Why Obey?

I can’t find my copy of C. S. Lewis’ Mere Christianity. If you could see my bookcase, you would not be surprised. Imagine packing for a 2 month voyage in an overnight bag. That’s my bookshelf. It overflows.

Somewhere, though, is Mere Christianity. We read it as a Sunday school class years ago, and I thought it was (and still think it is, even though I can’t find it) a wonderful book. One of the ideas which really stuck with me was Lewis’ idea that we have an inborn awareness of right and wrong. For him, it was this awareness which is one of the hallmarks of God’s creation and his presence.

I wish I could quote him.

Yesterday, I wrote about the availability of forgiveness. According to that post, forgiveness is available for everyone for everything. If that is true, then the question becomes “Why obey?” What is the motivation to do what God tells us to do? As one of the gentlemen in the class said, “Where is the moral code?”

One of the scriptures we studied on Wednesday was from Romans 7:5-7 – this is part of it:

The law code had a perfectly legitimate function. Without its clear guidelines for right and wrong, moral behavior would be mostly guesswork. Apart from the succinct, surgical command, "You shall not covet," I could have dressed covetousness up to look like a virtue and ruined my life with it.

The law exists so that we have a moral guideline; I agree with Paul. I also agree with Lewis, that we have an inborn, God-given sense of right and wrong. We ignore it, but it exists. One of the members of the class said that we know right from wrong, deep down, where the “ought” lives.

The problem with the law is that times we become legalistic, when we need to be grace-filled. Jesus told us that the greatest law of all was to love God and to love each other. If we do that, I really believe that the rest will take care of itself. As one person in class said, we will obey the law, and treat each other as God wants us to, because we wouldn’t treat people we love otherwise.

Just as our love for each other should motivate us to treat each other in a Christ-like manner, our love for God should create in us a response to do as God would have us to do. We are motivated by a need to please him, because we love him.

God tried it the other way. He gave us the law in the Old Testament, but we were not able to “get” it. We disobeyed. We still disobey. To leave us without forgiveness, or to give us only a forgiveness that we must earn, would be to lose us. So God took a risk. He gave us grace. He opened up his heart, and showed it to us, and said, spreading his arms wide, “I love you this much – more than you can even imagine. I will not lose you, so I will take the risk that you will love me, too. You are forgiven.” And he awaits our response.

Image: One I found on my hard drive this evening - I may even have posted it before, but I like it.