"A New Season"
"Identity" (Relational Truth: part 8)
St. John exhorts the true child of God
to a conquering faith: "And the victory that conquers the world is our faith"
(1 John 5:4). This faith is a belief in Jesus as the Son of God. Jesus
conquered the world--saved the world--through obedient love. Sin had
entered the world through the disobedience of Adam and Eve, and sin has been in
the world ever since. True children of God are in the world too, yet
we are not of the world. We belong to God, and we are to share in the
obedience of the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.
A true barometer of one's identity as
a child of God--a true son or daughter of the Father--is obedience. For,
obedience is God's will for us just as holiness is God's will for us (see Thes. 4:3). In fact, without obedience there can be no
authentic holiness. Hence, St. Peter says, "Like obedient children...be
holy yourselves in every aspect of your conduct" (1 Pet. 1:14,15).
The Catechism of the Catholic Church
states that "obedience is submission to the authority of God" (CCC (glossary),
p.889). "Obedience is the submission of [the human person] to the will of God"
(Dictionary of Biblical Theology, p. 397), and God's will contains His
Authority. True children of God recognize the authority of God every where and desire to submit to it: "For there is no
authority except from God and those that exist have been established by
God" (Rom. 13:1).
St. Paul begins his letter to the
Romans by speaking of "the obedience of faith": "Faith is not obedience, but
it is its secret; obedience is the sign and the fruit of faith" (Dictionary
of Biblical Theology, p. 397). Obedience is also the sign and fruit of
authentic love. Jesus tells his disciples, "whoever loves me will keep
my word...and the word you hear is not mine but that of the Father..."
(John 14:23,24). God asks of us a 'heart-felt- obedience. Just as one "believes
with the heart" (Rom.10:10), and one loves with the heart, one also obeys from
the heart: "You have become obedient from the heart" (Rom. 6:17).
The Father delights in our
obedience--and who of us does not want to please the Father?!: "Does the
LORD so delight in holocausts and sacrifices as in obedience to the
command of the LORD?" (1 Sam. 15:22). Honestly, if the winds and the sea obey
the command of Jesus, how much more should a true child of the Father submit
one's intellect and free will to the Lord?: "What sort of man is this, whom
even the winds and the sea obey?" (Mt. 8:27). Jesus always lived in the
world under the Authority of the Father, and it was the driving desire and joy
of Jesus to please the Father in all things. Is it my desire as well?
Questions:
1) Do
I desire to submit to authority at all times?
2) Like
Jesus, is it my desire to please the Father in all things?
Scriptures:
Any scripture from the text; Ex.19:5; Joshua 24:24; Luke
2:51; Heb. 13:17
