In the very first conversation Satan ever had with a human being, he promised there would be no consequences from disobeying the word of God. Much to the contrary, he promised some pretty great benefits. “You will be like God,” he told Eve (Gen. 3:5).
We believed him, and our world plunged into misery untold.
Yet the devil’s promise, so misleading and destructive, still continues to circulate today.
And we continue to buy it.
Look how easily we’ve redefined marriage, family, and gender, as well as concepts of love and justice. Our new understandings directly contradict the plain words of scripture. Why? Because a familiar old voice tells us it will actually be harmful if we obey God, that it will limit us, cause us to miss the pleasures of life, and frustrate our human potential.
Without a doubt, Scripture is full of commands. It not only invites us into the worship of God, but it prescribes what we should do and prohibits things we ought not to do. Even when the gospel reaches us—what we call “the gospel invitation”—at a certain point, it ceases to merely be an invitation, and turns into an imperative. Acts 17:30 says that God commands all men everywhere to repent. He commands it, rather than merely invites it.
Beyond our initial faith and repentance though, God continues to be anything but ambivalent about the way we live.
Commands continue.
In Matthew 28:18-20, Jesus said to his disciples, “all authority in heaven and on Earth has been given to me. Go therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” The first priority for the newly baptized was to learn obedience to all the things Jesus had said.
At least two great reasons exist for obeying the commands of Christ in Scripture. The first is relational. Obedience affects and reflects the way we relate to Christ.
In Luke 6:46, “Jesus asked, why do you call me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ and not do what I tell you?” Today we find the commands of Jesus in the scriptures. These include not only His words in the four gospels, but those spoken through the Apostles in the rest of the New Testament.
Your attitudes toward the things written says something about what Jesus is to you.
For instance, the guy who gets a work email telling him his spreadsheets have been done wrong. He replies, “Oh well, whatever.” The next week he receives another email warning him about the number of times he’s been late. He casually replies, “Meh. Nobody’s perfect.” After a number of such exchanges, it would not seem the man is getting messages from his boss. Maybe they’re coming from Freddie, the kid who works in the mail room, or Cheryl, the receptionist. But his attitude suggests they’re not coming from anyone above him.
This is the logic of Jesus in Luke 6:46. If He is your Lord, either you are doing what He told you, or you are failing, asking forgiveness, and then seeking to do what He told you. But there’s no such thing as calling Him Lord, while ignoring, excusing, or muting the things He commands.
It seems both we and Jesus are often handling two different dictionaries when using the word “Lord.” The version Jesus uses says, “If I am Lord to you, you will do what I tell you.” That’s simple, and logical. But our definition of Lord reads “One who inspires me and offers me a moral or spiritual point of view.”
It is shocking then, in Matthew 7:21-23, when believers finally give an account before Christ about the way they lived their lives. Some are saying, “Lord, Lord” and Jesus says to them, “I never knew you.” It’s as though He’s telling them, “I have many subjects in my kingdom, and I know all their names, but I’ve never known you as being subject to me in much of anything.” They actually thought “Lord” meant volunteering, getting involved in religious causes, and inventing ministries. And yet meanwhile, these same people were neglecting his will, the larger, expansive commands of God contained in scripture.
Ultimately, our attitude towards that which is written reflects whether Christ is Lord to us, or not. However, this isn’t simply about who’s boss.
In John 14:23, Jesus said, “If anyone loves me he will keep my word, and my Father will love him.” The foundation of obedient keeping is not slavish legality, but love. In fact, love-based obedience promotes a deepening relationship where the believer loves Jesus, and the Father loves the believer. As this continues, Jesus said, “We [the Father and the Son] will come to him [the believer who loves and keeps] and make our home with him.” The Father and the Son will treat the believer who keeps the word like a go-to place, a home, a locus of rest, of self-disclosure, and understanding.
Alternately, verse 24 says, “Whoever does not love me, does not keep my words, and the word that you hear is not mine but the Father’s who sent me.” Not loving and not keeping also go together.
