If ye love me, keep my commandments. The Lord Jesus Christ, John 14:15
“Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice” (1 Samuel 15:22). King Saul had just won a battle of annihilation and now, because of disobedience, Samuel pronounces: “The Lord hath rejected thee from being king” (15:26). Those are hard lines with which to meet a triumphant victorious king. It was a hollow victory and an empty triumph. Saul had tried to improve upon the commandment of God. We do the same today, only in more subtle ways.
There are certain words that command respect. They speak of something held in high regard. Few people hold a negative view of these words. One of them is a volunteer! The sound of the word may cause shivers to run through a person. The word is used where ideals are at stake, where sacrifice is necessary. It has the sound of someone above the crowd—the exception; someone of a free will doing something with the consequences clearly in mind. The word occurs in time of war. It also applies to the spiritual war, especially in the foreign missions enterprise, as in the Student Volunteer Movement of the early part of the twentieth century.
In recent months I have been asking groups of Christians a simple question: “Would you rather volunteer or would you rather obey?” With very few exceptions every group has responded overwhelmingly to volunteer.
The first time I asked this question was at a junior-high Bible study group. Everybody wanted to volunteer, the answer was clear. They got credit for volunteering and no credit at all for doing what they were told. One boy added some further insight into the problem. He was thinking about volunteering to clean the basement and was feeling rather fine about it when his mother cut his musing short with an order for him to clean the basement. She ruined it all! Suddenly he did not want to clean the basement. This question was prompted by the passage we were studying:
“Suppose one of you has a servant ploughing or minding sheep. When he comes back from the fields, will the master say, ‘Come along at once and sit down’? Will he not rather say, ‘Prepare my supper, fasten your belt, and then wait on me while I have my meal; you can have yours afterwards’? Is he grateful to the servant for carrying out his orders? So with you: when you have carried out all your orders, you should say, ‘We are servants and deserve no credit; we have only done our duty’” (Luke 17:7-10, NEB).
A word that occurs today with great frequency is the word challenge. Although it is not a synonym for volunteer, there is a close relationship between these words. If challenge is used as a synonym for encourage or exhort, no harm is done. But the word in today’s vocabulary connotes the concept of the defiant challenger flinging down the gauntlet. This sort of challenge involves the application of subtle pressures on a man to attempt that which he previously has been either unwilling or unable to do. Often we hear Christian speakers portraying the difficulties and hazards of particular tasks in such a way as to provoke in the minds of their hearers a human pride that makes them eager to volunteer and do that which needs to be done.
The dictionary definition of “challenge” has a close resemblance to the word as we use it today, with one exception. We challenge our own team. According to Webster’s New World Dictionary, and according to tradition and history, a challenge comes from the enemy, the adversary, the sentry, the opposition. A challenge does not come from our team. It is defiance, a dare. Now with this definition we see the challenge subtly challenging God’s authority, when the serpent said to the woman, “You shall not surely die.” Other examples are:
- Satan’s challenge to God to let him have access to Job in Job 1:9-11; 2:4-5.
- Goliath’s defiance of the armies of Israel in 1 Samuel 17:10.
- Elijah’s challenge to the prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel in 1 Kings 18:21-27.
- Rabshakeh’s famous challenge to the people on the wall to surrender in 2 Kings 18:27-37.
When the challenge comes from the enemy, it may come as a threat, a lie, or a promise. In any case, it is an attempt to get us to respond to a challenge on the challenger’s conditions.
There is wonderful example in the New Testament of the enemy’s challenge and the proper response: Acts 4:17-31. The apostles’ response was first according to God’s directive.
But Peter and John answered them: You yourselves judge which is right in God’s sight, to obey you or to obey God. For we cannot stop speaking of what we ourselves have seen and heard (vv.19-20, TEV).
They were then threatened again. The apostles’ response to this second threatening was to present this challenge from the enemy to the Lord.
And now, Lord, take notice of the threats they made and allow us, your servants, to speak your message with all boldness…When they finished praying, the place where they were meeting was shaken. They were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak God’s message with boldness (vv.29, 31, TEV).
The apostles did not respond to the challenge in the flesh. They obeyed God and gained his power to be obedient.
Obedience is a willing or an unwilling carrying out of an order or a command. Most of our own experience from childhood up has been of the unwilling kind of obedience. This is one of the reasons “volunteer” has a better reputation than “obey.” In our experience volunteering always means to be unwilling. If, however, we had known something of willing obedience, then volunteering would be out completely. God does not ask for volunteers, nor does he challenge his own children. When Jesus called his disciples he did the choosing. He said, “Follow me.” It was a simple imperative. There were also a great many volunteers who followed Jesus. The volunteers did not last. Perhaps you think that volunteering is a greater expression of love than obedience. What is your basis? Jesus said, “If you love me you will obey my commands, and the man who has received my commands and obeys them—he it is who loves me” (John 14:15, 21, NEB). He made simple, absolute, and authoritative statements. These were not challenges seeking volunteers, nor were they goals, landmarks to stretch our reach, to make us try harder. They were imperatives of an absolute nature. Not to obey them was sin. Every imperative from God since has had an absoluteness in its character that defies improvement of the commandment or satisfaction if one falls short of the requirement.
