Learning Obedience

One way or another, everyone goes through some kind of suffering. It may be mild, it may be acute, but it can’t be avoided. Elsewhere, the author of Hebrews reminds us that Jesus’ suffering means that, as our Great High Priest, He understands and empathises with our painful experiences (Hebrews 2:17). Isaiah foretold that in His suffering He would bear the pain of ours (Isaiah 53:4-5). But here we are told something else: that through His suffering Jesus learned obedience.

This doesn’t mean that Jesus had to learn how to be obedient. But He did have to experience the fact that obedience to God in a disobedient world is going to be costly. And, like us, He was always free to choose whether or not to go the costly way. So, He did learn what the consequences of obedience were.

Meditating on this, I began to think through my own hard times. Some of them were undoubtedly the inevitable result of bad attitudes, sinful choices and lack of discernment – in other words, disobedience. I can look back and say, “That’s where I went wrong. That’s what I must avoid in the future.” But this was never the case with Jesus because He never sinned. None of His suffering was the result of disobedience. Quite the opposite. If He had disobeyed His Father’s will, He would have avoided a great deal of pain.

But every moment of difficulty and pain that Jesus endured strengthened His determination to be obedient to His Father’s will, come what may, because that was where He experienced His Father’s faithfulness.

Years ago, I used to row competitively. Training, particularly after a lazy summer holiday, was something that could be described as ‘suffering’. How well I remember aching legs, back and arms as I fought to get my body back into shape ready for the challenges of the racing season. And we won races! Just like every one of us, Jesus’ suffering prepared Him for the greatest challenge and the greatest victory of all – the cross. How He dreaded it! But, in the Garden of Gethsemane, He was able to say, “Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me. Yet not my will but yours be done” (Luke 22:42).

There will often be a cost for obedience. Each time we go through what it costs in terms of loss and suffering, we discover (just as Jesus did) that God is faithful and, through it, will bring us into the fullness of what He has for us. In that way we too ‘learn obedience’.