What it means to Obey

What it means to Obey

(Picture credits at end of post)

Reading: Mark 3:31-35

For whoever does the will of God is My brother and My sister and mother.” (Mark 3:31-35 – NKJV)

Jesus used every situation that presented itself as an opportunity to teach a lesson regarding the principles of the Kingdom of God.

Here he was surrounded by people eager to hear him, and those related to Him by blood found their access blocked. They could not get near Him because the house where he was teaching was jammed full with people.

So a message is passed from one to the other till it reaches Jesus” “Look, Your mother and your brothers are outside seeking You.”

Jesus responds with an apparent rejection of His mother and half-brothers. He seizes the moment and uses earthly relationships to instruct His hearers as to what constitutes family relationships from a Heavenly perspective.

Christ was not rejecting his mother and other blood relations; He was just establishing the basis upon which a relationship with Him is to be conducted – obedience to His Heavenly Father.

Now the moment the word “obedience” is mentioned the human mind interprets it as bondage. We think of it as being under obligation to do something we either do not want to do, or something we will find extremely difficult or well-nigh impossible to do.

We get into a state of mind in which all the joy is squeezed out of our Christian experience, and we come back under the bondage of the law. This is all due to a failure to understand the nature of obedience as it is revealed in the New Testament.

The apostle Paul calls faith itself an obedience (Romans 16:26):

In this context obedience to the will of God means to follow the Faith. It means to commit yourself to the Gospel of Christ and all that it implies. It means to commit yourself to a Gospel in which we are saved by faith, and not of works. It means to embrace the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ as full payment for your sin and entrance into an everlasting Kingdom.

This kind of obedience is more like being given a cheque by a billionaire and told to go to the bank, withdraw ten million dollars from his account, and to deposit it in your own account. Who would consider obedience to the billionaire a burden and a bondage? Such obedience would be a delight to any reasonable soul.

True obedience is motivated by love, and Jesus said it was a delight to do His Father’s will.

Not a Dragon

© Sunday 21^st September 2014 – by Christopher Shennan

Obedience is not a dragon

Swooping down on all God’s people;

It’s not a dreaded judgment

Proclaimed from church and steeple

Obedience is a delight

Born of love and pure desire;

It’s a longing just to please,

That only God can inspire.

When you’re born into to God’s family,

His nature enters, too,

And a longing to obey

Is just – given to you.

You’re no longer under law,

Except for the law of love;

The power to obey

Comes down from Heaven above.

 Check out my books at: My website: http://www.christophershennan.ca
Twitter: https://twitter.com/CNShennan
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ChristopherShennanAuthor

“Family <3,” copyright. Image uploaded from Flickr by Yjenith onto wikimedia.org. Used under the Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic (CC BY-SA 2.0) license. No changes were made to the photo. Photo found at http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Happy_family_%281%29.jpg.