Obey God

To know God is to love God is to obey God. Obedience deepens your knowledge, knowledge elevates your love, and love refines your obedience. And so the cycle continues. Your relationship with God is dynamic, like a flourishing tree beside a quiet stream, both reaching ever-downward into the depths of the earth and rising ever-upward into the glory of heaven. Knowledge, love, and obedience are the nourishment of the soil and sun upon which your relationship with God depends. There is no separation between the three. One cannot love God and willfully, persistently disobey him. Neither can one truly know God and not love him. To know, love, and obey God is not merely your duty to him as his creature; it is his invitation to you as his child.

Obedience is where the internal is made manifest, where your love for God is revealed through your actions. Obedience is practical love. You show that you love God by doing what he says. Perhaps this sounds like an abusive, authoritarian relationship, where your standing is entirely dependent upon your behavior – or, more accurately, upon the whims of the person who holds the relational power. Many dysfunctional relationships are built upon this premise: “I’ll only love you if you do what I say.” So why is it different with God?

It is only different with God because God is radically different. Remember, God has already given up everything to bring us to the point where this relationship with him is even possible. As the apostle John famously said, “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son, that whoever believes in him will not perish, but have everlasting life.” God does not demand everything while giving nothing. It is nearly the exact opposite. God has first given you everything, and in the grand scheme of things, he demands very little of you. Is it really so great a burden to practice self-control in your appetites, be generous instead of greedy, forgive others, or strive for humility? The yoke is easy. The burden, light.

Obedience is not a burden when the one demanding it is trying to save your life. Imagine finding yourself in a life and death situation. The threat is imminent, but someone has come to rescue you in the nick of time. It is obvious that this person has all the strength and courage to get you out of the danger. They also care enough about you to put their life at risk to save yours. Would you do what they tell you? If they offered you a hand, would you take it? Or if they said, “Follow me,” would you go your own way, instead? Only a fool would disobey their savior.

Life is a life and death situation. You may not have a bad guy with a gun to your head, but you do have a powerful enemy in the spiritual realm who wants you to die every death – of the body, of the heart, and of the soul. In addition to this external threat, you are also threatened every day by what is inside of you – your thoughts, beliefs, and desires. Jesus is the strong and courageous one who came to save you from all threats, internal and external. It would be the height of foolishness to say to him, “Thanks, but no thanks.”

God wants to rescue you from everything that is threatening your life. He’s not using obedience as a power play or a guilt trip. Obedience is the open door of escape from all the ways you die. It is the path into the fullness of life that only God can provide. Obedience will set you free. The opposite is also true. Disobedience will make you a slave. No one on the path of disobedience loves you. No one you meet there is seeking your good. Disobedience is the path which leads to death. On the way of obedience, however, there is nothing but love. Obedience to God is the true way, and all who walk it find its treasures.

“If You Love Me…”

Jesus made several strong connections between love and obedience during the Last Supper, which was recorded by the apostle John. In John 14:15, Jesus plainly states, “If you love me, keep my commands.” This statement might make alarm bells go off in the heads of modern readers. Coming from anybody else, a statement this strong could be construed as abusive, manipulative, or coercive. Many of us have heard something like this come out of the mouth of an abusive parent or partner. So why is it okay for Jesus to say this? We dealt with this in a general sense above, but now it’s time to get more specific.

Two major events provide important and clarifying context for this controversial statement. First, the foot washing. Jesus had just finished washing the feet of all the disciples – even the one who was a few hours from betraying him to those who would have him killed. Most people in those days walked through dusty streets and dirty fields all day long in either bare feet or open-toed sandals. You can image just how dirty the average person’s feet would be by dinner time. In a household with servants, the lowest-status servant was given the job of washing the feet of everyone who came into the house. It was the dirtiest and most humiliating job in the home. And this is what Jesus did for twelve men! This radical act of service was certainly at the forefront of all of their minds when they heard Jesus say, “If you love me, keep my commands.”

Second, the arduous torture of the crucifixion was going to begin about twelve hours later, and Jesus knew this was coming. He knew that he was about to endure unimaginable suffering, both physically and spiritually. He was going to take all that the Roman Empire could throw at a single man. Then, while bleeding from the whips, thorns, fists, and nails, he would endure everything that the devil could throw at him. All of the sin of mankind was about to be placed on his shoulders. The service of the cross, by which the sins of everyone in the world are taken away, is far more humiliating and more painful than the washing of twelve men’s dirty feet. In between becoming the servant of lowest status and the lamb who takes away the sins of the world, Jesus told his disciples, “If you love me, keep my commands.” His actions give him the moral authority to say such a thing, and far be it from you to look suspiciously upon him for it.

What, then, are the commands of Jesus? A comprehensive catalog is not within the scope of this essay, but he gave three commands that sum up all the rest. First: Love the Lord your God. Second: Love your neighbor as yourself. Third: Love one another. To love God is to obey God, and to obey God is to love God, your neighbor, and your fellow Christ-followers. Everything that Jesus commanded you to do – be generous to the poor, be patient with one another, reiterating the Ten Commandments, etc. – can be summed up as love of God, neighbor, and fellow disciple. Love is obedience, and obedience is love.

