The Heirarchy of Obedience

Acts 5:29

“But Peter and the other apostles answered and said, ‘We ought to obey God rather than men” (NKJV)

What we obey makes who we are. When we are primarily obedient to the things of man, then we become sinful because we fall into the ways of this world, but when we are truly obedient to God and follow His will, then we glorify Him. God commands us to love Him, which in turn means we should obey Him. When a husband loves their wife, he will do whatever she asks of him out of love. With this same love that obeys we should serve God.

When Christ was asked what the greatest commandment was, He answered and said “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul and all your mind’… And the second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself”. This is our order of hierarchy of love and obedience. We first need to obey God through the love we have for Him, then we can love others and obey them. If we are asked to obey God or men, we are commanded to obey God; for we need to ‘obey God rather than men’.

I love the Lord with all my heart, but I don’t always obey Him. Sometimes I have even only obeyed God out of fear and not wanting to be punished. God is all powerful and entirely independent, but we should not get caught up in that type of thinking. We, as trees, need to be deeply rooted in God’s love; for this is what allows us to stay upright in hard times. Through this over abundant love we shall obey God and then obey men.

To work on being obedient, today whenever I am asked to do something and be obedient, I am going to pray to God first for His love and then pray a prayer of love for the person who asked me to complete the task.