Hebrews 5:8

Hebrews 5:8

A lesson in obedience

Some of us may have had strict parents who believed in discipline and physical punishment. Some who are older may also remember the days when schoolteachers had canes and did not shrink from using them! Proverbs 13:24 says, “He who withholds his rod hates his son, but he who loves him, disciplines him diligently.” The word “diligently” is very important here!

The thing is, our Bibles teach us that Yeshua was without sin, and yet His Father chose to teach Him obedience through suffering! To make sense of this we need to understand that true obedience means more than just “do as I say or you will face the consequences!” Jesus did not have a struggle trying to keep His rebellious nature under control and neither did He behave as if doing what His Father required was against His own will! He learned, as a child, to obey His parents and then as He grew up, He was taught the Law of God. When questioned by John about baptism, Jesus replied that He must be baptized “in order to fulfil all righteousness.” Matthew 3:15. In other words, it was an act of obedience. What Jesus was doing was experiencing what we humans experience, learning our ways, understanding our faults and weaknesses, going through the same trials and tests that we go through, in order that He might fully understand what it costs to be human and then to be obedient to God. Obedience grows in intensity in direct relation to the tests that it must pass. Obedience can only be born out of faith, and in completely fulfilling His Father’s will to the point of surrendering to death, Jesus Christ shows us that not only was He fully human, but that His faith in His Father and the tasks assigned to Him were the greatest tests that any man could endure. Thus, His obedience shines as a beacon to us all. Undoubtedly, this was the reason why some of His most devoted followers were willing to be martyred for their faith. For them martyrdom was the ultimate test of their obedience and the complete surrender of their rebellious human natures to God. Would we be prepared to go this far to prove our obedience?

 

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