- Overcomer Literature Trust
- Swindon
- Wiltshire
‘Obedience.’
By Andrew Murray.
In opposition to sin stands obedience. “For just as through the disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the one Man the many will be made righteous . . . You have become slaves to righteousness" (Rom. 5 v19 & 6 v18). We must always give obedience the place assigned to it by God.
It was because Christ humbled Himself and became obedient to death - even death on a cross, that God so highly exalted Him, and Paul exhorts us, “Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus” (Phil. 2 v5). We see that above everything else the obedience of Christ, which was so pleasing to God, must become the characteristic of our entire way of life. Just as a servant knows that he must first obey his master in all things, so the surrender to unquestioning obedience must become the essential characteristic of our lives. How little this is understood by Christians!
How many there are who allow themselves to be misled and are satisfied with the thought that sin is a normal part of every day life. It would be difficult to say how great the harm is which has been done by this mistake. It is one of the chief causes why the sin of disobedience is so little recognized. Disobedience is daily acknowledged and yet there is no turning away from it.
Have we not here the reason why so much prayer for the power of the Holy Spirit is offered and yet so few answers come? Do we not read that “God has given His Holy Spirit to them that obey Him"? Every child of God has received the Holy Spirit. If we use the measure of the Holy Spirit which we have, with the definite purpose of being obedient to the utmost, then God can and will favour us with further manifestations of the Spirit’s power. But if we permit disobedience to get the upper hand, day by day, we need not wonder if our prayer for more of the Spirit remains unanswered.
The Spirit desires to possess more of us. How can we wholly surrender ourselves to Him otherwise than by being obedient? The Scripture says that we must be led by the Spirit, that we must walk by the Spirit. My right relationship to the Holy Spirit is that I allow myself to be guided and ruled by Him. Obedience is the great factor in our whole relationship to God. “Obey My Voice, and I will be your God.”
Mark how the Lord Jesus, on the last night, when giving His great promise about the Holy Spirit, lays emphasis on this point. “If you love me, you will obey what I command. And I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Counsellor" (John 14 v15 - 16). Obedience was essential as a preparation for the reception of the Spirit and this thought is often repeated by Him. “Whoever has my commands and obeys them, he is the one who loves me. He who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I too will love him and show myself to him” (John 14 v21). So also in 14 v23, “If anyone loves Me, he will obey My teaching. My Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him.” “If you remain in Me, and My words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be given you" (15 v7). “If you obey My commands, you will remain in My love” (v10). “You are My friends, if you do what I command” (v14).
Can words more plainly or impressively declare that the whole of life depends on obedience? That is the spirit of Christ. He lived to do not His own will, but the will of the Father, and He cannot, with His Spirit, make an abiding home in the heart of one who does not surrender himself utterly to a life of obedience.
Alas, how few there are who are truly concerned because of this disobedience! How little it is believed that Christ really asks for, and expects this from us, because He has undertaken to make it possible for us. How much is it manifested in prayer, or walk, or in the depths of the soul-life, that we really endeavour to be well-pleasing to the Lord in all things?
But is obedience really possible? It is certain for the one who believes that Christ Jesus is his sanctification and relies on Him.
Just as it is impossible for the ones whose eyes have not yet been opened to see that Christ can at once forgive their sin, so is it also with faith in the assurance that there is in Christ a sure promise of power to accomplish all that God desires from His child. Just as, through faith, we found the fullness of forgiveness, so through a new act of faith, a real deliverance from the dominion of the sin which has so easily beset us is obtained, and the abiding blessing of the continuous experience of the keeping power of Christ becomes ours. Thus faith obtains a new insight into promises, the meaning of which were not previously understood, “May the God of peace . . . equip you with everything good for doing His will, and may He work in us what is pleasing to Him, through Jesus Christ” (Heb. 13 v20 - 21). “To Him who is able to keep you from falling . . . be glory and majesty” (Jude 24 - 25). “Be all the more eager to make your calling and election sure. For if you do these things, you will never fall” (2 Peter 1 v10). “May He strengthen your hearts so that you will be blameless and holy” (1 Thess. 3 v13). “But the Lord is faithful, and He will strengthen and protect you from the evil one" (2 Thess. 3 v3).
When the soul understands that the fulfilment of these and other promises is secured for us in Christ, and that, as certainly as the forgiveness of sin is assured to us in Him, so also is power against new or fresh attacks of sin assured to us, then for the first time is the lesson learned aright that faith can confidently rely upon Christ and His abiding protection.
This faith sheds a wholly new light on the life of obedience. Christ holds Himself responsible to work this out in me every moment if I only trust Him for it. Then I begin to understand the important phrases with which Paul begins and closes his epistle to the Romans (Rom. 1 v5 & 16 v26) “the obedience that comes through faith” . . . “believe and obey”. Faith brings me to the Lord Jesus, not only to obtain the forgiveness of sin, but also that I may, every moment, enjoy the power which will make it possible for me, as a child of God, to abide in Him and to be numbered among His obedient children of whom it is written that, as He who has called them is holy, so they also may be holy in all manner of conversation. Everything depends on whether or not I believe on the Lord Jesus with the fullness of His grace, that He will, not now and then but, every moment be the strength of my life. Such faith will lead to an obedience which will enable me to walk worthy of the Lord, being fruitful in every good work, strengthened with all might according to His glorious power.
The soul which feeds on such promises will experience, instead of the disobedience of self-effort, the obedience of faith. All such promises have their certainty and strength in the living Christ.
From ‘The Prayer Life”.
* * * * * * * * *