Fame” chapter (Hebrews 11) understood that faith means we must sometimes act before we understand – we must obey before we fully comprehend.  These people seem to have learned a lesson we all must learn in the course of the Christian life: that faith often enables our obedience and our obedience often enables our understanding. ​

*This post was first published on our sister site, LivingWithFaith.org

Justice and Love: Old and New Testament ideas?

Justice and Love: Old and New Testament ideas?

by | Aug 1, 2025 | God, Love

For Many Christians, the concepts of justice and love sum up the major thrusts of the Old Testament and New Testament respectively. But this view misses a great deal of truth in both parts of the Bible.

Starting with simple word counts (using the NIV as a basis), the word “justice” occurs 115 times in the Old Testament and only 15 times in the New. But there are far more books in the Old Testament than the New, of course, and when we look at the average occurrences in the individual books, we find the frequency of the word justice is actually about the same in both Testaments. 

When we look at the word love, we find the same thing.  The Old Testament mentions love a surprising 425 times, and the New Testament mentions the same concept 261 times. But once again, when we check the averages, we find they are essentially the same – the word love occurs with about the same frequency in the books of the Old Testament and New Testament.  

But there is more to this.  Looking at simple word counts only gives us part of the picture. First, there are OT verses that clearly show the equivalent importance of both justice and love. David, for example, wrote “I will sing of your love and justice” (Psalm 101:1), and Hosea urges us to “maintain love and justice” (Hosea 12:6).  

We may be familiar with such verses, but when we read the Old Testament carefully, we find something surprising.  In many places in the Pentateuch, laws regarding justice are clearly alternated with laws regarding love. We find this, for example, in Exodus 23:1-9 as we see below – where the laws regarding justice are in normal type and those regarding love are in italic type:   

“Do not spread false reports. Do not help a guilty person by being a malicious witness.  “Do not follow the crowd in doing wrong. When you give testimony in a lawsuit, do not pervert justice by siding with the crowd,  and do not show favoritism to a poor person in a lawsuit.

“If you come across your enemy’s ox or donkey wandering off, be sure to return it.  If you see the donkey of someone who hates you fallen down under its load, do not leave it there; be sure you help them with it.

“Do not deny justice to your poor people in their lawsuits.  Have nothing to do with a false charge and do not put an innocent or honest person to death, for I will not acquit the guilty. “Do not accept a bribe, for a bribe blinds those who see and twists the words of the innocent.

“Do not oppress a foreigner; you yourselves know how it feels to be foreigners, because you were foreigners in Egypt.“

When we consider the numerical frequency of the words justice and love that we looked at in the beginning of this article, and we add the frequent alternation of laws of justice with laws of love in the Old Testament, we realize that to characterize the Old Testament as the testament of “justice,” as opposed to the New Testament of “love” is a complete misunderstanding. Both the Old and New Testaments stress the important of justice and love.

Both the Old and New Testaments show that God is a God of justice and love. For example, in the Old Testament we read “Righteousness and justice are the foundation of your throne; steadfast love and faithfulness go before you.” (Psalm 89:14), and in the New Testament we read both that “God is love” (1 John 4:8; 4:16)  and “Lord God Almighty, true and just are your judgments” (Revelation 16:7; 19:2).  Verses such as these show that the two cannot be separated – true justice involves love and true love involves justice.

The application of this fact for us as Christians is to look at our own lives and to consider if they reflect the godly qualities of both justice and love.