Day 17: The Submission of the Believer | 1.20.26

Our Lord never insists on having authority over us. He never says, “You will submit to me.” No, He leaves us perfectly free to choose – so free, in fact, that we can spit in His face or we can put Him to death, as others have done; and yet He will never say a word. But once His life has been created in us through His own sacrifice to cover our transgression with His blood, I instantly recognize His right to absolute authority over me. It is a complete and effective domination, in which I acknowledge that “You are worthy, O Lord” (Revelation 4:11). Why do we resist Him? It is simply the unworthiness within me that refuses to bow down or to submit to the worthy one. When I meet someone who is more holy (set apart / revealed identity) than myself, and I don’t recognize His worthiness, nor obey His instructions for me, it is a sign of my own unworthiness being revealed. God teaches us by using people who are a little better (at trusting Him) than we are, not intellectually, but more spiritually holy. And He continues to do so until we willingly submit. Then the whole attitude of our life is one of obedience to Him.

If our Lord insisted on our obedience, He would simply become a taskmaster and cease to have any absolute authority. He never insists on our obedience, but when we truly see Him, we will instantly obey Him. Then He is easily Lord of our life, and we live in adoration of Him from morning till night. The level of my growth in grace is revealed by the way I look at obedience. We should have a much higher view of the word obedience, rescuing it from the mire of the world. Obedience is only possible between people who are equals in their relationship to each other, like the relationship between father and son, not that between master and servant. Jesus showed this relationship by saying, “I and My Father are one” (John 10:30). “Though He was a Son, yet He learned obedience by the things which He suffered” (Hebrews 5:8). The Son was obedient as our Redeemer, because He was the Son, not to become God’s Son.