Does Bonhoeffer's emphasis on "First Step" and "Only those who obey can believe" erode the truth of the Gospels, as explained in Romans and Hebrews, concerning the new identity of righteousness of the believer?
Over the last several years, I have done a Bible study, mostly in the Epistle to the Romans but also touching on similar statements in the Epistle to the Hebrews, concerning the status, tense, and permanency of the righteousness imputed to the believer through Jesus' sacrifice. The practical application is that, as Bonhoeffer has so appropriately stated, "Only those who believe [in the imputed identity of righteousness] can obey [the dictates of God]," or put another way: You already are (have been made) the righteousness of God. You cannot become any more righteous. God doesn't have anymore righteousness to give you. If He did, He would have. You are the righteousness of God, so act like it. (Obviously, this applies only to those who have committed their entire beings to Jesus, offering the circumcision of the heart to give the "first faith" to Him, including in the sufficiency of His sacrifice.)
In my frequent study along the lines of, shall we say, "righteousness consciousness" and the emphasis on God's provisional grace, I have become curious about what compels a man, such as Paul, to continue to fervently apply himself to avoid sin and seek God-honoring actions, attitudes, activities. It seems more noble for someone to be compelled through positive motivation (i.e. this pleases God and you will prosper / be happy for it) versus negative motivation (i.e. God doesn't like that and you will suffer for it), but perhaps I am just not that noble all the time. Maybe there is a place for both the positive and negative motivation.
Jesus uses positive motivation, such as in Luke 7 when the prostitute was washing Jesus' feet with her hair, Jesus uses the positive motivation of forgiveness and love to encourage a change in her lifestyle whereas the Pharisees are shown as desiring Jesus to use harsh negative motivation, railing her for her sins.
Jesus also uses negative motivation, such as His diatribes against the Pharisees (Matthew 23) and in talking with the man healed by the pool at Bethesda saying "See you have been made well. Go and sin no more lest a worse thing should come upon you" (John 5:14).
Paul says "the love of Christ compels us" - positive motivation. David prays "unite my heart to fear Your name" - negative motivation.
These scriptures reaffirm my long-held understanding that "those who believe obey". But Bonhoeffer also makes a convincing case that disobedience is cured by obedience, not through an appeal to belief. I know that what brought me to Christ, or rather what caused me to humble myself and accept the One who sought me, what the final realization of the horror that I saw myself to be and my complete inability to improve myself. Rather than becoming more noble with age, I was inflicting more pain. When I heard the gospel (and it was in a Pentecostal Holiness church that I first heard the gospel) that Jesus Christ can regenerate a person and free a person from the bondage of sin, and also when the fear of hell broke through my atheistic Shangri-La, and also when I was starving on a train with no money for food and a man gave me two vegan-friendly bean burritos, then I let my guard down and God filled me. Over the next several years, I saw that all my problems were not solved, but now I had the solution to all my problems. I became more and more noble even as I was zealous in obedience to the dictates of God.
I could make all sorts of excuses for why I have not felt the same zeal for obedience in the last year or so, though I still hold fast to Christ just with weariness over some moral battles. Perhaps, the time to ponder whether Bonhoeffer's exuberance for obedience is contrary to my understanding of the regeneration is not when I am frustrated at my own imperfect obedience. So, I will take to heart Bonhoeffer's appeal: As I obey, so I will believe. Jesus, you who are able to keep me from stumbling, I present my members to you. I will glorify God in my body, which is the Lord's. I am bought with a price, and I refuse to be an unprofitable servant. I am not a son of belial, I have been made a son of God. I will work out my own salvation with fear and trembling. Not as the satanic "I will", but as the Spirit of God searches the deep things of my spirit, even so I will welcome and take part in the Spirit helping in my infirmity. (The word for "help" in Romans 8:26 means to "take hold opposite together", like how it takes two people to lift and carry a couch: taking hold of opposite ends at the same time and with equal effort... more on that later.)
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