Chapter Two of John’s book on the new believer’s relationship with Lord Christ which herein why obedience is the unavoidable fruit of a redeemed soul and the source of his enablement.
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How can you show God the overwhelming love you hold for Him in your heart? You show it by doing what He wants you to do. We say that actions speak louder than words. When it comes to proving our love for God, actions speak louder than any promise or proclamation we can make. The best way to prove your love and demonstrate your honor for Christ is to obey Him and submit to Him in everything.
As a new member of God’s family, you now have within you the desire and ability to do what pleases Him. And that is also how you display your love to Him. Love and obedience are inseparable.
The Bible is filled from beginning to end with examples of the importance of obedience to the will of God, and the reminder that what a person does reveals the true feelings of his heart. There was never a time or place in the Old Testament when God commanded external obedience apart from internal motivation. In Exodus 20:6, God shows “mercy to thousands, to those who love [Him] and keep [His] commandments.” Obedience was always commanded from willing hearts.
In the New Testament, Jesus declared, “If you love Me, keep My commandments…He who has My commandments and keeps them, it is he who loves Me” (John 14:15, 21). The apostle John wrote, “Now by this we know that we know Him, if we keep His commandments…Whoever keeps His word, truly the love of God is perfected in him” (1 John 2:3, 5). If you belong to God—if you are indeed an adopted member of His family—you will love and obey Him.
The obedience of a true believer will be unequivocal, uncompromising, sincere, and an integral part of his salvation. In fact, the apostle Peter actually described salvation as an act of obedience: “Since you have purified your souls in obeying the truth through the Spirit in sincere love of the brethren…having been born again, not of corruptible seed but incorruptible, through the word of God which lives and abides forever” (1 Peter 1:22–23). The “truth” is the gospel, which is essentially a command to repent and believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. In the New Testament, the gospel message was always preached as a command (Matthew 3:2; 4:17; Mark 6:12; Luke 5:32; Acts 2:38; 3:19; 17:30; 26:20). As a command it calls for obedience. Anyone who is genuinely born again has a new spiritual life because he heard the truth of Scripture, believed it, and obeyed it.
However, the moment of salvation involves more than an isolated act of obedience. In the beginning, obedience to God can be frustrating at best and seemingly overwhelming at worst. Like an adopted son or daughter, you won’t understand the commands or be able to obey them all at once. The same way an adopted child has to learn gradually what to do in the family, you must learn gradually what to do in this new Christian context. The reality of your commitment to Christ doesn’t hit you all at once. It unfolds over time like a flower. As God’s will in Scripture becomes clearer, you become more obedient and more eager to improve even further.
The reason we don’t immediately understand all the ramifications of our commitment to Christ is that God, through the Holy Spirit, must first give us that sense of dedication. Commitment does not originate with us. The Spirit produces in our hearts the willingness to travel the pathway of obedience to God as servants of Jesus Christ.
When you came to a saving faith in Him, you entered a whole new realm of obedience. Up to then you obeyed the flesh, the world, and the devil and were controlled by all the various facets of sin (see 1 John 2:15–16). But as a believer, you are eager to be obedient to the righteousness of Christ.
WHY WE OBEY
First John 2:3 says, “Now by this we know that we know Him, if we keep His commandments.” The word keep here carries the idea of watchful obedience. It’s not obedience externally motivated by force or pressure, but internal obedience out of pure love for the Master.
The Greek word translated “keep” means “to watch or guard as some precious thing.” A Christian demonstrates he knows God by a heartfelt desire to guard his obedience as a treasure. People who claim to be Christians, yet live in disregard for God’s commandments, undermine their testimony and call into question the validity of their claim to know Christ.
The word that John uses for “commandments,” entole, is also significant. In 1 John the apostle uses it to refer to the precepts of Christ at least fourteen times. If you exhibit a recurring spirit of obedience toward safeguarding the precepts of Christ, a regular desire that they be honored, and a consistent determination to obey them, then you have come to know God and the Lord Jesus Christ. When you sincerely enthrone Christ, you gladly submit to His authority.
To an outsider—and to many new Christians if we’re honest with ourselves—obedience to the will of God can seem incredibly hard and unpleasant, if not impossible. Deny yourself? Take up a cross? You can’t be serious! But in 1 John 5:2–3 the apostle reminds us of a startling and reassuring truth: “By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and keep His commandments. For this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments. And His commandments are not burdensome.” As Jesus Himself said, “My yoke is easy and My burden is light” (Matthew 11:30).
There’s a chain of events that takes place in the hearts of Christians: We believe in God; we have faith in Christ, who is God; our faith produces love; that love produces obedience. If you believe Christ is who He claims to be, then He will draw all the love, praise, and adoration out of your heart, and you will be consumed with Him. And those who truly love Him in that way express their love by keeping His commandments, bearing His easy yoke with joy.
Paul offered some clarification on why obedience to God’s commands is not a burden:
Do you not know that to whom you present yourselves slaves to obey, you are that one’s slaves whom you obey, whether of sin leading to death, or of obedience leading to righteousness? But God be thanked that though you were slaves of sin, yet you obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine to which you were delivered. And having been set free from sin, you became slaves of righteousness. (Romans 6:16–18)
A slave’s primary duty is obedience—to do whatever the master tells him to do. That is true in the spiritual realm, whether someone is an unbeliever and a slave to sin, or a believer and a slave to Christ. But Paul then applied that simple illustration to the crucial phrase “obeyed from the heart.” Heart obedience ought to be the overriding attitude and desire in your life. You should obey because you want to, not because anyone is forcing you to. It means obedience is a fundamental, inner trait of your new life, and you become so singularly obedient to God’s Word that you are called a slave of righteousness.