You know how it works. When you love someone, you tend to listen to them and obey them without resentment. In marriage, sometimes you find yourself saving money for a certain reason, vacationing in places you never would have chosen while you were single, and even loading the dishwasher differently. Why? We love someone who is for those things. Before we know it, we find ourselves hoping and praying for the success of projects we never would have been interested in before. Why? Because it is theirs. This doesn’t mean we lose our personality, only that we truly begin to feel the same way they feel about something. It is deep, raw, loyal affection. Yes, there are sometimes struggles involved along the way, but that’s part of what it means to build a home, as the Father and Son do with the believer.
Our attitudes toward the commands of scripture have a way of reflecting our relationship with Christ.
The second great reason for obeying the commands of scripture is formational, that is, having to do with your development and progress as a believer. There was a time when Paul wrote to his young understudy, Timothy, giving him the strongest advice possible about how to develop his ministry and his Christian life. We can distill quite a bit of benefit for our own selves from these passages:
“Until I come, devote yourself to the public reading of scripture, to exhortation, to teaching. Do not neglect the gift you have, which was given you by prophecy when the council of elders laid their hands on you. Practice these things, immerse yourself in them, so that all may see your progress. Keep a close watch on yourself and on the teaching. Persist in this, for by so doing you will save both yourself and your hearers (1 Tim. 4:13-16).
Timothy was to have both a public and private involvement with Scripture, because that was where his progress would occur. Publicly, he was to exhort others. Privately, he was to keep a close watch on himself. In front of the church he was to use his teaching gift, ministering scriptural truth for the needs of his brethren. Alone in the recesses of his heart, the young man was to continually calibrate himself to the word and avoid any compromise of it.
In a similar passage Paul also wrote,
“But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it and how from childhood you have been acquainted with the sacred writings, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus” (2 Tim. 3:14-15).
Timothy was to continue in those wisdom-building scriptures because, “All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work” (2 Tim. 3:16-17).
Where your healthy development and progress is concerned, your obedience to scripture is critical.
One winter night, the Old Testament King Jehoiakim was sitting in his royal chamber. A fire pot was burning by his throne. He sent a court official to fetch a scroll of the book of Jeremiah, so the official brought it, and at the king’s request he began to read it out loud. Each time the official finished reading a section of it, the king reached over with a knife, cut off that part of the scroll, and threw it into the fire pot. Jehoiakim was obviously offended by the scriptures being read, and did what a lot of people today want to do–banish it from their sight. The sinful king continued mutilating the scroll until it was entirely cut up and burned.
Two things instantly became clear in the moments Jehoiakim was burning the scriptures. First, that Yahweh, the God of Israel (and of the universe) was not his Lord, nor was Yahweh in any sense loved by him. Secondly, there was no evidence Jehoiakim had any spiritual formation in his life. The man had progressed up the political ladder and ascended the throne, but as far as God was concerned, he was a zero. This king of Israel was about the same as any of the kings of the Pagan countries surrounding Israel.
Obviously, Jehoiakim is an example of how not to be. Yet think about all the times you’ve happened upon a Bible verse you didn’t particularly like, or at least found uncomfortable. Maybe you ignored it, or explained it away. At worst you attacked it. At any rate, you failed to obey it, or assign any importance to living out its reality.
Perhaps you googled an alternate interpretation. You’ll find a hundred of these, all helping the reader escape the ramifications of a difficult verse. But the people who write these are themselves unfaithful to Scripture, and have personal agendas and hobby horses. They’ll help you understand a passage exactly the opposite of the way it is plainly written.
All of this is a problem, because the scriptures command.
There’s a better way to think and respond. When we encounter a scriptural command that seems pressuring, even impossible, remember that our readiness to submit to it leads us to new places. As said earlier, we will find fresh depths of relational richness with the Lord, as well as progressing spiritual development.¹
May the wonderful Bible not only sit on your shelf, or cell phone, but its spiritual reality live in your heart.
1. See the previous post, The Scriptures Invite.
