STATION 3: THE CALL TO OBEDIENCEI want to present two terms to you right now. They are precise scientific mathematical terms. The first term is "necessary;" the second term is "sufficient." Of the two "sufficient" is the most powerful term. If something is "sufficient," it is all that is necessary in order for something else to be true. Things that are sufficient contain all of the things which are necessary. But, simply having one necessary element does not necessarily generate the entire condition. Let me give you an example. A circle is drawn with a continuous line. But, having a continuous line is not the definition of a circle. We say that it is necessary for the line to be continuous, and yet that is not sufficient. By a continuous line, I mean there are simply no gaps in it. So, while being a continuous line is necessary for drawing a circle, it is not sufficient, because you can draw that continuous line in many, many shapes, none of which would be a circle. What is sufficient for a circle is the collection of all points equidistant from a center. That condition is sufficient and contains as a subset, other properties: the relationship of radius to diameter, the continuity of the line, the area of the circle. All of these are properties which follow from the sufficiency of all points, connecting equidistant from a center. Why do I bring this up? We are going to begin our examination of the cross on a very human earthly level. This station, and the one after it, the call to love, really work as a pair. The call to obedience is necessary. The call to love is sufficient. By that, I mean that if you have love, you have all truth. But, until we get there, we have to start somewhere, and that somewhere is obedience. Obedience is necessary for a proper relationship with other human beings. Obedience is necessary for a proper relationship with God, but it is not sufficient. We will discuss more about this in the next section. For right now, I want to focus on the power of obedience, and what the cross of Christ tells us about it. We will begin on a very simple, common, human plane. You see, Jesus was a man. He spent His youth learning and growing. He spent His early adulthood teaching and ministering. He worked most closely with His 12 disciples. He ministered to the masses, and, according to the record, sometimes He healed people. Sometimes He simply taught them; sometimes He resurrected them from the dead. But, He spent most of His time trying to work with His twelve closest disciples to help them understand the tiniest bit of what He was truly here to accomplish. As He did that, His life led Him to the confrontation with the authorities, and He was facing a great very painful decision. That decision was facing Him in the Garden of Gethsemane, the last night of His life on planet Earth. What was that decision? The decision that Jesus faced was the same decision that every human being faces at each stage of our lives. He was confronted with a very difficult future. He knew that the authorities were coming to capture Him, put Him on trial and crucify Him for crimes against Rome and against the religious authorities of the day. Now, at that point, He had 3 options, and every human being only has 3 options. I call them the three "F's": to fight, file or flee. This comes from the income tax situation here in America. When the IRS sends you a notice that you are going to be taxed this much money, that they wish to steal this much money from your family and from your children's future, you have 3 choices: fight, file or flee. You can stand up and fight. You can go to court and claim, righteously, that this tax is unconstitutional. You can claim, righteously, that their demand for this money is immoral. You can claim, righteously, that according to the constitution, you cannot be required to sign this income tax return. You can go up against Goliath, and you can fight him. You can also file. Filing is, in many ways, giving in. It doesn't necessarily mean giving up, but it means giving in, cooperating, giving the criminal what he is looking for. The third option is to flee, to simply run away. If you are walking down the street and a mugger approaches you and demands your wallet, you only have 3 choices: fight, file or flee. You can stand your ground. You can attempt to harm, beat up, or perhaps shoot the mugger. You can simply hand over your wallet and let him have his way with you. Or, you can try to turn and run away as fast as you can. There's no other choice given to a human being. For Jesus, He faced this fight, file or flee trinity with an intensity beyond what most of us have ever experienced. The record is that when He was in the Garden of Gethsemane, he was actually sweating blood. From research I have done, I understand that. Although this extremely rare, it is, nevertheless, physiologically possible. One can become so distraught that your adrenaline flows so quickly, and you are so hyper extended in terms of your physical makeup, that the capillaries at the surface of your skin begin to burst. You actually, literally sweat blood. I do not know about you, but I've had several occasions in my life where I felt quite distraught and very upset. But, never did I come anywhere close to feeling like I was about to sweat blood. That was exactly what Jesus was experiencing. All three options in His case were horrible. To fight would mean that He was to bring out swords and rocks, gather His disciples around Him, and wage a militaristic holy war against the occupying forces. But, this man had spent His life trying to heal, trying to give, trying to minister. For Him to turn on His fellow human beings in such a violent and ugly way offended every sensibility He had. Simultaneously however, to