Love Grows Along the Path of Obedience

There are a lot of people, more than would care to admit it, who have gotten what they know about Love and Life from pop songs and television shows. Could I suggest that maybe those are not the best sources for information on Love and Life? Most of what we hear about Love is garbage. It’s time to sift through the refuse and hold on to what is true and pure.

John the Apostle writes in chapter four of this letter,

“Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. . .”

Because we have been fed less than stellar stuff on love by our culture, we have get behind the words here. Is John telling us to be nice to each other? Is he telling us to feel a certain way? Well, he may be, but he is telling us more than that. In fact, John makes it clear what he means by loving each other.

“By this we may be sure that we know God, if we keep his commandments. He who says “I know him” but disobeys his commandments is a liar, and the truth is not in him.” 2.3-4

“By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and obey his commandments. For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments.” 5.2-3

The one who loves, obeys.
When you choose to love someone you choose to voluntarily limit yourself. You limit our options and your freedom. This is not imposed on you. You impose it on yourself, because of love. The person who will never receive correction, never compromise, never submit in obedience is a person who does not love, or maybe, loves no one but themselves.

This is a lesson that we strive to teach our children. When the parent took the paddle to the child, the old saw went, “Son, this hurts me more than it hurts you.” In other words, I’m doing this difficult thing to help you. You’ll thank me later.” We provide boundaries and rules for our kids when they are too young to provide them for themselves. Every home needs boundaries and rules.

Cesar Millan has proven that. Do you know who he is? Cesar Millan talks to dogs. He is the Dog Whisperer. Millan is called that because he seems to have an almost supernatural ability to communicate and train problem dogs. Millan says that often, where there is a problem dog, there are problem people. Millan was called into the home of a Chihuahua named Bandit. He was a little thing but he was a terror, threatening people and other dogs. His owner was Lori who had a husband and a son. Lori would let Bandit sleep under her shirt every night. Millan asked Lori if her husband was okay with that. Her reply was, “Well, he is our baby.” Lori had Bandit on her lap and her son, Tyler, was sitting next to her. Tyler reached over to try to pet Bandit and Bandit lept up and attacked the boy, snapping and growling. Lori reached out and held the dog and caressed him soothingly.

At this point, Millan took charge. “Enough with the dogs attacking humans and nobody really blocking him.. The dog is only becoming more narcissistic. It is all about him. He owns you.” Millan was angry now. “It seems like you are favoring the dog. If Tyler kicked your dog you would correct him. The dog is biting your son, and you are not correcting the dog. . .I love dogs. I’m the dog whisperer. You follow what I’m saying? But I would never choose a dog over my son.”

We’ve grown afraid of discipline. We don’t discipline ourselves and we don’t expect discipline out of others. We have a muddled notion that somehow all discipline is cruel and unloving. Discipline and obedience are not the opposites of love but in fact, when used properly, the very expression of Love. Jesus tells a story about a father and two sons. The father went to the first son and said, “Son, go work in my vineyard today.” The son answered, “No thanks dad. I have other things to do.” But then, the son later changed his mind and went and did the work. The father went to the second son and said the same and the second son answered, “Yes, certainly I will go father,” but then never showed up for the work. “Which of these two sons,” Jesus asks, “did the will of his father?”


Notice that Love and Obedience do not depend on how we feel in a given moment. Sometimes the choice of obedience is a painful one. But that is sign, not of disapproval or aggression, but of care and love.


“It is for discipline that you have to endure. God is treating you as sons; for what son is there whom his father does not discipline? . . . for the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant; later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.” Hebrews 12.7,11

We are trained by obedience. Sort of like a dog. But don’t let that notion offend you. Most everything that is good is worth training for. We who have been born into this nature bent on sinning have been precondition, pretrained, to be selfish and disobedient to God and to others. We need retrained in Kingdom values and Kingdom living. Eugene Peterson writes that what is needed is “a long obedience in the same direction.” He borrowed the phrase from Nietzsche, of all people. The quote is this:

“The essential thing “in heaven and earth” is. . . that there should be long obedience in the same direction; there thereby results, and has always resulted in the long run, something which has made life worth living.”

Peterson adds this from Jeremiah, “If you have raced with men on foot, and they have wearied you, how will you compete with horses?”

Our world has this assumption that anything worthwhile can be acquired at once. We assume that if something can be done at all, it can be done quickly and efficiently. Our attention spans have been conditioned by thirty-second commercials. But who will take the path of a long obedience in the direction that Jesus leads us?

“Do not love the world or the things in the world. . .for all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the pride of life, is not of the Father but is of the world. And the world passes away, and the lust of it; but he who does the will of God abides for ever.” 1 John 2.15-17


John’s letter, like Paul’s to the Corinthians, ought to be known as “the Love Letter.” John teaches us that daily obedience and responsibility to God and others is the way of love. Obedience teaches us more about love than any emotion, poem, song, card, or oath. Picking up dirty socks. Picking up milk. Extending patient courtesy, showing honor and respect – these are the building blocks of Love. These are Cupid’s arrows. A wise man once wrote, “It is not Love that sustains a marriage. It is the marriage that will sustain your Love.” Ted Haggard was a successful pastor of evangelical megachurch. He was president of the National Association of Evangelicals. Lots of important people listened to what Haggard had to say. But Haggard was living a secret life of adultery and drugs. It his sin, as sin always does, came out. Haggard’s world came crashing down. But a couple years removed from this meltdown, Haggard and his wife appeared on Oprah the other day and talked about how they have learned to love and trust each other again. Haggard said, “I don’t ask my wife to trust me blindly. I have to earn her trust.” And he went on to list some of the rules and boundaries he lives by now. He was careful to add, “these are not imposed on me by my wife, like a sentence. I freely choose to do them out of love for her and she for me.”

The point of boundaries and rules are not the rules themselves, but the kind of person they are helping us become. Dallas Willard asks these two questions when he wants to measure his spiritual health:

“Am I growing more or less easily irritated these days?”
“Am I growing more or less easily discouraged these days?”

There is a pain and duty in obedience. But the person who commits their way to the long obedience finds that duty yields deeper and richer experiences in life. Joy shines through this path. Duty becomes delight.