Today’s author is Prince of Peace member, Steve Sveom.
We have been exploring the theme: “invitation” during these autumn weeks. The current topic is “Invitation to Obedience.”
I don’t know if it’s the American in me, my personal pride, or, a contrarian perspective, but, the word “obedience” has never resonated with me. Even as a child, I wasn’t ever drawn to the Sunday School song “Trust and Obey, for there’s no other way to be happy in Jesus, but to trust and obey.”
The theme has two ideas which almost seem to oppose each other. “Invitation” is welcoming and non-confrontive. It is gentle and warm. “Obedience” strikes me as more “take it or leave it” and demanding. To someone who wants to be steeped in the gospel, “obedience” strikes me as law.
I did an internet search about faithful obedience and found “3 types of obedience”; “4 types of obedience”; all the way to “10 steps of obedience.”
Even this struck me as legalistic “how to” language. The descriptions distinguished obedience ranging from fear, to transactional, to love.
Apparently, near the end of his life Napoleon reflected on his power and noted: “Alexander, Caesar, Charlemagne, and I myself have founded great empires; but upon what did these creations of our genius depend? Upon force. Jesus alone founded His empire upon love, and to this very day millions will die for Him”.
Christian obedience is a response to a gracious invitation. Taken in this way, these two words – “invitation” and “obedience” – are both filled with grace. Just as law is meant to tear down our resistance to God and reveal our character apart from God, so that we will be driven to the gospel, an “Invitation to Obedience” is meant to diminish our prideful arrogance and our inability to see that God is God and we are the creation. The invitation draws us to God in love so that in love we will live as God’s people with faith and love for God, and as an extension, love for God’s creation.
Prayer: God of grace, you invite us into an obedience of love. Tear down our prideful resistance to your grace for all the world and fill us with love for your whole creation. Amen.