“Unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ” (1 Peter 1:2).
The character of this obedience involves the whole principle and blessedness of the Christian position and the life which belongs to it. In this passage the words “obedience” and “sprinkling of the blood” equally depend on “of Jesus Christ,” and this brings out the distinct character of the obedience. For the nation of Israel, the condition of entrance into blessing was obedience to the law, to which they were bound by the blood which Moses sprinkled upon the people (Ex. 24:68). For the Christian, it is a wholly contrasted character of obedience — “of Jesus Christ” — that is, to obey as He obeyed. The blood of Jesus Christ, instead of establishing the authority of the law by a death penalty on disobedience, becomes the delivering power for an obedience after the pattern of His own.
The Man in the Flesh
The law was addressed to man in the flesh, but we know that it is “enmity against God,” so that “they that are in the flesh cannot please God.” The obedience of Christ is in total contrast to this. He obeyed the law perfectly, but not as having to be forbidden what He desired. “Then said I, Lo, I come: in the volume of the book it is written of Me, I delight to do Thy will, O My God: yea, Thy law is within My heart” (Psa. 40:7-87Then said I, Lo, I come: in the volume of the book it is written of me, 8I delight to do thy will, O my God: yea, thy law is within my heart. (Psalm 40:7‑8)). Neither was the character of His obedience that He gave up His own will in deference to the Father’s will, for He says, “I came down from heaven, not to do Mine own will, but the will of Him that sent Me” (John 6:3838For I came down from heaven, not to do mine own will, but the will of him that sent me. (John 6:38)). Thus we see One whose only will was to do God’s will.
The New Man
“God sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin [that is, “as a sacrifice for sin”] condemned sin in the flesh” (Rom. 8:33For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh: (Romans 8:3)). But this condemnation having taken place in the death of Him who gave Himself for me that He might be my life, I see that I am entitled to count all that took place in His death as having happened to me. Thus we know that “our old man,” that is, all we were as characterized by sin and the flesh, “has been crucified with Him that the body of sin” — its whole system and power — “might be annulled, that we should no longer serve sin” (Rom. 6:66Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin. (Romans 6:6) JND).
To Paul it is given to develop this new creation on the side of our place in Christ according to the eternal counsels of God, while in John’s epistle it is brought out on the side of Christ as our life, involving participation in the divine nature. In 1 John, then, it is not the believer now looked at as with a war of two opposed principles within him — the flesh with which he has been born into this world and the divine nature as born of God. Rather, all that is of the first man being gone in the death of Christ, God sets before us the characteristic privileges and nature of the life we have been brought into, as if we never had another.
Set Apart for Obedience
Thus we see that we have been set apart for the obedience of Christ, so that no lower character of obedience can belong to the Christian. The essential principle of the Christian position in its deepest privilege is disclosed. The life that was true in Him alone when He was here is now “true in Him and in you, because the darkness is past and the true light now shineth.” The commandments and Word that were the full expression of the life in Him are now given to direct that life in us. Whatever blessed traits of that life were expressed in Christ’s path here become His Word, with divine authority over me as His commandments too, to indicate the expression of the same life in me.
The obedience of Christ is thus a total contrast to anything presented to man before. Instead of a law acting from outside upon a nature wholly opposed to it, it is the revealed will of God, expressed in the commandments and Word of Christ, coming with authority to a nature which responds to and delights in that will and finds its liberty in obedience.
It is sweet to turn to the lowly life of Jesus, where that obedience is seen in all its perfection, even though the incomparable glory of it humbles us, and we feel more and more the poverty of all our thoughts of Him. Psalm 40, from which I have already quoted, brings us to His entrance into the place of it. The heart of God now finds its entire satisfaction in Him who says, “Mine ears hast Thou opened.”
