Haggai's Call to true Obedience
14 April 2025
By Dr Adi Schlebusch
During the sixth century BC, the prophet Haggai was sent by the Lord to the apostate covenant people with a twofold question regarding the law of the Lord. First, he asked whether holy sacrificial meat, of which Leviticus 6:27 says sanctifies all those who touch it, would sanctify anything else it touched. The priests answered "no" (Haggai 2:12). Then he asked whether someone defiled by touching a corpse would make anything they touched unclean. The priests answered "yes," as taught in Numbers 19:21 (Haggai 2:13). Haggai used these examples from the law as symbols of the people's disobedience, saying in the next verse: "So is this people, and so is this nation" and "so is every work of their hands." In other words, while breaking the Law always defiles, outward religious displays of obedience—false obedience lacking a genuine heart of sincere and obedient devotion to the triune God—is despised by God. Haggai indicates that the people's religion, though they brought offerings and appeared obedient, was detestable to God because He knew their false hearts. In the New Testament, Hebrews 11:6 conveys the same message: "Without faith, it is impossible to please God."
Yet, the central point of Haggai’s admonition is not merely to call the people to adopt the right attitude. The examples he drew from the laws recorded in Leviticus and Numbers shows that he wanted to remind the people of the necessity of obedience to God’s Law. To serve God and practice true religion means to seek and do the Lord’s revealed will. Through the prophet Haggai, God Himself reveals to us that true religion rests primarily on knowledge of God and His will, as John Calvin also emphasized right at the beginning of his Institutes of the Christian Religion. The nineteenth-century Southern Presbyterian theologian R.L. Dabney addressed this same issue in an 1887 article published in the Presbyterian Quarterly, titled "Spurious Religious Excitements." In this article, Dabney warns against the dangers of emotional religious excitement unbacked by divine truth. He defines such heightened spirituality or spiritual revival as mere emotions without any saving influence on the human mind or conscience. While he acknowledges that feelings or emotions are an important component of true religion, they are only valid when stirred by an embrace of divine truth as revealed in Scripture. To embrace this truth, systematic knowledge of scriptural truths is essential. For Dabney, there is no true religion without doctrine. Dabney critiques modernist evangelistic revival methods, such as the well-known "altar calls," which use emotional excitement to produce merely apparent conversions. Such practices lead to false conversions, self-deception, and a hardening of the heart. Sinners are encouraged to see their emotions as evidence of faith, while biblical self-examination in light of God’s revealed will is neglected. Preachers who use such methods, Dabney argues, ignore Christ’s emphasis that true converts are known by their fruits. The result is churches filled with emotionally stirred but unregenerate members who bear no true fruit.
The Heidelberg Catechism (question and answer 21) describes true faith as, among other things, "a sure knowledge by which I hold as true all that God has revealed to us in Scripture." This is more than mere spirituality. It involves human reason and understanding. What we accept as truth largely directs and shapes our actions. This means that true revival is more than just spiritual emotions and excitement. It is far more than merely feeling close to God or having a stirred heart .Without knowledge of Christ and His will, there is no true service of Christ. It is therefore of utmost importance that heightened spirituality, built on emotions, sentiment, and excitement, is never confused with true repentance, which involves sorrow for our sin—sin we know from studying the Word of God—and obedience to His will revealed in God's Word. It presupposes, as we also confess in the Heidelberg Catechism, that we must know and embrace the Bible as the absolute truth and guide for our lives of individuals, families, congregations, and nations.
Haggai’s message resonates profoundly during Holy Week, a time of reflection on Christ’s sacrifice and resurrection. The prophet’s call to authentic faith—rooted in knowledge of God’s will and genuine obedience to his law—perfectly mirrors Jesus’ own emphasis on true discipleship. Haggai lamented the covenant people's disobedience. Jesus calls all nations to obedience. Following Christ demands more than mere emotional fervor on the one hand or formalistic rituals on the other: it entails willingly obeying Him for the sake of truly glorifying God and delighting in seeing his will, as revealed in His Word, be done.