Obedience
The thread throughout the entire bible points to the initial disobedience of mankind, causing us to fall away from God’s purpose for us, the solution to salvage us from certain death and reconcile ourselves with Him, and the obedience expected from His children.
Please join me for “10 Days on obedience”.
Let us read together as a body and come to the knowledge of how the Lord defines obedience. My prayer is that the Lord will grant us the strength to walk in obedience, knowing that this is the only way we can know God’s purpose for our lives.
Day 1 [15/06/2020] John 14 v 15 - 26 | 1 John 3 v 11 - 24
We start this journey with a clear instruction when Jesus says that “if anyone loves Him, they will keep His word.” The core of obedience is therefore based around this and lays the foundation and ground rules for what follows next.
We cannot love Him without keeping His commandments – the two are not mutually exclusive. The one is dependent on the other. We cannot consider ourselves to be free in Christ and expect to do as we please. Surely the question now is this. What does it mean to keep His commandments?
Well, when Jesus says, we should love one another, doesn’t He also refer to the law, for if we love one another we would not cause any harm to our neighbour. This also applies to His spiritual law, for if you hate your brother, you have committed murder in His eyes. If you therefore covet your neighbours’ possessions, you have stolen with your eyes and the origin, where all of this takes place is the heart, which is “deceitful and desperately wicked above all things.”
If our heart condemns us, it means we are being convicted by the Holy Spirit. If our heart does not condemn us, we can stand with confidence before the Lord. The only way to do this is through love. Loving the Lord, our God wholeheartedly and loving one another with the same sacrificial love God had (and still has) for us, by laying down His life.
We too are commanded to “lay down” our lives for our brothers and sisters in Christ, by loving them in “deed and truth“. Not through mere words, but our love for them should reflect in our actions. This is the only way, you will know you are in the truth, living in obedience, abiding in Him, and He in us through His Spirit. For if you (really) love God, you will also (naturally) love your fellow beings.