In order to get men into the Armed Forces, the Armed Forces put out recruiting posters. “Be all that you can be,” “Aim High,” “The few, the proud, the Marines.” These are challenges to appeal to the pride of men so that they will volunteer and join the Army. However, once the man volunteers, the whole system changes. He is no longer appealed to. He is commanded and he obeys. The Army could not command him into the Army, so they used the challenge in order to get him to volunteer. Once he is in, it is a different story. Enlisting in the Army is the beginning of a command-obedience relationship. There is also an upper limit to this obedience, not as clearly defined as the enlistment at the beginning. In fact, it is always defined after the fact. For instance, an Army captain calls for his own position to be bombed with Napalm in order to destroy the enemy who has his company outnumbered and is overrunning his position. He receives the Silver Star and is recommended for the Congressional Medal of Honor for “danger above and beyond the call of duty.” In the Army there is a beginning to obedience and there is a place above and beyond obedience. Between the lower limit and the upper limit the relationship is command—obedience.
Is there a lower limit to obedience in our relationship with God? There may be a lower limit in our ability to obey, but not a lower limit in the requirement to obey. This ability begins when we know Jesus Christ. In 1 John 2:3 we are told, “If we obey God’s commands, then we are sure that we know him” (TEV). But before we knew Jesus Christ, we were under the command of God. And 1 Timothy 1:9 says, “It must be remembered, of course, that laws are made, not for good people, but for lawbreakers and criminals, for the godless and sinful, for those who are not religious or spiritual, for men who kill their fathers or mothers” (TEV). Even our repentance into life was commanded by God. In fact, it is a command to all men. Here it is in Paul’s declaration at the University of Athens:
“God has overlooked the times when men did not know, but now he commands all men everywhere to turn away from their evil ways” (Acts 17:30, TEV).
No, God does not have a lower limit to obedience. He does not challenge us to volunteer for Christ. He commands all people everywhere to repent.
Is there an upper limit to obedience in the Christian life? Is there a “danger above and beyond the call of duty?” Can we volunteer beyond the highest command of God? What is the greatest command? Jesus said:
“and thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength: this is the first commandment (Mark 12:30).
Now look at it again and see if by volunteering we can go beyond it. The superlatives are all there. God requires all of each of our faculties to love him. In Christian churches today it is normal to hear challenges to greater heights than ever before, but less of the commands.
Because the commandments of God are way beyond us—ideals that are not very realistic for the present—we make a graded scale and challenge Christians to follow the graded scale and challenge Christians to follow the graded scale one step at a time. This is because we do not believe God provides the power and love and wisdom to obey his superlative commands as they are given. And since he does not provide, we decide we will dispense with the obedience, which is frustrating, and do it our way: challenge—volunteer. If we volunteer for less than the commandment requires, we are disobedient, even if we gain our objective.
There are many Christian works that are using the challenge today to get Christians supposedly to obey God in everything from Bible reading to the Great Commission. They are using it because it seems to work. Christians are proud, too proud to obey. They will go to foreign mission fields because of a challenge presented in a dynamic way describing the lostness of the people, the dangers, and the hardships, whereas they will not go in obedience to a simple command given by Jesus Christ. A challenge is an appeal to the pride, to human ego. The challenge is doubly wrong:
- It puts people on the foreign field who should be there, but it gets them there with a wrong motive.
- It puts people there who should not be there.
There are men who have gone to the field in response to a challenge only to find it was obedience that could keep them there.
If we are not to challenge and we are not to volunteer and our only remembrance of obedience has been reluctant, recalcitrant obedience, how do we get so that we willingly obey? It all has to do with our view of the Commander. Do we worship him, stand in awe of him, love him, fear him, long to be with him? Or are we buddy-buddy with him? Do we think it is a 50-50 relationship? The latter is not love and will never get instant obedience. All of our obedience will be qualified, and therefore disobedience.
Now the end of the commandment is charity [love] out of a pure heart, and of a good conscience, and of faith unfeigned (1 Timothy 1:5).
If ye be willing and obedient, ye shall eat the good of the land (Isaiah 1:19).
Questions:
- Study Colossians 3:1-25.
- List the imperatives in this chapter.
- How many are there?
- Is there a means of obedience as well as a requirement to obey?
- Make a personal decision about each of these imperatives.