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1 John 5:3
This is love for God: to obey his commands. And
his commands are not burdensome.
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April
22
Obedience is Love
While we do not earn our salvation by following
the law, nor can we repay God by later doing
good, we are still meant to follow God's
commands.
Some people approach Christianity as a list of
do's and do-not-do's but it is much more than
that. We should not obey the commands that
God has for us simply out of necessity but
because we love Him and want to make Him happy.
Our relationship with God is similar to a
marriage in this respect. There are
certain things that are expected by spouses.
Clean up after ourselves, show affection, take
care of the other when they are sick, pay
attention to the other's needs, etc.
Husbands and wives can methodically go through
and do everything to make their marriage work
but most people only pay attention to these
things when they are having trouble in their
marriage. The reason is, when the
relationship is going well, these things happen
automatically without thinking. Only when
things sour do we have to think back to what
made it work previously.
Likewise, what we do for God should be done
automatically out of love. The more we
love Him, the more we'll want to obey Him and
we'll do it without thinking. When our
relationship falls off track we'll notice that
we haven't been obeying as we should but if we
dig deeper, we'll realize that really we haven't
been loving as we should. |