“Anyone Who Loves Me…”

Jesus picks up this theme again a little further along, in John 14:23-24. “Anyone who loves me will obey my teaching. My Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them. Anyone who does not love me will not obey my teaching.” It’s a simple dichotomy: Love Jesus and you will obey him; do not love him and you will not obey him. He’s only stating the obvious. Those who love Jesus will love God, their neighbor, and one another. You won’t do it perfectly, of course. You won’t do it at every opportunity or in every way. No one is capable of perfect love, and perfect obedience is only possible when you love perfectly. (This is why there will be no sin in heaven. You will see God face to face, and therefore you will know him fully. Because you will know him fully when you see him, you will love him perfectly. Only then will your obedience be perfect, and it cannot be otherwise.)

Those who do not love Jesus, however, will not love God or their neighbor, and because they are outside of the Church, there is no “one another” for them to love. Some may object to this statement, and fair enough. You do not need to love Jesus to be capable of love. You can love other people, and even love them well, without loving Jesus. However, you cannot love in the way the commands prescribe unless you first love Jesus. Jesus, after all, is God, and you don’t love God if you don’t love Jesus. Moreover, in rejecting the love of Christ at the cross, you are rejecting the universal love of mankind (your neighbor) which results in redemption and salvation. The sort of love that God considers the essence of obedience is only possible for those who love his Son.

Everyone who loves Jesus has a relationship with God. The Lord’s promise is that God will love those who love Jesus, and that both the Son and the Father will make their home with those people. This raises a question: Must I love God before he will love me? The answer, of course, is no. The love of the Father for the world is the impetus for the movement of the Son from heaven to earth, the very reason that he became the sacrifice by which you are saved. As John said elsewhere, “We love because he first loved us.”

Your status before God changes when you love Jesus. You go from being in the world to being in God’s family. When you love Jesus, you experience the same love from the Father that Jesus himself experiences. It’s not that the Father doesn’t love you before you love the Son, it’s that in loving the Son you enter into the fullness of the Father’s love. How do you know this is true? Because the Father and Son make their home with you by sending the Holy Spirit to dwell in your interior world. The smallness of your love, imperfectly given to God, results in the incomprehensible greatness of his love filling and lifting you beyond what you imagined possible.

“You Are My Friends…”

Jesus returns to this theme a third time during the Last Supper when he says in John 15:14, “You are my friends if you do what I command.” The repetition is important. Jesus, as well as the author John, are trying to drive this point home: love and obedience go together. Our relationship with God is contingent, at least in part, upon our obedience to him. This is not to say that God demands perfection. He doesn’t. He is familiar with our fallen state and knows that perfection is impossible for us right now. What God is looking for is growth. Effort. An overall trend in the direction of more obedience. There is grace in every failure and humility in every victory, but no matter what we must always try to obey Jesus.

Jesus is acknowledging that the disciples have undergone a transition. They used to be his servants. Now they are his friends. Obedience was formerly an obligation of status. He was the master above and they were the servants below. But now, at the end of his earthbound life, everything is changing. At the cross, Jesus will lower himself farther than any human being can be humiliated. It is not possible to be lower than Christ crucified. The King of kings has become the Servant of servants. We can become friends of God because Christ has lowered himself beneath us and then lifted us up on his shoulders so that we can, if we persevere and overcome, sit with him upon his throne that is above all thrones. This is our friend, raised by God because he obeyed the Father and lowered himself to the depths that are lower than death. He himself was obedient, not only to God his Father, but also to death – even to death on the cross. And why was he obedient? Because of love. His love for us compelled him to obey both God and death. He who says, “Do what I command” has himself done what he was commanded to do, and this for our eternal benefit. Obedience, once the obligation of status, is now the joy of friendship.

There is no friendship with God apart from obedience to Christ. Your relationship with God, whom you cannot see, is contingent upon your obedience to his commands, which you can see written in Scripture and hear proclaimed at Sunday services. You cannot have a relationship with God while at the same time actively, obstinately, willfully, and consistently disobeying him. Even so, grace abounds. God knows that you will never be his ideal friend. He does not demand the ideal. He simply demands that you love him. That does not seem so unreasonable given the overwhelming love he has demonstrated for you.

Conclusion

How can you have a relationship with an invisible God? The answer is: Know him, love him, and obey him. No one can see God, but anyone can know him because he has made himself known. Through his self-revelation – in nature, Scripture, and Jesus Christ – you can know everything you need to know about God. And in knowing him, you will love him. No morally sane person can know God and not come to love him. And in your love for God you obey him. Obedience is practical love. And as you obey him, you will find that you come to know him more, which in turns deepens and strengthens your love for him, which then refines your obedience to him. This cycle continues, going ever deeper and reaching ever higher until you are perfectly formed, through the work and power of the Holy Spirit, into the image of Jesus Christ, becoming fully who you are destined to be: friend of God, bride of the Son, son of the Father.