Importance of Obedience (1 John 2:3-6)

The issue of assurance is one that is of concern for many Christians. It is generally agreed that biblical assurance has three aspects: (1) assurance that comes from God’s promises such as when eternal life and forgiveness of sins is promised to all who trust in Christ; (2) assurance that is deduced from a changed lifestyle, especially shown in obedience to God’s  commandments; and (3) assurance that is the impression stamped on a believer’s heart by the indwelling Holy Spirit, being usually a strong sense of the love of Christ or of divine peace or of overflowing joy. One helpful way of recalling them is to regard each as a leg of a three-legged stool, which needs each leg to be there in order for it to be fully functional.

A question that can be asked in response to those three aspects is this: which aspect of assurance is essential for a believer to have? The question does not ask what kind of assurance is most comfortable or enjoyable; instead it asks what aspect is essential for genuine Christianity. The answer is the assurance that is deduced from a changed lifestyle. Without it, the first aspect drawn from divine promises is merely assumption and the third aspect of strong inner experiences is imagination at best. Experiences can be worked up and conclusions drawn about spiritual reality that are not valid from the Bible’s teaching.

John here is writing about persons who claim to be genuine disciples, advanced in spiritual experience. He informs his readers that a failure to keep God’s commandments invalidates all profession of conversion and discipleship. Therefore we can see why wholehearted obedience is essential for genuine assurance.

What is meant by keeping God’s commandments?

To begin with, we can say what it does not mean. John does not mean that obedience to God’s commandments is the condition for knowing God. Instead he means that obedience is the confirmation that a person has come to know God. John uses the perfect tense when he refers to a person having come to know God, which indicates that there is a specific moment when a sinner comes into this relationship with him. A sinner may be aware of that moment of conversion because it was a vivid encounter or he may not be aware of it because it occurred during a prolonged exploration of the gospel message. Whenever that moment was, it was not the climax of a process of obedience to God’s law. Any sort of law-keeping that existed before that moment was self-righteousness. The way of entering this relationship is by faith in Christ, accompanied by repentance for our sins. But once this relationship has begun, it will be confirmed as genuine by the presence of obedience.

In addition, John is not saying that a true disciple keeps God’s commandments perfectly. He has stated in the previous verses that every Christian needs to confess sin and will do so throughout his life, and sin is basically a failure to keep God’s requirements. All Christians fail, therefore John is not describing a perfect keeping of God’s commands. Nor is John saying that a believer cannot backslide into a period of disobedience – such a decline is always possible, although it is important to realise that the proof that a person was a backslider is that he or she eventually repented of their sins.

Further, John is not describing a mere outward conformity to God’s rules. In one sense it is easy to have a moral lifestyle in which a person lives an outward life that looks like the kind of life that God requires. Those who were brought up within a church environment can have such a way of life and often it would be hard for radical outward change to take place. Nevertheless there is a radical inner change in the hearts and minds of all true converts.

Divine encouragements for obedience

What John has in mind is a steady, ongoing, determined life of obedience to God’s commandments from the heart. Sometimes, when believers are informed of this description, they become apprehensive because they imagine that they will never be able to keep God’s commandments. Therefore it is important for them to remind themselves of what happened within them when they came to know God.

The most common way by which the Bible describes the relationship between God and his people is through the idea of covenant. We can think about the eternal commitment God made concerning them in the covenant of redemption made within the Trinity before the universe was created. The covenant that believers should keep in mind for guidance as far as obedience to God’s commandments is concerned is the new covenant, the details of which are stated in Hebrews 8:10-12: ‘For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord: “I will put my laws into their minds, and write them on their hearts, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. And they shall not teach, each one to his neighbour and each one to his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest. For I will be merciful toward their iniquities, and I will remember their sins no more.”’ God says that he will perform two things in their hearts in order to ensure that they will know him: first, he promises to inform them of his commandments (write them on their minds) and, second, he promises to ensure that they will love his commandments (write them on their hearts). All each of us needs to do is to ask ourselves, ‘Do I love the commandments of God?’ If the answer is yes, then we know that God is at work within us and that he is also instructing us concerning our obedience.

One may respond, however, by saying, ‘I understand what God wants me to do and I love what he asks me to do, but I find myself so weak in a spiritual sense that I am afraid I will not have the ability or power to keep his commandments.’ God has provided an answer to this dilemma – the Holy Spirit, who came to indwell believers when they commenced their personal relationship with God. Paul encouraged the Christians in Rome when he reminded them of how the Holy Spirit enables believers to keep God’s law: ‘…the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit’ (Rom. 8:4). Therefore it is good for us to remind ourselves that the loyal Holy Spirit is always working within his people on earth, enabling them to keep God’s commandments in a measure.

