IT is on my mind to write a few lines on “Obedience,” a word which we sometimes don’t quite like to hear, because we are by nature “children of disobedience.”
No doubt you will think directly of man’s first disobedience. Adam and Eve did the only thing God had told them not to do. Perhaps you think you would not have done it; and yet we all like to do the very thing that is forbidden.
I heard the other day that a gentleman went into an office on business, and found nobody there, but presently saw a card on the mantelpiece with the words, “Don’t look on the back” (or something like that) on it. When he turned it over, he found, “Don’t you think you had better be going?”
The people belonging to the office knew that anyone who saw the front would do the very thing he was told not to do. Are you obeying God now? He says in His Word, “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ.” If you have not believed, read 2 Thessalonians 1:77And to you who are troubled rest with us, when the Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven with his mighty angels, (2 Thessalonians 1:7) to 9, telling us what will happen to those who obey not the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, and then read Philippians 2:55Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus: (Philippians 2:5) to 11, showing what it cost Him to obey, so that we might be saved.
If you do believe, God also tells us to confess the Lord Jesus. Have you told your father or mother (for instance) that you believe on Him? If so, are there not other things God’s Word tells us to do? But, although we ought to be obedient, we are not under law, but under grace. It is one thing for a child to obey its father, and quite another for a slave to obey his master. If we believe, we are children of God by faith in Christ Jesus. “We love Him because He first loved us,” and “If a man love Me, he will keep My words.” So when the Lord Jesus says “Do this” (whatever it may be), we should obey, not merely as a duty, but because of His great love.
Obedience and Happiness Go Together.
ML 03/24/1918