file, He knew would grant Him immense suffering and pain. He knew that the police would come and arrest Him. He knew that He would be flogged and ultimately experience a most unpleasant death upon the crucifix, which was a Roman torture test device. The purpose of crucifying people was not to kill them. Its purpose was to, Number 1, make a public spectacle out of them, and Number 2, make them suffer in as gory and agonizing way as the Romans could possibly devise. There are more directly painful things you can do to a person than nail their hands and feet to a cross. This is not pleasant, but there are, in fact, much more painful acts you can perform on a human body. So, the Romans were not necessarily interested in sensationalistic torture, because they knew that after a while, too much torture causes the human organism to shut down and no longer feel any pain. The Romans didn't want that. It lessened the effect, shall we say. It made them rather upset. But, through crucifixion, they had the best of both worlds. They could administer an intensely painful, horrible experience, and by properly devising the exact location where the body was placed on the cross, they could extend the suffering and the pain for a very, very long time. Depending upon the physique and strength of the person being crucified, some people survived as long as two full days. That, for the Romans, was a lot of "bang for their buck." Jesus, being a Jew, probably knew personally scores of people who had been crucified. It was a regular, constant occurrence. The Romans crucified tens of thousands of people, even a hundred at a time. They would run the gallows seven days a week. So, Jesus certainly knew if He filed, what was facing Him, and this was definitely not something to be hoped for. The only other option available to Him would be to flee. He could run away, and certainly that temptation must have been great. He says very clearly, in the Garden of Gethsemane, "If it is possible Lord, take this cup away from me." I don't want this. Certainly the thought of getting out of there crossed His mind more than once. Why did He not flee? This station of the cross tells us the power and strength and salvation in obedience. Jesus heard, either literally or figuratively, the voice of God. He heard God tell Him, this is what I want you to do. He knew in His heart that He had a mission, and that mission led Him to the cross. This was not necessarily a pleasant task, and it was not necessarily something He wanted to do, obviously. However, one thing that Jesus' passion teaches us is the power of obedience. Jesus listened to His Father and obeyed His voice. He said clearly, "Not my will but your will be done Father." I will obey you, I will do as you say. This became salvation. Because through this, God is communicating to all of us, the power and glory of simple human obedience. Obedience, as I said at the introduction, is necessary. Without obedience, there can be not social order whatsoever. I may not like you, but I must obey and not murder you. Love, which we will discuss at the next station, comes later. Ideally, I would love you and cast away my hatred for you. But, if I cannot do that, then what I'm going to need to do, if we're going to have a social order of any kind, is to begin by obedience by obeying the laws of society and the law of God. Do not violate that law. That is a necessary first step. When a child is young, that child will face many dangerous situations that he simply cannot understand. In his earliest stages, you cannot expect obedience, because the child is so unthinking. A young child cannot comprehend obedience. You must simply prevent the child from entering into any harm. You must lock the cabinets. You must keep the child away from the stove and away from any harmful poisons around the house. The maintenance and support and health of that child is 100% your own. The goal of education, the goal of parenting, is to help that child to become responsible and self-reliant, so that he can take care of his own life. He must be able to be accountable for his own health and safety. In education and in parenting, the health and strength of the teacher or parent are transferred to the child as he progresses toward adulthood. That is a beautiful illustration of what happens in our Christian lives. We start off completely weak and unthinking and unknowing. God is entirely responsible for our care. But, He doesn't want us to remain little children. He wants us to be able to grow up to become adults, so that we can grow to the full stature of a man, or as the Bible says, "To become complete in Christ." He wants us to be actually and truly the image of God, completely grown to the fullness of all we can be. So God is, just as a loving parent, attempting to transfer to us His health, His strength, and His wisdom, so that we can stand on our own. As we return to the illustration of the infant child, as he begins to grow, he gains certain abilities himself. He is begins to walk and talk. Sooner or later, the child, hopefully, begins to be able to think. At that point, the child's health and safety becomes more and more his own responsibility. Now, what do we do about all of these tens of thousands of things that can harm the child? The first stage of growth has to be obedience. Before the child can understand the nature of chemicals and how ammonia does not interact well with a stomach, the child could experience a lot of pain by drinking ammonia. So, in stage one, the parents keep the ammonia away from the child, so he cannot be harmed. But, that is certainly no way to live as an adult. He needs to be able to understand how ammonia can hurt him. Before he can get to that point, he must learn to obey the parents simply