Dear BPCWA worshipper, Perhaps some may groan at the title of this pastoral. The fallen nature does not like obedience. Contemporary thinking disdains obedience because they view anyone who promotes obedience as being self-centred and autocratic. What is vaunted today instead is individualism and independent thinking. We live in a society that promotes individual rights and liberties, aka “I must have a right to do whatever I want” and “be my authentic self” from the heart. We chafe against the need to obey and being “strict” is viewed negatively. The philosophies in the world are working overtime against anything that sets boundaries and rules. However, Christians must not undermine its importance. Instead, we must see obedience in biblical light. Israel was reminded, “If thou do at all forget the LORD thy God, and walk after other gods, and serve them, and worship them, I testify against you this day that ye shall surely perish. 20 As the nations which the LORD destroyeth before your face, so shall ye perish; because ye would not be obedient unto the voice of the LORD your God” (De 8:19-20). When the LORD (the covenantal Name of God) is your God, you are expected to obey His voice.

Disobedience is a sin. When God created Adam, He expected obedience from Adam, “But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die (Gen 2:17). God did not create anything evil. This tree was not intrinsically evil. God taught man what sin is – disobedience to what He says. God did not persuade Adam on what he should or should not eat from the Garden. Rather, we are told in no uncertain terms that “the LORD God commanded the man” (Ge 2:16). The word command means charge or give orders. This implicitly means that obedience is expected and not an option. Right from the beginning, God gives boundaries – commanding both the “dos” and the “don’ts” that He expected from man. The covenant of works, therefore, is a covenant requiring absolute unwavering obedience to everything that God expects of man. But we know what happened after God gave this command to Adam, because the Bible tells us “Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned” (Ro 5:12). By this, we have the very definition of sin for “Whosoever committeth sin transgresseth also the law: for sin is the transgression of the law” (1Jo 3:4).

God gives specific rules. Please remember, God did not simply say, “Just don’t sin, if you do you will surely die”. He gave a specific rule regarding a specific tree. Fallen man may not buck against general ideas of what not to do or to do. Merely mentioning general ideas gives men the leeway to define for themselves the boundary. But specific rules are definitely unwelcome. For example, today, Christians may not mind being told to keep the Lord’s Day holy unto the Lord. But the specific rules God gave are disdained, “If thou turn away thy foot from the sabbath, from doing thy pleasure on my holy day; and call the sabbath a delight, the holy of the LORD, honourable; and shalt honour him, not doing thine own ways, nor finding thine own pleasure, nor speaking thine own words” (Is 58:13). These specifics that God gives of what He considers keeping the Lord’s Day holy severely limits what man should or should not do on that day. This is not popular theology for today, but is biblical theology. Simply put, there is no hiding from the fact that disobedience to orders, commands, and laws is a sin. And fallen man hates any rules that “limit” our freedom of choice. Fallen man gets irritated at rules. We hate even rules that we know are good for others and ourselves and are not contrary to God’s laws. This is primarily because of self-will and pride in us. “I don’t mind obeying You, God, but don’t tell me exactly how”. With Adam’s disobedience, all mankind inherited this sinful nature with a tendency to disobey. The Christian who rather let his carnal flesh choose, will see specifics as restrictive rules rather than helpful and desired ways to increase sanctification. Sure, we must avoid cultish interpretations of God’s commands. But when the application of God’s principles is frequently disputed, one should check the underlying heart’s attitude toward obedience, sanctification, and consecration to God.  

Disobedience with “good” intent.  Besides “intentional” transgressions, there are sins of ignorance too. God reminds us of this when He commands the Israelites to bring sin offerings “if any soul sin through ignorance” (Nu 15:27). This means that sin goes beyond “intentional” transgressions against God’s law. Importantly, even transgressions with “good intent” are still sinful. Continuing from the account in the Garden of Eden, we know about Eve’s conversation with the serpent that led to her disobedience and she eventually led her husband to disobey. Eve had thought that “the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise” (Ge 3:6). She seemed to have good intentions in taking the fruit, for the Bible describes Eve as “the woman being deceived” while “Adam was not deceived”. Despite this, she “was in the transgression” (1Ti 2:14) and Eve sinned against God. Eve fell for the devil’s trap – disobeying God to achieve what she perceived to be good, to be “wise”. The Bible continues to warn us today of falling into the same trap, “Be not wise in thine own eyes: fear the LORD, and depart from evil.” (Pr 3:7). Eve had a perfectly sinless heart but fell into sin at the devil’s prompting. Today, mankind has a heart predisposed to sin, which does not need us to be tempted externally to fall into sin.  This is how conscious we must be of any disobedience. The subtility of Satan often leads man to think that the ends justify the means. Even if the means to achieving “godliness” is disobedience, it is still sin, simply because disobedience is the criteria of whether we have sinned or not. But Satan excused this disobedience as not being disobedience because “ye shall be as gods”, a “valid” reason for disobedience. Unbelievers have hearts that are “deceitful above all things” (Jer 17:9). Even believers must be warned not to be ignorant of Satan’s devices, but must also realise that we can easily find “excuses” to do what our heart secretly yearns to do. When we rationalise with our own wisdom, we can excuse disobedience and do what is “right in his own eyes” (De 12:8), just like in the days of the Judges.

Jg 17:6   In those days there was no king in Israel, but every man did that which was right in his own eyes.

Yours in our Lord’s service,
Pastor