Obedience Supersedes Free Will - Series: Part 2

Well Hello TiMP Nation! It’s Sunday and time for part 2 in our series. I sincerely hope that during these times you are all taking time to study these teachings and really absorb them while we wait on God through His Holy Spirit to prepare the next lesson or parts of a lesson series. If you recall from our read and study over the past 2 weeks. I noted that maintaining your obedience to Christ over your free will is easier said than done. I thought we would look at a couple of well known biblical examples. We need look no further than Peter and Jonah. Now all four gospels take in account Peter’s denial of being associated to Christ, but we will focus on the text from Matthew 26:69-75.

Here we find Peter denying that he even knows Christ. The interesting thing to me about this passage is that if you go over to Luke as well you see the boldness of Peter expressing his commitment to to die or go to prison with Jesus (Luke 22:31-34). Jesus even warns him that what you say is easier said than done. Sure enough when the time came Peter exercised his free will over obedience to Christ, by denying Him not one but 3 times. It would be easy for us to think the significance of 3 times being highlighted was to express the depth to which we can go in focusing on self. That it shows Peter driving home the need to think about what’s best for him in that moment. The other significant thing is that Jesus was not far off from him the Bible accounts they made eye contact when Peter denied him (Luke 22:61). Imagine being Peter at that moment.

Let’s take a look at Jonah we all know the story. Jonah doesn’t want to go to Nineveh they are Israel’s enemy. But God has a plan that requires obedience. Yet Jonah is trying to invoke his free will in the will of God. Now obviously this means Jonah has to suffer the consequences of his free will actions. The Bible teaches us Jonah ends up in the belly of a huge fish for 3 days. Then the fish vomits him out on to the shore of Nineveh, where he then preaches to them to repent before God destroys them in 40 days. This led to the repentance and salvation of the Ninevites (Jonah 3).

Now, let us go back to the significance of the number 3 as this is apparent in both Peter and Jonah’s journey. It will also tie these two events together if you never realized they were related. And how they are a picture of what Jesus Christ came to do. You see in both instances death, burial and resurrection are at the heart of the matter. Peter experienced spiritual death by denying Christ. He experienced burial in his guilt. Which led to his resurrection through his repentance. Jonah experienced a literal death and burial being swallowed whole by the fish. The Bible says while inside he prayed and repented to God. Then God showed his resurrection power by having the fish expel him on dry land (Jonah 2:1-10). These 3 steps are significant in the process for a believer to experience the freedom of obedience.

You may be asking yourself how is this so? The thing is we must grow to have an eternal outlook on our obedience to Christ. We must recognize that free will is bondage not freedom and that obedience is not bondage but true freedom. I know this makes no sense but we will break this down in part 3 to show how this seemingly backwards way of thinking is actually one of the keys to your spiritual growth and success.