Christians often ask, “How did Jesus do it?” Meaning, how
did He live his live so perfectly, “without sin?” Without breaking any single
commandment.
In recent years I have been seeing that a key to Jesus’
obedience was His ability to hear His Father’s voice and thus to do His
Father’s will unblinkingly. I have tended to, in the past, think of “obedience”
as “doing the right thing,” keeping the letter of the Law, doing the opposite
of what my sinful nature wants to do. But I am discovering even further now,
this is not God’s intent. In fact, it wasn’t His intent from the very beginning
when He called his children, the nation of Israel, out of Egypt to be to Him
His “special, treasured possession.” (Exodus 19:5)
In the Biblical Hebrew language, the word we translate
“obey” primarily means “listen/hear.” I remember my mother at times very
frustrated with me as a child and saying “Why can’t you listen to me.” Well, I
was “hearing” her but I wasn't “listening.” In other words, we may hear someone
speaking but in our hearts and minds we aren’t really “listening,” we’re just doing our own thing, probably even
rebelling or thinking of some caustic retort.
Exodus 19 is the account of Moses going up on the mountain to
receive the Ten Commandments from God. It is these Ten Commandments that truly
distinguish Jews and Christians from the sinful, pagan nations. But, I am
asking here, is it “obedience to the law” that makes us Christian or Jews, like
circumcision for the Jew or tithing for the Christian? No. And it never has
been. The apostles in Acts 15:10 realized that the law was “a yoke neither we
nor our ancestors have been able to bear.” In other words, “no one can get it
right.”
How did Jesus do it? In the same way God intended from the
beginning with his people Israel as we see in Exodus 19:5 (My very literal
translation of the Hebrew): “Now” (since you’ve seen how I delivered you from
slavery in Egypt, vss 1-4), “if you listen to hear my voice and keep watch over my
covenant, you shall be to me a treasured possession” (particular, special,
protected possession).
We are not special to God because we are “good,” we are good
because we listen. Jesus listened and He did everything He saw His Father doing
and spoke only what he heard His Father saying. That's what made Him perfect.
Perfect means complete, whole, healthy, good.
Hebrews 5:8 says about Jesus, “Son though he was, he learned
obedience from what he suffered.” What? Jesus had to learn obedience from suffering?
Again, the Biblical word for obedience has the root “hear,” literally it means
“to listen under,” i.e. to hear and submit, to do what His Father was telling
him.
God said to Jesus (Hebrews 5:5) “You are my Son, today I
have become your Father.” Sons and daughters listen to their Papa. Like Jesus
we too at times “offer up prayers and petitions with fervent cries and tears”
(vs. 7) on behalf of the lost world around us, in the face of persecution or grave illness. But
even in the midst of huge suffering, even death on a cross, we can say to our
Father “into thy hands I commit my spirit” or “Father, forgive them, for they
know not what they do.”
You are God’s treasured possession! He has hidden you in His
heart, in a safe place. No matter what may be happening externally in your
life, He wants to hear your voice and you to hear His. Obedience is nothing
more than reverent, submissive listening and then doing. And as we center ourselves in Papa’s love, reverent submission becomes a joy and delight. When we are experiencing Father delighting in us, delighting
in Him comes naturally and easily. That’s how Jesus did it.