Christ in Dependence
In Isaiah 50 we find Him come, and in the path. In what character then did He come? “The Lord Jehovah hath given Me the tongue of the instructed, that I should know how to succor by a word him that is weary. He wakeneth morning by morning, He wakeneth Mine ear to hear as the instructed. The Lord, Jehovah, hath opened Mine ear” (vss. 4-5 JND). He who was Jehovah came as a man to be dependent and obedient, looking for direction from God, with His ear wakened morning by morning to receive it. What a study for our hearts! What an obedience is thus foreshadowed—of One who alone had a right to His own will, but become man only to carry out the Father’s will!
In Philippians 2 the mind that was in Christ Jesus is to be now in us — a mind that, instead of reaching up as the first Adam to be as God, reached down until He could go down no lower. As God He emptied Himself, as man He humbled Himself, and His obedience in that place went all the way to death, even that of the cross, in which it was put to the last possible test and proved perfect—all He was thus entering into and giving its character to every step of His path. As man He was dependent and obedient, but the fact that He, in whom “all the fullness was pleased to dwell,” should take man’s subject place, to glorify God by submitting to it perfectly, gives the humiliation, and dependence and obedience displayed in it their only measure and infinite glory.
He had never before been in circumstances in which obedience could be rendered. Not that there was anything in that holy nature contrary to obedience; as we have seen, He became man only to obey, and found His sole motive for everything in obedience. But thus He learned it.
The Obedience of Christ
Do we know indeed that this is the obedience to which we have been sanctified? I am not speaking of failure in walking according to it, but have we bowed without reserve to the principle of it as proved in its absolute perfection in the blessed Lord? Then we shall know how to judge in the secret of our hearts any spring of thought or action that has not its source in God’s known will. I say known, because there is no more subtle form of temptation than when it is pressed upon us that circumstances call for action, when there is no word from God, no intimation of His will. Yet if we act without knowing God’s will, nothing can be more certain than that we are doing our own, and this is the essence of sin. “Behold obedience is better than sacrifice, attention than the fat of rams. For rebellion is as the sin of divination and self-will is as iniquity and idolatry” (1 Sam. 15:22-23 JND). Nothing in man is right except obedience. Confidence in God will be surely needed for waiting, as with the Lord, left for forty days without food, but is it a strange thing, to those who know His heart as perfectly revealed in the Son, that we should trust Him?
Love — the Spring
One more passage connects obedience with the spring of it, that, whether in Him or in us, gives it all its blessed character and acceptance—love. I refer to John 14:30-3130Hereafter I will not talk much with you: for the prince of this world cometh, and hath nothing in me. 31But that the world may know that I love the Father; and as the Father gave me commandment, even so I do. Arise, let us go hence. (John 14:30‑31). “Henceforth I will not talk much with you; for the prince of this world cometh and hath nothing in Me. But that the world may know that I love the Father, and as the Father gave Me commandment, even so I do.” What foothold could the enemy find in a life made up of nothing but love and obedience?
Satan’s Final Test
Luke brings us to the final assault of Satan; in Gethsemane, the full force of the temptation comes before us. Satan, having the power of death over man, sought to press it in that character upon Him, to deter Him from going the whole way in obedience. “Nevertheless not My will but Thine be done” records His giving Himself up to it, in the perfection of obedience here brought to its absolute and final test. Thus in infinite depths of suffering He endured the judgment of the will of the flesh that once characterized us. Oh, that in true dependence and nearness of heart to the Lord we may know how to be “always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus,” that nothing but His will-less life may be manifested in our body!
Christ Our Object
And now, in closing, I would put it to myself and to my beloved brethren—are our hearts doing always those things that please Him? It is profitable for our souls to pass our life in review before God in the light of such an obedience and consider how much of it would have been left out if Christ had been filling our hearts! Deeply humbling as such a review of the past must be to each of us, it is well if it only magnifies the grace that is in Him! If sanctified to the obedience of Jesus Christ, we may seek to realize it, not by effort but by abiding in Him. But this abiding in Him must be where He is, so as to live out nothing but that life in a sphere where everything is contrary to it. May we each one know more of such a life —Christ become everything as our object, for He is our life (Col. 3:1111Where there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, Barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free: but Christ is all, and in all. (Colossians 3:11)).
J. A. Trench, adapted