Day 20

How the Self Dies — Through Obedience

Today's Scripture: John 14:21 (NLT)

Among all the means by which the self is put to death, none is more practical, more daily, and more often overlooked than the simple, deliberate act of obedience. We talk about the cross. We talk about the Spirit. We talk about hiddenness and suffering. These are all real. But beneath them all, threading through every one of them, is the quiet, granular work of obedience — small acts of saying yes to God, in real time, in the actual moments of our actual lives, when the self is asking to be allowed to say no.

Jesus put it this way: "He that hath my commandments, and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me." Notice that the Lord did not say, "He that talks about my commandments, who studies my commandments, who admires my commandments, who recommends my commandments to others — he it is that loves me." He said, he who keeps them. Doing is the proof of loving. And every act of doing what God has commanded is, in some real sense, an act of dying to the self that would have preferred to do otherwise.

This is one of the most underappreciated truths in the life of discipleship. We tend to look for the grand, dramatic deaths — the cross-shaped moments of large sacrifice, the once-in-a-lifetime acts of consecration that prove our devotion. And those moments sometimes come. But they are not the substance of the crucified life. The substance is something far smaller and far more constant — the daily, ordinary obedience of a soul that says yes to God in a hundred small ways before lunchtime, and a hundred more before bed. The self is killed not by the rare grand gesture but by the constant small refusal to be its own ruler.

Think of what obedience does to the flesh. Every act of obedience is, by definition, a denial of the flesh's preference. The flesh wanted to sleep in; obedience got you up to pray. The flesh wanted to keep silent; obedience made you speak the truth in love. The flesh wanted to keep the money; obedience opened your hand. The flesh wanted to retaliate; obedience held its tongue. The flesh wanted to indulge; obedience said no. Every small yes to God is a small no to the self. And a life is made of millions of such small choices, and the accumulated weight of those small choices is the actual shape of the soul at the end.

This is why Jesus links love and obedience so tightly. We say we love Him. We feel the love rise in our hearts during worship. We tell Him so in prayer. But Jesus says love is not finally a feeling — it is a doing. "He that loveth me shall keep my words" (John 14:23). Love that does not move into obedience is not love; it is sentiment. And many believers have lived their whole lives with sentiment toward Christ but with very little actual obedience to Him, and they have wondered why their relationship with Him feels distant. The relationship feels distant because love, without obedience, never matures. Sentiment is the seed; obedience is the plant. Without the plant, the seed never produces anything.

There is a beautiful promise tucked into the verse, however, and we must not miss it. Jesus says that the one who loves Him through obedience will be loved of the Father, and that He Himself will manifest Himself to that person. The word manifest in Greek is emphanizo — to make visible, to show plainly, to disclose. There is a kind of intimate revelation of Christ to the obedient soul that is simply not given to the disobedient one. The Lord does not equally manifest Himself to all believers in equal measure. He manifests Himself most to those who walk with Him in obedience, and the experiential knowledge of Christ that flows out of obedience is one of the great hidden joys of the Christian life.

If you want to know Christ more, obey Him more. If you want to feel His presence more, do what He has said. If you want to walk in greater intimacy with the Father, stop arguing with the small commands and start keeping them. The intimacy will not come because you have earned it. It will come because obedience opens the soul to a kind of communion that disobedience closes. The doors of the heart open from the inside, and obedience is the key that turns them.

So today, in the small, ordinary, unspectacular moments, obey. Not the grand things. The small things. The conversation you have been avoiding. The phone call you have been postponing. The forgiveness you have been withholding. The truth you have been dancing around. The prayer time you have been skipping. The generosity you have been delaying. Do the small obedience right in front of you. And in the doing, watch the self die a small death, and watch Christ manifest Himself in a new measure to the soul that is learning, more and more, the meaning of love.

Prayer

Lord Jesus, I have loved You with my words and my songs more than with my obedience. Forgive me. Today, show me the small obediences that are right in front of me, and give me the grace to do them. Let love, in me, mature from sentiment into action. Manifest Yourself to me in the doing of Your word. Amen.

Today's Challenge

Identify one small obedience you have been postponing — a conversation, a forgiveness, an act of generosity, a discipline, a phone call. Today, do it. Do not wait for the feeling. The obedience is the love.

"The self does not usually die in the grand moments; it dies in the thousand small obediences the flesh would rather skip."