Learning obedience

Thanks to a question posted by our academic dean on our Moodle forum ~ in conjunction with Spiritual Formation III class ~ I have been pondering on what it means to "learn obedience" as a Christian.

I quote part the question here: "the author of Hebrews says of Jesus in 5:8, 'Although he was a Son, he learned obedience from what he suffered ...' What does it mean to LEARN OBEDIENCE?"

In the past week, I came to a conclusion regarding the above. An imperative of being under the Lordship of Christ is obedience out of faith and love. Obedience comes naturally to no man. God doesn't force it on us either ~ but by His grace, He makes our blind eyes see and our minds renewed. We will begin to test and approve God's "good, pleasing and perfect" will - and therewith decide for ourselves that the only ground worth standing on is the solid rock of submission, which will never give way. To obey God is to submit to His will. Learning obedience is first learning to submit to God's perfect will.

To learn this submission requires that we learn to embrace death (to our silken selves) as something dear to our hearts ~ as the source of our hope, the sustenance of true life and the essence of life while we are yet on this side of eternity. Jesus Himself embraced God's will and His mission to finish the Father's work as His FOOD (John 4:34). It was not in the absence of fear and anguish, as His encounter in the Garden of Gethsamane clearly shows us. Neither was it deliciously pleasant. We do not know how the Baby in the manger - fully God and yet fully man - came to accept such "food" as fulfilling and life-giving. But could He have also been subjected to the same growth pains we undergo, in order to culminate in His striking but passionate conclusion? Robert Clinton, author of "The Making of a Leader" (a book we are currently going through for SFIII), made a statement that obeying God is usually the first lesson in growing a leader as a person - other lessons (checks of integrity, word, etc) hinge on it. How true it is - until we have made obedience (and therefore submission to God's will) a life principle, we will fail miserably at most of the "desert temptations" and checks, if not all. We would never be able to take up our crosses to follow Jesus while we are half-engaged in warding off threats and menaces to our earthly existence. We would never be able to fully comprehend the completion of His work as our food.

After all, the essence of being God's minister is to be the aroma of Christ ~ the fragrance of His death to some and hope to others (cf. 2 Cor 2:14-16). To respond to God's call upon our lives is to say yes to an invitation to death and yet the hope that lies beyond death itself.