You’ve probably heard the phrase before. You’ve probably applied it to your children. You’ve hopefully applied it to yourself. Delayed obedience is disobedience. The phrase exhorts us that when we know the right thing to do, it is sinful to fail to do it. Or as we instruct our little ones: Do it now; do it all the way; and do it with a happy heart.

But is it invariably wrong to delay obedience? Is delayed obedience always disobedience?
My Bible reading this week took me to the closing chapters of Ezra which tells of God’s people leaving their exile and returning to Jerusalem. No sooner do they return than they become convicted that they have sinned against God by intermarrying with foreigners. Ezra records that “after these things had been done, the officials approached me and said, ‘The people of Israel and the priests and the Levites have not separated themselves from the peoples of the lands with their abominations … for they have taken some of their daughters to be wives for themselves and for their sons, so that the holy race has mixed itself with the peoples of the lands.”
Ezra leads the people in a powerful prayer of confession and the people are cut to the heart. They repent of their sin and make a covenant that they will separate themselves from these foreign wives and their children. “Then Ezra arose and made the leading priests and Levites and all Israel take an oath that they would do as had been said. So they took the oath.”
And then, because delayed obedience is disobedience, they immediately took action and drove away the foreign women on that very day, right? No, that wasn’t it at all.
Though Ezra called the people to act and seemed to do so right away, they pushed back, not because they wanted to delay their obedience, but because they knew the matter was complicated and that it was important to handle it with wisdom, care, and prudence. They knew that haste would lead to sloppiness and possibly compound the pain. “The people are many,” they said, “and it is a time of heavy rain; we cannot stand in the open. Nor is this a task for one day or for two, for we have greatly transgressed in this matter.” Instead they proposed that officials be appointed who would make their way from city to city to carefully examine each situation and then, on the basis of knowledge, pass the appropriate judgment.
Ezra agreed to this and the severing of Jewish men from foreign women was carried out over the period of three months rather than one day. Presumably these officials considered not only whether these wives were foreigners, but also whether they had come to fear God and accept the religion of their husbands—something that was permitted and had even been anticipated (see Ezra 6:21).
In this case, at least, delayed obedience was obedience. And this is because the delay was not due to apathy or indifference. It was not procrastination and not an attempt to continue to enjoy sin until the last possible moment. No, the delay was one of prudence to ensure that every judgment was fair and right, that every ruling was just and holy. Though the sin was dire and though they knew the right thing to do, the situation was complicated and the context unsuited to thoughtful decision-making. Thus in this case the lesser sin or the greater obedience was to move slowly.
And the lesson, perhaps, is that acting with wisdom, even in turning away from disobedience to pursue obedience, sometimes takes time—time to listen, time to examine, time to ponder, time to pray. In such situations it is better to act slowly and correctly than to risk compounding sin upon sin, pain upon pain. Delayed obedience, it seems, is sometimes not disobedience at all.

This week the blog is sponsored by Zondervan Reflective. This is an excerpt from Thaddeus Williams’ latest book on living out a radically God-centered systematic theology entitled Revering God: How to Marvel at Your Maker (Zondervan Reflective, 2024), featuring stories of Christian thinkers like Michael Horton, Fred Sanders, Joni Eareckson-Tada, John Perkins, Vishal Mangalwadi, and others on how God’s attributes have impacted their personal lives.
There are many so-called “evidential” arguments for God’s existence. The universe’s beginning points to its Beginner. Design in the universe points to its Designer. Moral laws point to the Moral Law-giver, and so on. Such arguments compute well with how certain minds are wired, particularly the more philosophic brainiac types. But there is another style of case for Christianity, one that I believe touches those without patches on their blazer elbows, pipes in their teeth, or five-syllable words on their tongues. There are arguments, if they can even be called that, which address themselves to all of us, every human and every dimension of our humanness. They address us not as cerebrums on sticks but as the artists, lovers, dreamers, hypocrites, heroes, loners, romantics, dullards, worshipers, adventurers, failures, jokesters, and weirdos that we are.
Every day you are bombarded with more arguments for God’s existence than your five senses can possibly intake or appreciate.Thaddeus WilliamsShare
They are something less like arguments and more like invitations, signposts, pointers, clues, keys that open doors to wider vistas of human experience, lighthouse beacons that guide us out of churning black ocean chaos to safer shores. They are what a pastor hailed as “America’s most important and original philosophical theologian” understood so well. Describing the searching soul, Jonathan Edwards says,
[I]t sees that till now it has been pursuing shadows, but that it now has found the substance; that before it had been seeking happiness in the stream, but that now it has found the ocean…. The enjoyment of [God] is the only happiness with which our souls can be satisfied. Fathers and mothers, husbands, wives, or children, or the company of earthly friends, are but shadows; but God is the substance. These are but scattered beams, but God is the sun. These are but streams. But God is the ocean.
Dusk, magnolia flowers, ground-rule doubles, dandelion fluff, thunder, baptisms, laughter-induced side cramps, the sudden volume spike of rain from a pitter patter to a torrent, the conversation with a homeless man, the wrestling match with a toddler, the cool pillowcase, the Lord’s table, and on we could go. Try to wipe God from the horizon and, in the final analysis, this stream of wonders runs dry. They are reduced to nothing but “illusions fobbed on us by our genes,” in the words of atheist Michael Ruse.
I have some books on my shelf that list five arguments for God. Others document a dozen. Peter Kreeft lists twenty. One youtuber boasts 150 arguments for God in a four-hour video. What is the true number? Something more like how many drops are in the Pacific, or how many subatomic particles exist. Every day you are bombarded with more arguments for God’s existence than your five senses can possibly intake or appreciate. Lord, give us eyes to see, noses to smell, buds to taste, fingertips to touch, ears to hear, and souls to sense the moment by moment grand case for You. Help us follow shadows to the Substance, streams to the sea, sunbeams to the Sun. Amen.

My gratitude goes to Banner of Truth for sponsoring the blog this week to tell you about a new collection of writings by J.C. Ryle.

(Yesterday on the blog: Fight For Your Pastor)
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Perseverance reveals the fruit of true, saving faith. It is both an exercise of genuine faith and evidence of it. Perseverance doesn’t save us, but it reveals that we have been saved. —Glenna Marshall