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Obedience – A Measure of True Spirituality

(Overcomer Wu)

“Now by this we know that we know Him, if we keep His commandments.” -- 1 John 2:3

For our spiritual health and advancement, we need to constantly measure the place God has in our lives, the extent to which we are truly surrendered to Him, the extent to which we really experience Christ, and not just some pious, transient emotion, which can be very deceiving. One of the greatest indicators and measure of these is founded in our obedience to God and His Word. Indeed, one can say that obedience is the measure of all spirituality based on the following reasons:

  1. The measure our love for Christ is determined by our total obedience to Him. You are His friends if you do whatever He commands you (Jn 15:14). In other words, anything less than one-hundred percent obedience is a proof of inadequate love for Christ. Do we desire a special intimate relationship with our Lord Jesus? Then we need to heed what He says: "Whoever does the will of My Father in heaven is My brother and sister and mother" (Matt 12:50).

Jesus says, "If you love Me, you will obey what I command" (Jn 14:15) and later in the same chapter, "If anyone loves Me, he will obey My teaching" (Jn 14:23). Any failure to walk in all the light, any lack of instant total obedience to the known will of God testifies to our inadequate love or perhaps even spurious love for God and the Church. Measure how much we love God by how instantly and completely we obey Him in the smallest of details. “But if anyone obeys His word, God's love is truly made complete/perfect in him. This is how we know we are in him” (1 Jn 2:5).

  1. The measure our faith is demonstrated by our obedience. Faith without the accompanying obedience shown in our deeds is dead, empty, or futile as we are told in James 2:20. To hesitate to give our full and instant obedience proves a lack of faith and the need for more faith.

  1. The measure our consecration is shown by our obedience. God said through Samuel, “To obey is better than sacrifice, and to heed than the fat of rams” (1 Sam 15:22). Thus, all spiritual/religious exercise or sacrifice are valueless in God's eyes if they are not accompanied with our obedience to Him. To preach a good sermon, to give out time and money for God's purposes and in service to the Church, and to give one's own body as a martyr means nothing to God unless we have the divine love that acts in accordance with the synopsis of the agape love found in 1 Corinthians 13.

  1. The measure Christ's lordship in our life is proven by our obedience. Obedience is a measure of the extent of Christ's lordship over you. The Lord Jesus asked, "Why do you call me, 'Lord, Lord,' and do not what I say?" (Luke 6:46). This is indeed a searching question from our Lord. Sometimes we are willing to yield to the Lordship of Christ only if what the Lord requires of us is minimally intrusive into our own agenda; however, when the Lord's demand cuts into our careers, our family lives, and personal comfort level, we hesitate to obey wholeheartedly. Someone has said it very well: “Either the Lord is Lord over all (our heart, our lives, our priority, etc.) or He is not Lord at all (over us).” If our Lord Jesus were to speak to us in person today, would He have reason to question the measure of our obedience and thus the measure to which we are subject to His Lordship in our lives?

We are all responsible for two main forms of obedience: Obedience to God's general commands, and obedience to God's personalized commands. On the one hand, most of God's requirements, as taught in His Word, are for every Christian. We are responsible to obey them. There is no need for further guidance if it is clearly laid out in God's Word, because that is the most reliable guide to God's will bar none. Preaching the gospel, forgiveness of others, receive the Word of God as our daily bread, restitution as far as possible of things wrongly exacted or taken, pray for other people and for our government, children's submission to their parents as long as we are not being asked to defy our faith and worship of God, tithing, moral purity – these are examples of matters of obedience, according to God's Word, for every believer.

On the other hand, some of God's commands/requirements are very personal. God may give you personal convictions about certain things. These are the obedience He requires of you, not of everyone. For instance, He may call you to ministry service in a particular country or a particular part of a country; or He may call you to special sacrificial giving to His kingdom based on what He has greatly blessed you with; or He may require you to devote a great amount of your time in prayer for others. He may not require these of others, but they are God's personal guidance for you and they become your responsibility to obey.

Abraham's obedience was severely tested in an intensely personal manner by the demand that he offer up His only Son Isaac to God on an altar (Gen 22). When God called Stephen to preach to the Jews in Acts chapter 7 at the expense of his being stoned to dead, that was a personal obedience God required of him. Likewise, the obedience of Ananias when God sent him to remove the scales off the eyes of the apostle Paul while he was praying (Acts 9:10-19). Many of the prophets were given highly personal directions from God. Clear personal guidance becomes God's personal command to us, and God will reward us accordingly for our obedience. Many a person will come to the Judgment seat of Christ expecting great reward and learn that the visible results of their ministry and efforts, even to what seemed like miracles, amounts to nothing due to their disobedience to God in the crucial matters that God requires of them (Matt 7:21-23). Many will claim to have prayed long prayers but will find that this only made their disobedience more abhorrent in the sight of God due to their praying in disobedience by not praying according to God's will.

Dear saints, this is a searching Word of God for all of us. Our real spiritual state is truly best demonstrated by our daily practical obedience to God in all things. Therefore, let us measure our spiritual experience and our ministry by the immediacy, the joyfulness, and the totality of our obedience to the entire will of God in every detail of our daily lives. In short, we are to measure our spirituality by our obedience.