You delight to obey God’s law because you love Him. Yes, loving is a duty—it is an act of the will—but it is not oppressive. Why is it so delightful to obey Him? Because God’s law is a reflection of Himself and the way we love Him. Obedience to His law pleases both Him and Christians who love Him and seek His pleasure.
LAW VERSUS GRACE
Still, the harsh reality is that every Christian fails to follow Christ perfectly, because every Christian has a sinful nature. Yet there’s an important distinction between legal obedience and gracious obedience.
Legal obedience is the result of fleshly effort. It demands an absolute, perfect obedience without a single failure. It says that if you violate God’s law even once, the penalty is death.
Gracious obedience is a loving and sincere spirit of submission motivated by God’s grace to us. Though often defective, this obedience is nevertheless accepted by God, for its blemishes are blotted out by the blood of Jesus Christ.
What a difference! With fleshly, human effort, obedience must be perfect to be of any value. With divine grace, God looks at the heart, not the works. If God measured my legal obedience against His standard, I would spend eternity in hell. But God looks at me and sees a heart redeemed by Christ that longs to obey Him and a spirit that wills to submit to His lordship, even though that willingness is far from perfect.
Do you remember when Peter was frustrated in convincing the Lord that he, though disobedient, loved Him? What did Peter finally say to get the Lord to accept his confession of love? He didn’t say, “Look at my obedience,” since he was caught disobeying. He said, “Lord, You know all things; You know that I love You” (John 21:17).
That is the point of the cross of Christ. Jesus died, bearing the full penalty for our sins and failings, so that His blood can cover whatever is defective in our day-to-day love and obedience.
Certainly even the apostles didn’t always obey God. All of them failed the Lord and made mistakes because they, too, were sinful. Yet concerning them, Jesus could tell the Father, “They have kept Your word” (John 17:6). Did they keep it perfectly? Of course not. Their desire and determination to submit to Jesus Christ were what Jesus measured, not a legalistic, absolute standard.
God’s standard of holiness is still absolute perfection, but He has graciously made provision for our inevitable failures. If we do something wrong, He doesn’t say we are no longer Christians. He looks with favor on those who have a spirit of obedience. The true Christian has a desire to submit to Jesus Christ, even though he can’t always fulfill that desire. But God discerns and graciously accepts it.
God knows what’s inside because He has written His law in your heart: “I will put My law in their minds, and write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people” (Jeremiah 31:33). Psalm 40:8 says, “I delight to do Your will, O my God, and Your law is within my heart.” Scripture confirms that whatever is in a man’s heart controls how he lives: “For as he thinks in his heart, so is he” (Proverbs 23:7). Those who truly know God—those who love Him—will be moved in their hearts to obey the law God wrote there.
THE PERFECT PATTERN
Though we can’t obey God perfectly, we can and do try to pattern our lives after the one Person in history who could obey with perfection—Jesus Christ. He shows you by example what to do if you will only follow Him.
First John 2:6 tells us, “He who says he abides in Him ought himself also to walk just as He walked.” John used the word abides to mean “knowing Him,” “walking in the light,” and “being in fellowship.” All those terms indicate salvation. The point is that if you declare yourself to be a Christian, you ought to show a pattern of walking in the same manner as He walked. That doesn’t mean your life will be exactly like His, but you will walk with a desire to please God as He did. Christ is our pattern—we ought to live as He lived as nearly as possible. Loving obedience moves us toward Christlikeness.
Philippians 2:8 says of Jesus: “Being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross.” Jesus was in the form of God, but He did not insist on hanging on to that glory and privilege. Instead, He was willing to temporarily set them aside and humble Himself. That is the greatest illustration of humility ever. Jesus said, “I have come down from heaven, not to do My own will, but the will of Him who sent Me” (John 6:38). His entire attitude was marked by a spirit of obedience. And that is the pattern of loving obedience we are to imitate. Obedience to Christ and His Word is the ultimate proof of the reality of your love for Him. What you say about your love for Him is relatively unimportant—what counts is that you show your love for Him by how you live your life.
The Bible is filled with examples of ways you can demonstrate your love for God. Here are a few:
• Meditate on God’s glory (Psalm 18:1–3).
• Trust in God’s divine power (Psalm 31:23).
• Seek fellowship with God (Psalm 63:1–8).
• Love God’s law (Psalm 119:165).
• Be sensitive to how God feels (Psalm 69:9).
• Love what God loves (Psalm 119:72, 97, 103).
• Love whom God loves (1 John 5:1).
• Hate what God hates (Psalm 97:10).
• Grieve over sin (Matthew 26:75).
• Reject the world (1 John 2:15).
• Long to be with Christ (2 Timothy 4:8).
• Obey God wholeheartedly (John 14:21).
This list barely scratches the surface. The Bible is the source of everything Christians need to know to obey God’s commands. Once they realize obedience is the only way to demonstrate God’s love, they’re naturally anxious to understand what God’s commands are.
As a new Christian you may already have some sense of the vast wisdom and instruction in God’s Word, but feel a little overwhelmed at the sheer magnitude of it. I’ve been preaching from it for more than forty years, and I’m still overwhelmed. In the next chapter we’ll take a look at the Bible and consider, now that we’ve dedicated our lives to obeying God, how our obedience depends on knowing the Scriptures.
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MacArthur, J. (2004). Welcome to the family : What to expect now that you’re a Christian (11). Nashville, Tenn.: Nelson Books.