Love and Obey
To love God cannot be divorced from obeying Him.
Christ is more concerned that you act on His word than you hear more of it.
We live in an information saturated environment. Digital marketing analysts estimate that North Americans see an average of between 4 000 – 10 000 ads a day. We can access thousands of years worth of books at the tap of a screen. The 24/7 news cycle blares through our TVs, computers, and even pushes alerts on our watches. Advocates, activists, and advertisers use this bombardment to trumpet their causes and content. Even by taking this course, you are drinking in a stream of information!
Sometimes, we treat our faith like a race to know more about God. Christian books, podcasts, sermons, seminars, Instagram posts, Bible reading plans, articles — the modern Christian is soaked in information, religious and otherwise. That can be a great thing, but we run into major problems when we divorce learning or knowing from acting and obeying. In fact, according to Jesus, it is not enough just to know the word of God, we must do the word of God if we are truly to love Him.
Have you fallen victim to the Herod Syndrome?
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Can you relate to the hypocrisy of the Pharisees?
The Pharisees were legalistic because they created additional rules on top of the rules they were given, as a part of how they tried to love God or possibly even earn his love. Yet, they missed the point of all that God had actually asked them to do —Love God and Love neighbor. Perhaps you have been careful to avoid outward religious acts in an attempt to earn God’s love and rest in grace. But perhaps, like Sean, you have ended up becoming religious about not being religious. The problem is, loving God cannot be divorced from obeying God. Outward acts are not automatically contrary to grace, in fact, they may be a part of how you live in and receive grace.
What outward acts is God calling you into as a part of walking in grace?
Test Yourself
Answer
Talk it Through
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1.2 Love and Obey
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The area of my life I can relate with legalism is my devotional time. Ever since I became a mother and my whole life started to look a lot different. I realized how stuck I was in legalism when it came to my solitude God time. Going from being free to having devotions at 6am to whenever I needed throughout the day. Everyday for years. To being sleep deprived, stepping into a new busyness, where my time was now feeding, changing diapers, etc…where it got to a point that my relationship with God was changing and it wasn’t going to look the same that it did. In the midst of finding what the new normal between God and myself would look like, I struggled in that journey to feel like He would still be pleased with me. I was constantly asking Him to forgive for not meeting 6 am, not being able to make Church some Sunday’s, for having to listen to audio bible in the shower, to having cry baby in the middle of me trying to spend time with you. I felt like i was not going to be able to have that strong relationship with God anymore. All to find out that becoming a mother has grown my relationship and dependance on God that much more.
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@K-Scott09 the season of early motherhood is a fantastic example of how a person has to learn to walk by the Spirit and not be bound to religious routine/habit! You may really appreciate the book, Liturgy of the Ordinary. Nik Amodeo, uses it quite a bit in his ECO course, Thinking Theologically.
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I think one area the Lord is confronting me with lately is my view of Sunday morning church. Most of my life I have viewed church as the “good Christian thing to do” and it didn’t seem to do much for me. I went for the sake of going and putting on a good show. Now I am actually part of the leadership team at our church and need to be there early to help get things organized and ready to go; and that definitely seemed to make things worse at first. I started to view going to church as a chore, not as a way to connect with other believers, lift each other up through prayer and encouragement, and praise God as a community; which is what I know church is really about.
The Lord has been showing me that church is more than just a job to check off my to do list once a week. He has been giving me joy and excitement about being surrounded by fellowship with like-minded believers, worshipping Him as a body, and hearing His Word.
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@JWasmuth as a pastor’s kid, I can certainly relate! Whenever I told my Dad I didn’t want to go to church he would reply, “That’s when you need to go.” I’m not sure if that helped or not, but it does turn out that when we push through the feeling of this is a chore and treat it as service, God can change our heart’s attitude about it. Have you heard of the book, Dangerous Calling, by Paul David Tripp? If not, you should consider reading it. Here is a quote related to your comment:
“I am very concerned about the acceptance of Sunday morning mediocrity, and I am persuaded that it is not primarily a schedule or laziness problem. I am convinced it is a theological problem. You see, the standards you set for yourself and your ministry are directly related to your view of God. If you are feeding your soul every day on the grace and glory of God, if you are in worshipful awe of his wisdom and power, if you are spiritually stunned by his faithfulness and love, and if you are daily motivated by his presence and promises, then you want to do everything you can to capture and display that glory to the people God has placed in your care.”
It sounds to me that you are entering into a bit of that “caring” attitude that desires to capture and display God’s glory for others. Keep on keeping on!
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Legalism can stem from a sense of deep insecurity (i.e. fear) and a misguided and/or misplaced sense of identity. If obeying God becomes more about something I fear could happen if I do not do XYZ—if I doubt God’s love and His gracious provision in every circumstance– this can be a path to legalism. Similarly, if I feel that if I do ABC, I can somehow earn God’s favour (forgetting that, in Christ, I already have God’s favour)– this is another path to legalism. There can also be social pressures as well—our peers may grant privileges or social standing if we do ABC and so we can lose sight of God and become wrapped up (at least subconsciously) in how we look to other people. The common denominator to all these scenarios is finding our sense of identity in how we perform. We focus our identity on what we DO rather than who we ARE in Christ. Most of us have been guilty of all of these things at one time or another. As a sidenote, I would say that if there is a disconnect between the heart and mind, this is a sure path to legalism. A disconnect (resulting from pain, confusion, and/or a lack of time for personal and prayerful introspection of the heart and reflection (mind)) inevitably leads to a life of “automatic pilot”—which is (more or less), another form of legalism. We behave or do certain things without thinking any more about what they could actually signify or why we are doing them. Conversely, setting our heart/mind on who Christ is and who we are in Christ (i.e. our identity in Christ) is liberating. Our doing can then come freely out of who Christ is and who we are in Christ.
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Growing up I had the mindset that religious acts are contrary to grace and it wasn’t till I truly turned my life over to Christ and got baptized that I understand the real meaning of the law and why we have it. Not just to ignore it but to serve God and others, and to help ourselves out, it makes life alot easier wanting to follow God because then you want to follow the law and the law often won’t get you into ugly situations. Now I know that I want to serve God as best I can and it’s okay to do it by actions as long as my heart is in the right place.
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