The Continuance of Obedience
Major Bradley J. Caldwell
God’s Word: 1 John 1:8-10; Matthew 5:43-48; 1 Thessalonians 5:23; Psalm 37:4-6
The Christian Church suffers from a divided mind when facing the subject of obedience to God. Answering three questions will help us view the issue with a proper perspective and reach some conclusion.
Consistency
The first question concerns the very possibility of consistency: Can a believer obey God without interruption? Typically, Christians answer, “Yes,” followed by a qualifying, “but.” This
qualifier yields the more complete answer, “Yes, we can, but no, we do not.” I was raised in a church where leaders in the congregation taught the flock that we “sin every day in word, thought, and deed.” Salvation primarily involved God’s justification, a forgiveness that we were taught rendered us “just as if you never sinned.” But that justification apparently stopped short of delivering us from future sin.
First John 1:8-10 served as the packaged proof that believers remain sinners rather than become accomplish obedience: “If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. If we claim we have not sinned, we make him out to be a liar and his word is not in us.” But John Wesley taught that John presented a progression in these three verses. First, we are born in sin and thus prone to sinning—if we claim differently, we then “deceive ourselves.” Second, if we confess that we are trapped in sin from which we cannot extricate ourselves, God will both pardon and purify us from sins and sinning. Third, we must never forget the despair of sin from which God delivered us, and we must never claim that we have made ourselves good apart from Him.
Requirement or Recommendation
A second and more vital question concerns the believer’s obeying God without fail. Is obedience required or merely recommended? Rather than answer via an if/then scenario—if I continue in ongoing sin after being saved, then how am I impacted? Consider how Jesus enlarges the nature of Christian obedience. He does not limit us to either following instructions or achieving some adequate level of behavioral compliance. Instead, in Matthew 5:43-48 He declares that we can only prove our status as children of God if we yield ourselves wholeheartedly through self-giving love.
Jesus concludes this definitive call to obedience by challenging His followers to “be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matthew 5:48). Such direction from our Christ seems an unequivocal answer that, yes, we must obey God always.
Why Don’t We Obey God?
The reality of life as we experience it forces a third question on the subject. If we both can and are required to continually obey God, why don’t we? Why is sin still visibly woven into the daily practices of those who claim to be Christ followers?
Originally, I intended to entitle this piece “The Capacity for Obedience,” with credit for such capacity being laid largely at God’s feet. First Thessalonians 5:23 suggests that humans play a seemingly passive role in preserving a clean spiritual slate: “May God himself, the God of peace, sanctify you through and through. May your whole spirit, soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.” No purifying activity in this verse springs from the believer. God sanitizes and revitalizes the believer’s entire being in every part and then sustains the “whole” person’s alignment with God’s requirements. But capacity for performance does not always ensure ongoing pursuit of the relevant activity. Pop singer Bill Withers, famous for performing popular radio staples including “Ain’t No Sunshine,” and “Lean On Me,” left the music business abruptly, not over any deterioration in his vocal ability, but simply because he did not want to continue the life of a professional musician. NFL running back Jim Brown, whom The Sporting News identified as the greatest professional football player ever in 2002, retired from the game at the age of 30. He had many possible seasons left in him but shifted his interest to acting in films.
I propose that we fail to make obedience to God our default way of life because, like Brown and Withers, we either lose our appetite or more likely fail from the start to cultivate a proper desire for God. Jesus the Teacher worked most effectively through synthesis. He gathered diverse topical elements and boiled them into a singular unified entity, and He leads us to such an awareness in this area of faithful obedience. Since we know from 1 Peter 1:10-12 that Christ directly influenced the content of Scripture, we can rightly recognize His influence in Psalm 37:4-6:
Take delight in the Lord,
and he will give you the desires of your heart.
Commit your way to the Lord;
trust in him and he will do this:
He will make your righteous reward shine like the dawn,
your vindication like the noonday sun.
Allegiance
Believers are here advised to trust in God rather than invest in doing (obedient) things for Him. To invest in obeying God means to strike a deal wherein our obedience is contingent upon certain results. For example, “I will obey God until I feel the requirements exceed certain limits. Then I will deem obedience unreasonable and therefore impossible.” But if I trust God, I am saying that there are no conditions under which I will walk away from Him. As Commissioner Stanley Ditmer’s hymn professes, “I’m in His hands. What’er the future holds, I’m in His hands. The days I cannot see have all been planned for me. His way is best, you see; I’m in His hands.” Within this perspective obedience takes a backseat to devoted allegiance.
Furthermore, even allegiance to God leaves a believer bearing some measure of uneasiness. Allegiance feels dependent and self-originating—I myself will do this. But Psalm 37 precedes the call to commit with an urge to “delight.” Delight as a verb means more than merely liking rather than disliking. To delight is to take pleasure in a thing, and willfully taking pleasure in turn exceeds mere enjoyment by determining also to find joyful satisfaction. The Psalmist says in effect, “Plan to find a loving relationship with the Lord your most satisfying option for a life path, and He will prove that decision completely satisfying at the heart level.”
God further bolsters His followers in the journey of ready and unbroken obedience by proving to the world through His faithful ones that this choice of trust and delight in Him produces a demonstrably, commendably rewarding life. “He will make your righteous reward shine like the dawn, your vindication like the noonday sun” (Psalm 37:6).
Our Corporate Prayer
Dear Father, as we have looked at the reasons for our obedience, we admit that often we have mixed motives. We want Your blessings and Your approval, and we know that is a good thing. But we want to know that above all else that You will find in our hearts a holy desire to please You because of our deep, deep love for You. We ask Your Holy Spirit to shine His light in our hearts to show us, to correct us if needed, to assure us if we our hearts are where they should be. We want what You want: nothing less, nothing more, nothing else. In Jesus' name. Amen.
Our Worldwide Prayer Meeting
Ghana Territory
Thinking It Through
As children we are often taught that we are to obey so that we might receive this or that reward. It carries into the workplace, our family life and beyond. How hard it is to obey God simply because He is God, and not because there is a special reward attached!
Notable Quotables
“Resolution One: I will live for God. Resolution Two: If no one else does, I still will.” - Jonathan Edwards
And finally, we have a gospel quartet brining us the old favorite, "What a Friend We Have in Jesus."
We would appreciate any feedback and/or suggestions on how to improve these devotionals. Please email comments to: SpiritualLifeDevelopment@uss.salvationarmy.org or by going to our website: https://southernusa.salvationarmy.org/uss/spiritual-life-development.
We would love to hear from you.
Lt. Colonel Allen Satterlee
Territorial Spiritual Life Development Officer/THQ Chaplain
USA Southern Territory