The guidelines for obedience

An obvious question to ask is, ‘Where can a person find out what God wants him or her to do?’ John provides the answer to this question when he refers to truth indwelling a person and to a person keeping God’s Word. The Bible is the only means of information regarding divine requirements. Today it is possible to have plenty Bibles in our homes, but not to know the Bible very well. Because we have personal copies we may lose sight of a very important detail, which is that the important place in which to keep God’s Word is in our hearts. Having several Bibles on a shelf will not keep me from sin, but having God’s Word written on our hearts will prevent us acting in disobedience.

Understanding what the Bible requires from us is not the same as knowing what the Bible teaches about certain doctrines. It is possible to have excellent head knowledge and not have any of the Bible in one’s heart. How does the Bible get into both our minds and hearts? One answer is memorisation accompanied by meditation. If we were to take one verse a day, we would learn 365 verses in a year. This would mean that last year, for example, we could have learned and meditated deeply on several books of the Bible. We could have memorised all of Paul’s prison letters (Philippians, Ephesians, Colossians and Philemon) last year.

In addition to memorisation and meditation there has to be implementation. A good response to discovering a divine commandment is to perform it. For example, if we read that we are to love our enemies, then we should go to a person who has done something bad to us and show our obedience to God by doing something good for that person. I’m quite sure that such a commandment will then be written permanently on your heart. Instead of immediate application of a divine instruction, we tend to wait for an opportunity to obey it, but often when such an opportunity arises we have forgotten about the commandments that are applicable to it.

John informs his readers that such a lifestyle indicates that the believer has a maturing, developing love for God. (It is not entirely clear whether the phrase ‘the love of God’ refers to our love to God or to his love for us, but the context would suggest that it is our love. In any case, in what sense can God’s love for a person be said to become perfect since it already is perfect!) Such an obedient person has the confirmation that his faith is genuine and that he has the grounds for expecting that divine consolation and strength (the third aspect of assurance that we considered earlier) will be given to him.

The example of Jesus

John gives another challenge to his readers when he exhorts them to walk in the same way as Jesus did, with the context indicating that John has in mind the obedience displayed by the Saviour to his Father’s will. There are many details concerning his obedience which could be identified, but here are five of them.

First, the obedience of Jesus was a cheerful obedience. The author of Hebrews (10:7-9) uses the words of Psalm 40:8 (‘I delight to do your will, O God’) to describe the heart attitude of Jesus as he obeyed his Father. What he did for God – whether in his home in Nazareth, in the years working as a carpenter, and in the three years of public ministry – he did from a glad heart, conscious that he was pleasing his Father.

Second, the obedience of Jesus was a careful obedience. By this is meant that he made sure that his obedience was according to God’s Word. He resisted temptation in the desert from the devil by doing what God had instructed in the Book of Deuteronomy. He instructed people whom he had blessed, such as the cured leper, to go and complete the biblical requirements connected to public declaration of healing from leprosy. There are many examples of his careful obedience. The Saviour meditated on the Bible and always endeavoured to keep it accurately, and always succeeded in doing so. Partial obedience was not an option he ever chose.

Third, the obedience of Jesus was a continuing obedience. Throughout his earthly journey he always obeyed God’s instructions. There never was a moment when his obedience was set aside and he adopted another option. In every circumstance, whether private or public, he fully obeyed his Father with informed mind, loving heart, and determined will.

Fourth, the obedience of Jesus was a costly obedience because it led him to the awful experience of the cross. He was careful throughout his time on the cross to continue loving and obeying his Father as he finished the work of atonement. While we cannot say that the cross was pleasant, nevertheless the Saviour was willing to please his Father and obey him, knowing that one consequence would be an innumerable number of obedient disciples. 

Fifthly, we can also note that the obedience of Jesus was a crowned obedience, as Paul explains in Philippians 2:6-11.  The Saviour was obedient unto death and was rewarded by the Father with exaltation to the highest place possible. While any obedience of his people is faint in comparison, there is a kind of parallel because Jesus has promised that if we are faithful unto death we will receive a crown of live from him. The prospect of heavenly reward is an incentive for comprehensive obedience to God’s commandments.