Q: What is the difference between unconditional submission and unconditional obedience?
A: To submit means "to defer to another's judgment, opinion, or decision." To obey means "to comply with or follow the commands, restrictions, wishes, or instructions of." A condition is "something demanded as an essential part of an agreement." Therefore, if something is unconditional there is nothing demanded of the parties involved. Submission, from a biblical perspective is a response of love. In Hebrews 12:9 we read, "Moreover, we have all had human fathers who disciplined us and we respected them for it. How much more should we submit to the Father of our spirits and live!" Submission to God is compared to a person submitting to a fathers discipline. A father does what he does for his children out of love for them. A loving father will provide for his children. The provisions are things like food, shelter, clothing, instruction, protection and even playing with his children. As the children realize that their father is caring for them they will respond to him in love because of the love he has shown to them throughout their lives. The children may have alternatives to the love of their father, but they don't match up in comparison and the children freely choose to submit to their father because they trust him.
The trust relationship a child has with a loving parent is a picture of the relationship Christians have with our Father in Heaven. God designed mankind with the desire for unconditional love, total acceptance and meaning and purpose to life. He designed us in such a way that only He could fulfill the deepest desires of our heart. Through faith we receive as an inheritance "every spiritual blessing in Christ (Ephesians 1:3)" and God has "given us everything we need for life and godliness (2 Peter 1:3)." Because of all God has freely given us through faith in Christ we defer to His "judgment, opinion or decision" as we engage the world around us. Our submission is, in essence, unconditional because we are not obligated to respond to God's love for us. But, when we match up what we have in Him with what the the world can only offer us through sin, the decision to submit to Him is an obvious one. "Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you (James 4:7)." As we respond to God's love for us, the temptations of sin begin to lose their appeal. By default, we end up resisting the devil in the process and he flees from us because he knows what he offers us pales in comparison to what we already have in Christ.
There is no such thing as unconditional obedience. Obedience is only possible when there are conditions to obey. The Christian life is one of learning to live in a trusting and dependent relationship with God not one of obedience and repentance to "commands, restrictions, wishes or instructions." If someone comes up to you and tells you that you "must be obedient to God," you have just met a person who is a slave to sin. "For sin shall not be your master, because you are not under law, but under grace (Romans 6:14)." You have to put yourself under some form of law in order to live a life of obedience. This law can be the Mosaic Law of the Old Testament, the "law" of Jesus' Sermon on the Mount, the various laws of any Christian denomination or our own personal laws which are usually a combination of the previous laws mentioned. But, what many don't realize is that the "sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law (1 Corinthians 15:56)." The purpose of the law is to lead us to faith in Christ by stirring up more sin in our lives. As we seek to be obedient, we soon come to the humbling conclusion that we only discover more sin to overcome. No matter how dedicated we are to being obedient the words of the Apostle Paul soon become a reality to us. "For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing (Romans 7:19)." For this we should thank God.
We should thank God that we realize the depths of our sinfulness is endless. God designed it that way so that we would come to the end of ourselves and turn to faith in Christ. "What, then, was the purpose of the law? ... So the law was put in charge to lead us to Christ that we might be justified by faith. Now that faith has come, we are no longer under the supervision of the law (Galatians 3:19, 24-25)." Our attempts to be obedient to God result in the discovery that we cannot obey Him. His conditions are impossible to meet. This revelation makes it clear to us why God, in Christ, did for us what we could not do for ourselves. It is because He loved us unconditionally. We are not justified by obedience, but by faith. It is faith that saved us and it is by faith that we live. The obedience of Jesus Christ results in our humble submission to what He did for us out of love. The difference between obedience and submission is that our inability to do one leads to our thankfulness to be able to do the other. Our obedience is an attempt to love God by what we do. Submission is our response to what God did for us. "We love because He first loved us (1 John 4:19)." Be blessed.
4 comments:
Awesome Word Man. Always full of wisdom! Thanks for the inspiration!
Thanks for the encouragement, Terry. Glad it inspired you.
Ian, I am glad I saw this. You and I had a discussion a few months ago about being obedient to God. After that discussion, something did not sit well with me because I thought "Isn't not sinning being obedient to God?" And I didn't mean having to follow a list of things God wants us to do. I just meant simply choosing to do what we believe God wants us to do, like sharing the Gospel, helping someone in need, etc., not out of a sense of obligation but out of love and thanksgiving for God. And I just couldn't reconcile the issue until now. I was using the term "obedience" to God when it should have been "submitting" to God. I hope I have correctly explained what I mean. It is in agreement with what you said in your blog.
Yes, I understand what you're saying Robbyn. Personally, I think there is more than one way to look at obedience. The traditional way is responding to a command. Then there is an obedience of faith. "Through him and for his name's sake, we received grace and apostleship to call people from among all the Gentiles to the obedience that comes from faith (Romans 1:5)." This is an obedience that is a response to the love we are receiving from our God. Let us use your example about not sinning.
There is the traditional way of looking at avoiding sin. You are taught to avoid it because failure to do so will result in God punishing you in some way, not to mention the worldly consequences you may suffer. Those punishments of God run the gamut from death or loss of salvation to being "out of fellowship" with God. However, when you are receiving the love of God, you have an alternative to sin that makes you simply say "no" I don't want to do it. Furthermore, you avoid it because it is not an act of love to sin with or against someone else. you avoid sin because it can't do for you what God has done and is doing to meet the desires of your heart.
Thanks for your comment. It was good.
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