The ultimate test of our character is obeying God’s laws and commandments. This daily devotional looks at how faithful obedience completes our redo for godliness.
Nuggets
- We are obedient to God when we serve Him faithfully.
- We serve God faithfully through showing love by obeying His laws and commandments.
To read devotions in the Redo for Godliness series, click the appropriate button below.
Devotions in The Test of Character series
Wow! We’ve not only come to the last devotion in The Test of Character series, we’ve also come to the last devotion in our Redo for Godliness theme.
It is fitting that it is on obedience. Submission. Following God’s laws and commandments.
That is what we are striving for in our redo for godliness.
Let's Put It into Context
Here are the nuggets for this series.
- Loving Jesus means we prove that by loving truth.
- A changed heart proves that our salvation is genuine.
- Our inward change of heart comes through regeneration and sanctification.
- Our outward change of heart comes through our following God’s laws and commandments in our daily lives.
- We need to discern right from wrong and be remorseful when we sin.
- The change in motives and habits prove that salvation has gotten to the heart level.
- When we approach God’s throne room, we should do so with the right attitude.
- It is only through God’s goodness that we will become like Him.
- We must know and love God to have true character.
Being Obedient Servants
“Through whom we have received grace and apostleship to bring about the obedience of faith for the sake of his name among all the nations” (Rom. 1: 5 ESV)
We are obedient to God when we serve Him faithfully.
We spent the last part of the last devotion talking about walking humbly with God. Walking with God means we are humble, reverent, teachable servants of God.
Our test of character is all about testing whether we are truly servants of Jesus Christ. If we are servants of Jesus, we are servants of God.
We are to imitate Jesus. Jesus was a servant of God. “Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross” (Phil. 2: 5-8 ESV). So, we are to be a servant, too.
The worldview people want us to believe that servant is a demeaning title. Vaughan disagreed. He said that was the highest title we could ever have, even over apostle.
Resource
We are called to be servants, too. Vaughan argued that this call begins at our baptism.
I can see that. That is usually the first time we act on God’s call for us to be obedient post salvation. Baptism is our pledge to be obedient to God.
Baptism is the symbol of our conversion experience, providing the physical evidence that we have died and been buried to sin and have risen in a new spiritual life with Jesus.
Salvation is the gift of life through the deliverance from condemnation and sin to acceptance and holiness and changes us from being spiritually dead to spiritually alive.
- Sins are actions by humans that disobey God and break one of His reasonable, holy, and righteous laws and commandments, goes against a purpose He has for us, or follows Satan’s promptings.
- Holiness is the transcendent excellence of His nature that includes elements of purity, dedication, and commitment that lead to being set apart. Purity means possessing God’s moral character, having eliminated the stain of sin.
- Spiritual death is the spiritual separation from God that occurred as a consequence of Adam and Eve’s original sin. The spiritually alive are those who have ABCDed, so they are no longer separated from God.
The ABCDs of Salvation
If you have not become a believer in Christ, please read through the
Plan of Salvation and prayerfully consider what God is asking you to do.
A – admit our sins
B – believe His Son Jesus is our Redeemer
C – confess God as Sovereign Lord
D – demonstrate that commitment by making any changes needed in our lives to
live the way in which God has called us
The Disciple’s Job Description
Glossary
Part of me thinks that is what we sign up for when we accept God’s gift of salvation. We accept that we are becoming a servant of Christ.
But then, I do see that it can’t be at conversion. The gift of salvation is given to us because of God’s grace — when we accept it.
Grace is a free and unmerited gift of love from the Heavenly Father, given through His Son, Jesus Christ, that enables salvation and spiritual healing to believers by the work of the Holy Spirit.
That gift is free. We don’t have to clean up our acts.
To read a related devotion, click the button below.
I see that the Holy Spirit has to work on us to get us where we can serve God. Service is an act based on belief in God that comes from a response of worship by acknowledging His power through our submission.
Service has to be a product of the love we have for God, which grows as we actually see how God has freed us from sin and its consequences.
The great part is we serve the Servant, not the Master. It would be real easy to say, “God has no clue about what I am facing because He hasn’t faced it.”
Jesus has. No, maybe He hasn’t had to deal with the internet. But He still had to resist its equivalent temptation in His day.
Yes, it is all about complete submission to God. Submitting to God is actions by humans that obey God and keep His reasonable, holy, and righteous laws and commandments, follow His purpose for us, and do not follow Satan’s promptings.
In one word, that is obedience to God.
In this discussion, it is submitting to the Will of Christ. Same difference.
It is “… the obedience of faith …” (Rom. 1: 5 ESV).
It isn’t just doing good deeds.
The focus is full submission or obedience to the gospel of Christ. That means believing Jesus is our Savior and Redeemer.
It is the gospel that is the ultimate test of character, not whether we check everything off the checklist.
There is no checklist in the gospel — except have we ABCDed or not.
Robinson had an interesting take. He said that obedience is a product of faith. Faith is a gift from God that enhances the conviction that the doctrines revealed in God’s Word are true, even if we do not understand all aspects of them, a belief which impacts our lives and distinguishes us from others.
Glossary
Resource
I see that. If we don’t believe that God’s Word is true, why would we obey it?
Faith has to be the foundation.
Being Loving Servants
“And this is love, that we walk according to his commandments; this is the commandment, just as you have heard from the beginning, so that you should walk in it” (II Jn. 1: 6 ESV)
We serve God faithfully through showing love by obeying His laws and commandments.
Read that verse again. No, it doesn’t say love is that we make this world better and fix everyone’s ails.
The definition of love, according to John, is obeying God’s laws and commandments. It is that we love God.
Period. No qualification. No exceptions.
Obedience is the product of faith, which is the product of love.
Remember, that is what godliness — Christianity — is all about. That is the first greatest commandment.
It is the only test of character.
Making the Connections
All disciples are servants of Christ. That means He has a job for each of us.
We may be preaching to and making disciples of friends and family. God may drop us into what we consider a regular ministerial job.
Either way, we are still a servant with a job to do.
The Disciple’s Job Description
Complete Job Description
Individual Description
Serving — being obedient — helps us to grow in our faith. That is the goal of sanctification. We grow in faith — become mature (what perfect means) in our faith.
Sanctification is the transformation of mind, body, and soul, which begins with regeneration, gradually changes our nature and morals through the promptings of the Holy Spirit, and ends with perfected state of spiritual wholeness or completeness.
- Regeneration is being changed from spiritually dead to spiritually alive and the internal requickening in us that God brings about through the work of the Holy Spirit to give us new character.
- Perfection means we reach a state of maturity because the combination of the spiritual graces form, when all are present, spiritual wholeness or completeness — holy, sanctified, and righteous.
- Spiritual graces are worldly morals that have been submitted to God to further His kingdom instead of enhancing this world.
- Sanctified means to be set free from sin.
- Righteous means we are free from sin because we are following God’s moral laws.
Glossary
How Do We Apply This?
- Choose to ABCD.
- Obey God’s laws and commandments.
- Obey by imitating God’s Servant, Jesus.
- Obey as we walk with God.
- Commit to imitating Jesus — even knowing we will mess up — by having the desire to do it right.
- Have the correct attitude.
- Be a humble servant.
- Live out Matthew 25: 35-36 both to provide random acts of kindness and fulfilling our job description.
- Exhibit patience in our struggles, depending on God to see us through.
Verse Commentary
Resource
Father God. We love You. That love will be shown through our obedience to Your laws and commandments. By obeying You, we will gain Your character, making our redo for godliness complete. Amen.
What do you think?
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