Why Partial Obedience Is Disobedience
Obedience Is Hard
Do you find joy in obeying your Lord? Do you treasure his commands? Do you recognize the protective wisdom of the boundaries he has set for you? Do you really believe that God’s way is always the best way? Do you pick and choose which commands you obey? Are there moments when your behavior is formed more by your passions than by God’s commands? Regardless of how correct your theology might be, at street level do you love your way more than God’s? In what ways are you tempted to debate the wisdom of God’s law? Do you use the grace of forgiveness as an excuse for stepping outside God’s moral boundaries? Are you content with partial obedience? Do you respond to or resist the conviction of the Lord?
At the beginning of the book of Judges, we are greeted with a problem that will haunt the children of Israel, cause them generations of difficulty, and necessitate the loving discipline of the Lord. The problem is partial obedience. God’s children start down the moral pathway he had commanded them to walk, but they fail to complete the journey. There are a variety of excuses for partial obedience. Obedience is hard and requires personal sacrifice. It requires really believing that God is wise and that what he calls us to is always best. Obedience requires us to confess that we are not at the center of everything—God is, so life is about his will and his glory. Obedience requires resisting the temporary pleasures of sin. Partial obedience is not obedience at all; rather, it is dressed-up disobedience. Pay attention to what is said of Israel in Judges 2:1–3:
Everyday Gospel
Paul David Tripp
In the Everyday Gospel devotional, Paul David Tripp leads readers through the entire Bible in a year, helping you connect the transforming power of Scripture to your everyday life.
Now the angel of the Lord went up from Gilgal to Bochim. And he said, “I brought you up from Egypt and brought you into the land that I swore to give to your fathers. I said, ‘I will never break my covenant with you, and you shall make no covenant with the inhabitants of this land; you shall break down their altars.’ But you have not obeyed my voice. What is this you have done? So now I say, I will not drive them out before you, but they shall become thorns in your sides, and their gods shall be a snare to you.”
God had given Israel a job to do; they were to drive the pagan nations completely out of the promised land. But they did not complete the job. Yes, they fought many battles, but they ended up settling for living in and among these pagan nations with their false gods. In a real way, the rest of the drama, the spiritual struggle, and the discipline of the Lord that are so much of the content of the Old Testament have their roots right here. This passage also points us to the necessity of the gift of Jesus. He was sent to obey completely on our behalf, precisely because God knew that sin, somehow, someway, and at some time, makes us all too satisfied with partial obedience. He is our righteousness, because our righteousness is often incomplete.
This article is adapted from Everyday Gospel: A Daily Devotional Connecting Scripture to All of Life by Paul David Tripp.
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