I have recently watched "A Few Good Men." It was the first time that Nicole saw it. She really like it. I want to draw a parallel.
The marines within the movie are intense. They are fanatical. About what, a character asks? About being marines. One of the main lines of argumentation in the movie is that the two lower-ranked marines should not be held responsible (or as responsible) when they performed a code red because they were ordered to do so. Tom Cruise brings out the absurdity of marines disobeying direct orders. It doesn't happen. It can't happen.
Jack Nicholson eloquently and angrily makes it evident that he lives on the front-lines, in a dangerous world where a misstep could mean lost lives. Therefore, on that basis, orders are not options. Admittedly the hierarchy was corrupt in this instance (and will often be to varying degrees in real life). Yet, the picture of absolute obedience, loyalty, and honor is instructive.
No soldier gets entangled in civilian pursuits, since his aim is to please the one who enlisted him. (2 Timothy 2:4) Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle, set apart for the gospel of god... (Romans 1:1)
We ought to see ourselves as servants and soldiers of Christ. This means that we pledge immediate, full, unconditional obedience to God. We exist to execute his will, to make him known, to glorify him by obeying him.
I think that the true nature of our situation is much nearer to Nicholson's wartime picture than we realize. We live in a universe at war. Souls hang in the balance. Evil is moving and acting. God is opposing evil in all its forms, and we are either with him or against him. Humility and truth calls us to recognize that evil rests in ourselves as well. But the Bible would have us deal with ourselves with war-like violence, cutting off the offending hand, plucking out the offending eye. Our lives are short. They are important. They are meaningful in this battle because God has chosen for it to be that way.
Therefore, when God gives orders, he means for us to follow them. Sluggish obedience is disobedience. Our obedience to God should not come at the end of a weighing of options in which I am the one in control - as if God's orders had to go through me. This type of obedience paints a poor and unworthy picture of our infinitely worthy and faithful God. Unlike Nicholson, God never gives a bad order.
I have chosen to write about this, after a long time off blogging, because I have been helped by this picture and how clear it is. I have struggled mightily with different indwelling sins. And I have sought to establish my heart in the Gospel, and I have sought to fall more in love with God, and I have dwelt on his forgiveness. I do indeed think that his love precedes our love.
The Holy Spirit through the gospel applied to my heart generates a love and faith that produces true obedience and repentance.
But to sit and wait to feel in a Gospel-mood or to wait until I feel like I am appropriately in love with God before obeying is horrible. I think the Gospel is how it works.
But I don't think - when I am faced with some temptation to sin - that I ought to sit around juggling the gospel in some detached intellectual fashion. And I know from experience that it is possible to do that. I have let love for God and his love for me become a detached intellectual game, and that does not produce holiness or repentance. It is God himself who does that. And because God is God, I owe him all my allegiance.
Therefore, the appropriate posture in life is to have my ears perked to the walkie-talkie. To be a little on edge watching the horizon for danger. To be ready in a moment's notice to do exactly as God has commanded because he is my superior. Because God is God, because he is love, every command to obey is for my good and is shaping for me an immeasurably wonderful future for him. When God calls us to a place, he provides for us there.
There is a relaxation and a relief that comes with a predetermined posture to unconditionally obey. It is a relaxed and holy attentiveness. This happens because we are becoming the sort of person who flees temptation instead of dancing around it. I know that even if I forget that particular verse, God demands that I not sin, that I must flee. God goes with me. He gives speed to my feet.
This may seem like an awkwardly lopsided post. But I am at peace with that. If you read different parts of the Bible, different parts emphasize different things. If you only read certain passages, you may sound like an Arminian. If you only read other passages you will sound like a Calvinist. If you only read Song of Solomon, who knows what you would sound like. A very strange romantic, I suppose.
Let me conclude simply. We obey God because we love him because he first loved us. Yet it is a love for God to obey even when that obedience doesn't yet feel like it is coming from love. I would rather be seen a sprinter than a tapdancer when the devil comes knocking at my heart's door.
