Does failure in some areas give us license to disobey?

I have noticed a distressing tendency among some brothers and sisters to treat many commandments of the New Testament as an onerous burden to be cast aside.

What is really distressing is the argument I run into periodically where the individual responds to a clear mandate of Scripture with an example of another mandate we are not faithfully keeping. For example, I have run into some brothers in a discussion of women leaders in the church who have responded to Paul’s admonition against women teaching and holding leadership positions by pointing out that we don’t greet each other with a “holy kiss” or that many women wear jewelry to church. The argument apparently is that since we fail in so many ways, it is unnecessary to strive to obey at all or at least we are free to pick and choose at our discretion which commands are important.

If we fail to keep all of the commandments we see in the Scriptures, should that be an incentive for us to prayerfully ask God to strengthen us to greater obedience or should that be seen as a blank check to ignore the Word? Should our failures not spur us on to seek greater faithfulness?

Do I love the Lord God with all my heart, mind and strength? Unfortunately no. Should I then decide that the commands to evangelize, to pray, to be conformed to the Word, to contend earnestly for the faith are all irrelevant? God forbid that I think that! The truth of the matter is that what was written to the church didn’t not have an expiration date. The truths of the Epistles are as valid for us today as the Gospels are.

Paul was specific and repetitive about many aspects of the church. He wrote those words for a reason, and the reason was not that he was a misogynistic ogre who wanted to keep women in their place. Paul wrote what he wrote under the sovereign inspiration of the Holy Spirit and the words he wrote are not to repress us but to liberate us, not as burdens but as joys. We blithely ignore the explicit commands of Scripture to our peril.