What is Obedience?

It’s submitting to God’s will as revealed in Scripture. It’s following God’s commands. Simply defining “obedience” is rather obvious.

But after the obvious, we run into some problems. These are not caused by the Bible’s teaching on obedience. But rather, they’re caused by how many of us in the church have been trained to think about our obedience.

We tend to bifurcate the external act of obedience from the internal motive behind our obedience. So, we believe that as long as we do God’s command on the outside, we’re good. Even if we don’t want to do it.

Maybe you thought that this line of thinking was biblical. I used to hold to a form of this view. But you cannot find this in the Bible. In fact, you find its opposite.

The Bible teaches that true obedience to God is not merely keeping His commands on the outside. True obedience is keeping His commands from your heart – out of love for God.

In other words, it’s only God-approved obedience when it’s rightly motivated.

But what do you do when you don’t have the right motives? In other words, What if I don’t feel like obeying God?

Of course, it’s better to obey even if you don’t feel like it. That ensures moral stability in the world. You may feel like cheating and lying, but you shouldn’t do such things. That’s good!

But what you have done? You’ve only done civic morality. That’s not gospel morality. That’s not obedience that pleases God. Obedience that pleases God is not done out of a “just do it” attitude.

Instead, we learn from 1 Corinthians 13:1-3 that you can even sacrifice your body to be burned for Christ, but if you don’t have love in your heart as your offer yourself, it profits you nothing. God counts your sacrificial obedience as a “zero.” But why? You did the loving thing!

No, you did not. It wasn’t love on display. Paul’s language is precise – you must have love. Having love is not the same as doing a loving action. You can externally do something that looks like love. But “looks like” is not the same as “is.”

Having love is internal; it’s about your heart; it’s about your motives and desires, which fuel your behavior.

So then, am I saying that if you don’t feel like obeying God, you shouldn’t? No!
Am I saying that you need to check your motives and make sure they’re perfectly pure and right before you obey God.
Absolutely not!

Because the danger in dealing with our motives is navel-gazing – looking into yourself so much that you get all twisted up thinking about your motives. That will drive you away from Christ.

So, what should I do when I don’t feel like doing something God calls me to do? You should begin with confession - confessing the sin of not wanting to obey God.

For example, when you don’t feel like reading your Bible, I would encourage you to read your Bible, but to do so as you repent of your sin of coldness, which is the sin of unbelief.

You don’t believe, in that moment, that the Bible is the divinely inspired Word of God that has eternal life, that’s sweeter than honey, more precious than gold, converts your soul, and trains you in righteousness. My problem is that I’m not believing God’s own testimony.

So, I begin my Bible reading by repenting of my unbelief if my heart is cold. I ask for His forgiveness. Then I ask Him to grant me a willing and humble heart. And to grant me eyes to see the beauty of Christ from the text. And I ask Him to help me understand, enjoy, and see applications for my life by the power of His Spirit as I read.

Then I read. But I read having had my heart changed by repenting of my sin, receiving His forgiveness in Christ, and remembering how much goodness He has in store for me in the Word.

We can have a pure heart by God’s grace as we come to an issue of obedience. That is God’s promise to us.

So, next time you’re struggling to obey God. Don’t “just do it.” Don’t suppress your feelings.

Let God work on them by the gospel as you come to Him for mercy and grace to change you on the inside…so that you can obey, in the truest sense of that word, on the outside.