“He learned obedience” (Hebrews 5:8)
Let us look at our Lord’s life to see what true obedience can teach us. First, it is clear that he lived his life in a close personal relationship to God – his and our heavenly Father. Unless we have similar access to His abiding fellowship with God – with the three in one God via the Holy Spirit — all our attempts to live in full obedience will fail. It is God’s holy presence, consciously abiding with us, that guides us as He keeps us steadfastly obeying Him.
Flawed obedience is always the result of a defective abiding in the Lord’s presence. A life entirely under the power of God’s Spirit allows for obedience to flow to us as living water – and our thoughts and actions are its natural unified outcome. The defective life must be acknowledged, then admitted to God, with no delusional, self-justifying escape – it is confessedly a life of broken, irregular fellowship with God. It is a life that must be healed, must make way for a full and healthy spiritual life; then only can full obedience become possible. The secret of true obedience is the return to close and continual fellowship with God.
The author of Hebrews noted that Christ “learned obedience.” And why was it necessary for Christ to present his obedience as learned obedience? What do we learn from observing our Lord’s life as he neared his death on the cross? What is the blessing He brings us? Mark these words: “Even though Jesus was God’s Son, he learned obedience from the things he suffered. In this way, God qualified him as a perfect High Priest, and he became the source of eternal salvation for all those who obey him.” (Hebrews 5:8-9 NLT)
Suffering is unnatural to us who live in this human flesh – it calls for the surrender of our will. To surrender our will entirely to God is a pivotal shifting of our mindset, psychological suffering as we deal with the temptation to disobey. This is because, all our life we have lived in inherited disobedience, as the first Adam’s progeny.
As our High Priest, who would soon become our advocate at the right hand of God, Christ needed a demonstrable rejection of earthy leadership – a highly evident public form of suffering that the people would understand as a contradistinction to His love – that in Gethsemane He might appear to us, to learn to obey, to give up His will to the Father at any cost – on our behalf in the final act of redemption of mankind. “Not my will, but thy will be done”. As we know Jesus suffered injustice when the leaders and the people cried out: crucify Him. Nothing touches man’s conscience to unite with God. Injustice by the evils of fallen mankind contrasted with the beauty of a life of love and kindness as displayed by our Lord whilst he walked on earth.
He needed to learn obedience, that, as our great High Priest, as the final proving, that He might be exemplified as our teacher, as our exemplar, as absolutely perfect. He learned obedience, He became obedient unto death, that He might become the author of our salvation. He became the author of salvation through obedience, that He might save those ‘who obey Him.’
Obedience, was with Him, absolutely necessary to demonstrate; it is with us absolutely necessary to inherit, salvation from sin. The very essence of salvation is—obedience to God. Christ as the obedient One saves us as His obedient ones. Whether in His suffering on earth or in His glory in heaven, whether in Himself or in and through us, obedience is what the heart of Christ is set upon.
On earth Christ was a learner in the school of obedience; in heaven, He teaches it to His disciples here on earth. In a world where disobedience reigns unto death, the restoration of obedience is in Christ’s hands.
As in His own life, so in us, He has undertaken to maintain it. He teaches and works it in us, unto true life anew.
Let Christ Teach Us “He learned obedience.” And that learning was during his greatest trial on our behalf. And now that He teaches it, He does so first and most by unfolding the secret of His own obedience to the Father in the garden of Gethsemane. Our power of true obedience is to be found in the clear personal relationship with God. It was so with our Lord Jesus.
Observe His teaching ahead of the cross. He said: For I have not spoken on my own authority, but the Father who sent me has himself given me a commandment—what to say and what to speak. And I know that his commandment is eternal life. What I say, therefore, I say as the Father has told me.” (John 12: 49-50; see also John 8:28, 5:30, 8:16)
Dependence upon a present fellowship and operation of God, a hearing and a seeing of what God speaks and does and shows, is what He taught prior to the cross; and this continued in Gethsemane and as Christ hung on the cross.
Our Lord spoke of His relation to the Father as the type and the promise of our relation to Him, and to the Father through Him. With us as with Him, the life of continual obedience is impossible without continual fellowship and continual teaching. It is only when God comes into our lives, in a degree and a power which many never consider possible — when His presence as the Eternal and Ever-present One is believed and received, even as the Son believed and received it, that there can be the hope of a life in which every thought is brought into captivity to the obedience of Christ.
The church has a need for this continual teaching. The imperative need of the continual receiving our orders and instructions from God Himself is what is implied in the words: “This means that God’s holy people must endure persecution patiently, obeying his commands and maintaining their faith in Jesus” (Revelation 14:12 NLT)
With the commander of an army, the teacher of a school, the father of a family, it is not the code of laws, however clear and good, with its rewards or threats, that secures true obedience. Rather it is the personal living influence, wakening love and enthusiasm; it is the joy of ever hearing the Father’s voice, that will give the joy and the strength of true obedience. It is the voice that gives the power to obey the word; the word without the living voice does not avail.
We must learn to listen to what the Word of God speaks to us in our devotions, and like Christ, we can hear, follow and obey our God. We must allow the Spirit of the Lord to speak to us intimately, as we abide in Him.
Modified edits by Glen Jackman: Andrew Murray, The School of Obedience, pp 41-47