River Road Church Baptist

April 2, 2006
Dr. Michael J. Clingenpeel

“An Obedient Life”

No writer in the New Testament places more emphasis on the humanity of Jesus than the author of Hebrews.

He had a reason, of course. He wanted his hearers and readers to know that they were not alone in the choices that determined their futures. There is one who had gone before them, who wore their sandals, who lived inside their skin. Jesus may have been appointed by God but Jesus was one of us. He is the perfect bridge that connected the two distant shorelines between God and humanity, heaven and earth, eternity and time.

Few moments in the ministry of Jesus capture his whole humanity more poignantly and more accurately than the moments Jesus spent in the garden at Gethsemane on the night before his death at the cross.

Fred Craddock has written that “the point in Jesus’ life that most poignantly touches our own is this time of fervent prayer. His kneeling beside us as we offer up loud cries and tears is already itself an answer to prayer.”

Perhaps that’s why the writer of this letter to a congregation he calls ‘the Hebrews’ says these words: “In the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications with loud cries and tears to the one who was able to save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverent submission. Although he was a son he learned obedience through what he suffered. And having been made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him.”

The phrase in our text that captured my attention this week is the phrase that ‘Jesus learned obedience’. How is it that Jesus learned obedience in the garden of Gethsemane? Is it possible that Jesus had not learned obedience prior to Gethsemane, or what new did Jesus learn about obedience in Gethsemane?

Of course it is obvious that Jesus was not disobedient prior to the garden at Gethsemane. When Jesus was 12 he disappeared from his parents. They located their son in the temple where he was confounding the rabbis with his wisdom. Jesus then returned to Nazareth and in the words of Luke, “Jesus was obedient to them”. Already at age 12 Jesus was obedient to his parents.

Then the apostle Paul writes to the Christians at Philippi that the incarnation of Jesus was an act of obedience. “Jesus emptied himself”, writes Paul, “taking on the form of a slave, being found in human likeness, and then, found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death – even death on a cross.”

So what does it mean that Jesus learned obedience in Gethsemane? Perhaps what it means is that Jesus learned the consequences of obedience, of submitting oneself fully to God. What is it that happens in a person’s life when he or she submits himself in total, unreserved obedience to God?

The writer of Hebrews suggests two things. One is that prayers are answered, but not always with the answer we want. Prayer, at the heart of it, is conforming our will to the will of God, not God to our will.

When I was a seminary student I remember hearing Bishop Stephen Neill of the Anglican Church, a priest and theologian, who addressed the students in chapel. He began with the best and simplest definition of prayer I have ever heard. Six words. “Prayer is an act of surrender.”

Jesus’ prayer in Gethsemane was honest, human and humble. It was there that Jesus knelt alone with God. The outcome of his ministry was still undecided. At that point I don’t believe Jesus was shadow-boxing. Jesus could still have said ‘no’ to God. He could still have thwarted the divine purpose. Jesus still could have maneuvered around the confrontation with the ruling authorities. But it was there that Jesus submitted himself to whatever it was that was ahead of him in the providence of God. “Not my will but your will be done,” he cried.

That’s not an easy prayer to utter. Jesus, says the writer of Hebrews, offered that prayer and supplication with loud cries and tears. You recall from the gospels that it says Jesus sweated great drops of blood at the moment of that prayer. Prayer is an act of surrender, and better than anywhere else Jesus learned it in the garden.

The other thing that Jesus learned there is that when we are obedient to God we are not exempt from suffering. But somehow our suffering can serve the purposes of God. No human being was more faithful than Jesus. Even so, Jesus suffered at the hands of his enemies, with the abandonment of his friends, and ultimately by the abandonment of God.

So being obedient does not exempt you and me from suffering. I do not understand that. It is difficult to find words to grapple and explain that. But in a way that is difficult to explain, suffering can have a redemptive purpose in the lives of those who are obedient to God. It is even possible in moments that we serve God best by our sufferings.

The writer of Hebrews ends his lesson with a challenge. He says, “He became the source of eternal salvation to all who obey him”. The challenge is to live an obedient life, obedient to God. We are promised salvation if we model the same kind of obedience Jesus demonstrated there at the garden.

Several years ago Dallas Willard wrote a book entitled The Divine Conspiracy. And in that book he calls our attention to Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, particularly that point where Jesus talked about there being two ways, a narrow way and a broad way. The narrow way is the way that leads to life. The broad way is the way that leads to destruction. The narrow way is the way that comes by our obedience. Willard says “the essential task of the church in the 21 st century is to be able to combine faith and obedience.” We need to do more than just believe in Jesus. We also need to do what Jesus says.

And so the invitation that the writer of Hebrews gives us in this Lenten season is to learn obedience, and in learning obedience then to live an obedient life to God.

May we pray: The word obedience does not bring happy thoughts to us because in the saying of it and the doing of it we must acknowledge that we are not the Lord of our lives but that someone else is. And so, O God, when we confess that Jesus is our Lord, we pray that we might find along with it the joy and the transformation and the life itself that comes from being obedient to you. Through Christ we pray, Amen.