TRUE OBEDIENCE Part 1

“By whom we have received grace and apostleship, for obedience to the faith among all nations, for his name…”
Romans 1:5
“The word of God kept on spreading; and the number of the disciples continued to increase greatly in Jerusalem, and a great many of the priests were becoming obedient to the faith.”
Acts 6:7
“For I will not presume to speak of anything except what Christ has accomplished through me, resulting in the obedience of the Gentiles by word and deed…”
Romans 15:18
"Has the LORD as much delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as in obeying the voice of the LORD? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, And to heed than the fat of rams.” 1 Samuel 15:22

Soren Kierkegaard once told a parable about a community of ducks who every Sunday would waddle off to duck church to hear the duck preacher. The duck preacher spoke eloquently of how God had given the ducks wings with which to fly. With these wings there was nowhere the ducks could not go, there was no God-given task the ducks could not accomplish. With those wings they could soar into the presence of God himself. Shouts of "Amen" were quacked throughout the duck congregation. At the conclusion of the service, the ducks left, commenting on what a wonderful message they had heard, and waddled back home.

Too often, we waddle away from church and bible reading just as we waddled in-unchanged. We read our Bibles and we hear our preachers calling us to obedience and telling us that we can do it. So we leave the word and church inspired and hopeful and ready to obey and then find ourselves failing miserably. I have been a Christian for 38 years this year and left to myself, I must admit that I am not a very good at being good and doing obedience. At times I am grieved that after all of these years I am still selfish, egotistical, insensitive, prideful, ambitious, cold, cynical, and impatient. The harder I have tried to live the Christian life, the worse it often times gets. For every good intention, there is often a bad action. For every good action, there is often a bad intention. For every right thing I do, there are two wrongs. I am very skilled at snatching defeat right out of the jaws of victory. Oh how many tears have I cried over my sinfulness.


The apostle Paul describes this experience of himself in Romans 7:14-25, "“For we know that the Law is spiritual, but I am of flesh, sold into bondage to sin. For what I am doing, I do not understand; for I am not practicing what I would like to do, but I am doing the very thing I hate. But if I do the very thing I do not want to do, I agree with the Law, confessing that the Law is good. So now, no longer am I the one doing it, but sin which dwells in me. For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh; for the willing is present in me, but the doing of the good is not. For the good that I want, I do not do, but I practice the very evil that I do not want. But if I am doing the very thing I do not want, I am no longer the one doing it, but sin which dwells in me. I find then the principle that evil is present in me, the one who wants to do good. For I joyfully concur with the law of God in the inner man, but I see a different law in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin which is in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will set me free from the body of this death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord”!

The scriptures clearly teach us that God demands obedience from his people. We are responsible before God to obey His commandments. This involves not only obedient acts, but also obedient attitudes. For example, delight in the Lord is commanded (Psalm 37:6); love is commanded (Matthew 22:37); joy is commanded (Psalm 110:2; Philippians 4:4); gratitude is commanded (Colossians 3:15); hope is commanded (Psalm 42:5).

Secondly, the scriptures teach us that we are saved for obedience. For example,
“Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, separated unto the gospel of God,(Which he had promised before by his prophets in the holy scriptures,) Concerning his Son Jesus Christ our Lord, which was made of the seed of David according to the flesh; And declared to be the Son of God with power, according to the spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead: By whom we have received grace and apostleship, for obedience to the faith among all nations, for his name…” (Romans 1:1-5)
“The word of God kept on spreading; and the number of the disciples continued to increase greatly in Jerusalem, and a great many of the priests were becoming obedient to the faith.” (Acts 6:7)

Thirdly, obedience demonstrates our love for Christ. Our Lord said that, “if you love Me, you will obey what I command” (John 14:15). Then Apostle John adds, “For this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments.” (1 John 5:2-3).


Surprisingly, the apostle John adds something else about obedience that is both puzzling and wonderful. “...and His commandments are not burdensome” (1 John 5:3).


Do you feel an utter disconnect when the Apostle John says that loving God by commandment keeping is not burdensome? Has that been your experience? So what does John mean when he makes such a statement? In John's perspective, somehow, there is a kind of commandment keeping and obedience that is not burdensome but joyful, easy, and light. What is it?What does it look like?

When you combine what Jesus and John say you discover that love is not just obeying but a kind of obeying that comes from a certain kind of heart that makes the obedience not burdensome, but easy. So often we are taught that obedience is a decision and an act of the will. We are to obey because God says so period. You must do it whether or not you feel like it. But what if I do something that I ought to do but my heart is not into what I am doing. In short, what if I do what I ought to do but I don’t want to do what I ought to do?


This leads to a serious problem. How do I sincerely and earnestly obey the commandments that seem to all be rooted more within than in behavior? For instance, to have joy (Philippians 4:4; Psalm 100:2); to delight or enjoy God (Psalm 37:4) ; to hope (Psalm 42:5); to be tenderhearted (Ephesians 4:32); to be zealous (Romans 12:11); thankful (Colossians 3:15); broken and contrite ( Psalm 51:17); to have affection for my brothers ( Romans 12:10); to crave or desire (1 Peter 2:2); and most of all to love God with all my heart, soul, mind, and strength (Mark 12:30)?

It is here that I discovered that to obey these commands there has to be something more than willpower, duty, and decisions. It has to be something more than my power to do it. The reality is that I find it impossible to keep these commands and therefore they are very burdensome to me. But John says that obedience is not burdensome. So there is a kind of obedience that is not burdensome.

What is this kind of obedience? First, we have to see that the reality of the Christian life is that left to ourselves we are totally depraved. (Romans 8:7; 1 Corinthians 2; 14; Romans 5:19; Jeremiah 17:9). The root of our disobedience is our utter depravity. Our heart does not desire what it ought to desire. It has sinful, distorted, misplaced, and foolish desires. The core problem when it comes to God’s commands and our obedience is the weakness of our desires. John Piper in reflecting upon Saint Augustine understanding wrote, “We are free to do what we like, but we are not free to like what we ought to like.”

My freedom is my demise as I wrote last week. Last week I wrote that sinful mans freedom is an illusion of freedom. We are not free in our desires. If you don't have the desire to do a thing, you are not fully free to do it. If you do it only out of duty, obligation, will power, or others expectations to do what you don't want to do, nobody calls that full freedom. There is a constraint and pressure on us that we don't want and that is not freedom.

But there is a second problem with my freedom. What if you have the desire to do something, but you have no ability to do it, you are not free to do it. I would love to fly but I cannot. Therefore, I am not free to fly.My flesh always goes after what it likes, yet apart from Christ it always likes the wrong things. That is why the root of obedience has to be a change in my desires, inclinations, and affections. Otherwise our "want to’s" will never be what we ought to want. We won’t desire what we ought to desire and our hearts will go after fleshly desires. Therefore we will do what we ought not to do. Our behavior always follows are hearts!

The longer you walk with God, The more you understand who He is, what sin is, and who you are in Him and apart from Him, the better you become, the more you are ashamed for being bad, not just doing bad. As N.P. Williams said, “The ordinary man may feel ashamed of doing wrong, but the saint refined with moral sensibility, and keener powers of introspection, is ashamed of being the kind of man who is liable to do wrong.”

Left to ourselves, our hearts are spiritually and morally flawed. We do not desire what we ought to desire. We do not want what we ought to want. Yet God holds us responsible for our obedience. We may be corrupt but we are culpable for what we ought to do. So how do we obey when we don't want to obey? How do we do what we ought to when we don’t want to? To get to the root, how do our "want to’s” change?

To be continued next next week...