Many of us suffer at the idea of being obedient to God. Obedience isn’t a price. It’s a partnership.
Admittedly, it was my most difficult roadblock at the beginning of my rededicated walk. I would align myself with His Word and then negotiate my way back to what felt more comfortable. I would lean on my habits. I would return to my familiar places.
Romans 5:19 speaks of Christ’s active obedience for us⁽¹⁾, and as I began to understand this, I realized I was being called to something far deeper than mere compliance.
"For as by the one man's disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man's obedience the many will be made righteous."
I remember explicitly the day I decided to submit my entire being to Him. Such obedience was based on trust and love of the Father⁽²⁾, and I knew I had to offer Him the same.
It wasn’t without labor and groaning. My eyes were full of tears, meanwhile my heart was empty. My body was weaker than I ever remember it being.
I had run away from submission until the concrete of the sidewalk had ended and the weeds were thigh-high.
Yet in reality, I had never truly left my back porch. I was only pretending to run.
I finally got it.
All He wanted was my fully committed “yes.”
He had given me His Yes. He had fully committed by taking on sin and dying for my ransom.
"I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship."
That’s when it hit me.
Obedience isn’t a price we pay. It is the gift of partnership.
Jesus had taken on our sin and endured pain undeserved. He showed us how to submit to the Father’s will. Even in the garden of Gethsemane, knowing the suffering that awaited Him, Jesus prayed:
"Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me. Nevertheless, not my will, but yours be done."
The very obedience Jesus demonstrated is the same obedience we are called to.
Therefore, it is a shared experience. Jesus’ whole life was one of perfect, sinless, and conscious obedience to God as His Father, whose will for His life was learned through prayerful meditation on Scripture⁽²⁾.
Jesus, in His greatness, humbled Himself and became like us. Not merely to experience our humanity, but to become our merciful and faithful high priest, reconciling us to God.
He showed us what it means to submit fully to the Father’s will, so that we might strive to become more like Him.
"Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain, that is, through his flesh, and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water."
What a glorious God we serve.
In this partnership with Him through Christ, we are no longer bound by obligation—we are invited into relationship, where obedience becomes not a transaction, but the deepest expression of love.
References
[1] Stephen Wellum and Matthew Barrett, Christ Alone—the Uniqueness of Jesus as Savior: What the Reformers Taught…and Why It Still Matters, The 5 Solas Series (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Academic, 2017), 231.
[2] J. P. Baker, “Obedience of Christ,” in New Dictionary of Theology: Historical and Systematic, ed. Martin Davie et al. (London; Downers Grove, IL: Inter-Varsity Press; InterVarsity Press, 2016), 625–626.