Obedience Supersedes Free Will: Part 1

Happy Sunday TiMP nation! We are back and this week’s lesson is about obedience vs our free will. First let’s thank our Heavenly Father for this day and for the breath of life. We thank Him that His Will and purpose is being done regardless of how we feel or think. As only He knows what is best for any circumstance or situation in this life. As always we pray for those of us who know Christ to continue to daily seek Him and God’s truth. More importantly to be accepting of it. For those who are unsaved we pray that someone will through the purpose of God’s plan open their heart to accept Christ alone as their Savior and Lord and be fully baptized in water as a sign of repentance and association to the death, burial and resurrection of Christ Jesus our Lord, Amen.

Ok, show of hands. How many of you love having someone telling you what, when and how to do something? I would assume for most around the world not many hands would be raised. How many of you feel you have a right to your personal, political or constitutional freedoms? Because assuredly we are our own person and we have the right to do and say what we please. Why? Well simply put we all hold tight to our free will and our opinions. We place value on them and no one has the right to take those away from us. I too used to be one of those people. This is especially true in “so called” democratic built societies.

However, this all changes when we decide to have a relationship with Christ Jesus. You see when we by faith confess with our mouth and believe in our hearts that Jesus Christ is Lord, Savior and son of the Living God who raised Him from the dead. That is the condition for being made right and eternal salvation (Romans 10:8-10 (KJV) . We then become subject to the will of the Father and not our own. This often presents a challenge to some in their discipleship walk to follow Christ. This may seem confusing to some as God is the one who gave us free will in the first place and now that we’ve acknowledged that we belong to Him, we must give up this self right willingly. Yes, that’s precisely it!

What is the greatest act of love one can express to another? The willingness to sacrifice one’s life for someone else (John 15:13). So when we look at John 14:15 which will be our study text for this series. Jesus says, “If you love Me, keep My commandments” (KJV). He repeats, this again in verse 23. Why is Jesus saying this and is He only speaking to the 10 commandments as some try and confine this bit of text to. Well, first Jesus is saying this because your love for Him has to supersede your love for yourself and anything else that you hold dear or place value on. Jesus, clearly expresses this in Luke 14:26, He says, “If you want to be my disciple, you must, by comparison, hate everyone else—your father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters—yes, even your own life. Otherwise, you cannot be my disciple”(NLT). Now, on the surface this seems strange for Jesus himself to use the word hate. However, in the context He means you should have a lesser love for those people no matter their relation to you or even your ideals about this life. Compared to a deeper and greater love you should have for Him. That if a choice has to be made in your life between mother, father, kids, possessions and so forth. That your choice should be Jesus over those temporary things every time! This is much easier said than done. (Remember this little sentence for next week).

Secondly when He says keep my commandments, we must first understand He is his Father’s representative. He’s therefore speaking to us to have a desire to be obedient to the will of the Father just as He has. Read John 4:34 (NLT). Understanding that having any relationship with the Father can only come through Him. But more deeply what Jesus is also saying is not just about being obedient to this ethical list of 10 formal directives from the Old Testament, but being obedient to the entire revelation of God’s word through the gospel without reserve.

I think this is a good place to stop so we can spend this week marinating on how we view obedience in our discipleship walk versus God’s expectations of that walk. As we get into part 2 of this series next week. We will pull out some biblical areas and conversations with folks I’ve had who claim to be believers and followers of Christ but try an pick their own path of obedience.