Obedience

Christ linked obedience to love when he said to his disciples, “If you love me, keep my commands.” (John 14:15). How often have we heard instead, if you keep my commands, I will love you! Obedience is not the precondition to being loved nor is God’s love for us increased by doing what God says. Instead, our love is increased by doing what we are commanded.

Our obedience is love itself brought out of the heart and inner self into the world around us. Obedience is the incarnation of the will to love. In exactly the same way, it is the outward expression of faith (Romans 1:5, 16:26). As faith without works is dead (James 2:14), that is, trust without any manifestation, so love without obedience is meaningless.

Many have unfortunate and untrue understandings of obedience. The problem is not with obedience itself, but when it becomes associated with a rigorous and demanding criteria of merit driven by the fear that one will not be accepted by God if we fail. When obedience is separated from faith and love, or placed before either, then it becomes an onerous term. When correctly understood, as the enacting of love and faith, obedience is deeply transformative.

Jesus’ statement on love and keeping commands is saying, if you love me then you will practice love as I have instructed. What else are his commands other than teachings on how to love? Loving me, Jesus says, means becoming a practitioner of love as I have taught it.

Notice that Jesus does not simply say “if you love me, then be loving”. Instead, he tells us to follow his commands. The problem is that we do not know how to love or what love really means. We need to assume that we are ignorant of love. While all his commands are about abiding in God’s love, we need to follow carefully what he teaches rather than trying to live out of our own notions of love. Obedience to his commands will enable us be loving beyond our own limited knowledge. Only later may we grasp how what he teaches is truly the expression of the love of God.

Obedience sounds unimaginative, tedious, and dreary, but training in love, or any other virtue, does not immediately appeal to our immature spiritual sensibilities. Those who try to follow the command to love without obedience to Christ’s teachings will ultimately be abiding in themselves instead of in the love of God.