The other night I talked for a few minutes about obedience to Jesus. I discussed the fact that a big motivator to our obedience to Jesus is a love for Him and desire to please Him. Tonight I want to discuss a second motivation for obeying the words of Jesus. Loving Jesus should be the only motivation we need. If we love Jesus and desire to please Him, that is all that should drive us to obey His words. But there are many more motivations for obeying the words of Christ, and the next on the list down, should be a love for others.
Jesus commands us in Matthew 28 to go and make disciples, teaching others the words of Jesus and baptizing them in His name. If we have any love for other people we must do this command. Jesus said the 2 greatest commands are to love God with all our being and to love others more than ourselves. If we are to love others more than ourselves, we had better tell them about the greatest person and gift we know about. To obey the words of Jesus then is to tell others about Him and His greatest gift, salvation. So we must be driven to obey Jesus by the fact we love others. To love others we will show them the love of Christ, we will show them the grace of Christ, and we will show them the mercy of God. To love others will motivate us to tell them about the Gospel. To love others will move us to show compassion on them and care for them. To love others will allow us to show them, that we are no better off then them and we make just as many mistakes and sin just the same. To love others is to provide the generosity needed to give a bigger picture of our saving God. So to love others will move us to obey Christ in a fuller way. When we love others we are fulfilling all of these commands and words of Jesus.
I want to disclose though that to love others is a motivation by the Spirit in our lives and an action of those who have surrendered their lives to the control of God. Which when God controls our lives we have no choice but to obey, so in essence this motivation for obedience is a motivation from God within us.
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