because the parents say, "Don't touch ammonia. Why? Because I said so." Why is all this significant to the cross? Why am I discussing this in the context of the death and resurrection of Jesus? I said in the introduction, that we look at the cross of Christ in the same way all the time. And, as we do that, we really cheat ourselves. One of the magnificent things that the Bible is telling us is that obedience is very important. Obedience is necessary. One thing that we can learn from the cross of Christ is that even the Son of God had to be obedient to the Father. Just as the book of Hebrews says, "Christ learned obedience through the things which He suffered." There is a lot of power in that. Obedience is capable of transforming the social order. It is absolutely necessary if the human race is going to survive. We must stop hating one another, but that may not be possible right now because that's the call to love. No. We, for the time being, can go ahead and retain our hate, but we must start obeying the simple laws of not killing one another, not stealing from one another, not abusing each other's rights, etc. What we want on this planet is for every human being to be fulfilled, for ever human being to have the opportunity to be full of love, joy, and the peace of God. We want all human beings to reach out to others, to help them, to serve them, to make their lives better so that we can walk down the streets in peace and happiness, with joy and contentment in our hearts. But, in order for us to get there, many things have to happen. It is necessary to start with obedience, we must follow the social laws. If society consisted of people who obeyed the laws and basically left each other alone, even if they were full of hatred anger and unhappiness, we could walk down the streets in peace. We could and leave our children with a friend and not worry about their being abducted. So, in terms of our individual personal growth, as infants becoming adults, and society as a whole, we can see the value, the necessity of obedience. It is not sufficient to fulfill our lives, but it is necessary. In terms of our relationship with God, obedience is a necessary first step. The law has received a very bad press in the last few thousand years. The law of God is now seen by most Christians as being a horrible, ugly thing to flog us into accepting the need for Jesus' salvation, in whatever way that's conceived. The purpose of the law is to convince us of our sin, they say. The purpose of the law is to show us that, without Christ, we are lost. I think that this is one of the most unfortunate things to have ever happened to the Western religious mind. The law you see, is a blessing. The laws of God, the ten commandments, are not cruel task masters. Their purpose is not to whip and beat us. Their purpose is not to simply show us that we have to believe in Jesus, whatever that means, in order to go to Heaven. No, the Bible is very clear. The purpose of the law is to help human beings and to enable us to live long, happy, fulfilled lives. If you read the book of Deuteronomy, you will find that God says, "I have given you these laws that you might live." They're not too hard. They're here so that you might live and prosper. Through the course of time, the law became overbearing for people, demanding endless actions and following the tiniest minutia of detail, which relieved the individual of all personal responsibility. They became such a burden that, in essence, the baby was tossed out with the bathwater. We renounced all law. We have much the same situation in America today, where our endless bureaucracy is making life so increasingly difficult for normal human beings that it is impossible to comply with all of the rules and regulations which the government is seeking to heap upon our shoulders. But, it ought not be this way. What we need to do is see law as a guide. As a starting point which leads us to personal responsibility. Not to negate personal responsibility by orchestrating every tiny aspect of our lives but to encourage personal responsibility by helping us to see the value of the law. We begin with obedience. We may not understand, we may not feel good, but through obedience we bring our actions in accordance with the law. If we are following a benevolent law, a proper law, a law of God, then through the course of time, we see the advantages of that law and we begin to internalize that law. This is a key aspect. Religion begins as an external force. Your parents tell you that you will go to Sunday school. God tells you, you will do this, you will do that. Through obedience, the obedience which Jesus had on that cross, we see the value and the worth of that law. As a result, what starts out on the inside of us, becomes internalized, and we like it. We see its value. To return to the previous illustration, if we had a society only of "obey-ers", walking around as I said, leaving each other alone, not hurting anyone, but still with all this anger and hatred in their hearts, the ultimate result would be that the hatred and anger in their hearts would go away. Because people, through obeying, would not be performing those deeds which anger us and fill us full of hate. We would see that the other person is really fine, is not a problem, and eventually the love and peace would begin to develop. That is the power of obedience. That is the first thing that
we can learn through this cross. It was necessary for Jesus to
obey. And we ought not think that we are greater than He is. If
He had not obeyed then that entire well spring of inspiration and
truth which we now have in His passion would have been denied to
us. Obedience is good, obedience is necessary. |
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