Archived Articles by Father Rob Smith

How Does God Motivate Christians?

How you answer that question will uncover what kind of God you have. We are surrounded by religious groups whose view of God is essentially punitive, a kind of carrot and stick view of Christian life. If you are obedient you get the carrot, if you are disobedient you get the stick. That may be defensible from some interpretations of the Old Testament, but it is hard to derive it from a balanced view of the teachings of Jesus. The only time in the gospels that Jesus actually used the word "obey" was in the parable of the mulberry tree in Luke 17:6, "If you have faith as a mustard seed, you can say to this mulberry tree, 'Be pulled up by the roots and be planted in the sea,' and it would obey you."

It is not that we are excused from obedience in the teachings of Jesus, but that His whole approach was different: "'You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.' This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like it: 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets."

What the Sermon on the Mount and the teachings of the Epistles of Paul make clear is that the obedience demanded by the law in the Old Testament is not a possibility for God's people. God provides a very different solution. "For as by one man's disobedience many were made sinners, so also by one Man's obedience many will be made righteous" (Romans 5:19). In recent reading I ran into the assertion that "Because God is just, He must punish His people who are unfaithful and disobedient." That is partially true, but the punishment falls on Jesus not on the believer.

For us obedience and disobedience have to find another entirely different resolution and that resolution is Jesus. A friend of mine summed up the Old Testament approach this way: "God says, 'My children make me angry so I will beat them,' then later God says, 'Well, that didn't work very well. I'll try something else.'" That something else is Jesus His Son. God stopped offering the carrot of blessings for our obedience and the stick of curses for our disobedience, and instead sent Jesus to die for us and to rise again from the dead.

Obedience is ultimately important but it comes as a love response to the work of Jesus on our behalf. In Ephesians 2:8-10 Paul says, "For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast. For we are His workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them." Some people want to interpret that as, "we are justified by faith, but if we don't do this, or we don't do that, God will punish us." That is just another variant on the heresy of justification by works. Only one thing brings obedience and ensuing good works and that is "faith working through love" (Gal. 5:7).

The transformation of human personality and the growth of obedience don't come from the carrot and stick approach, but as a natural result of our relationship with God. The secret of this transformation is in 2 Corinthians 3:18, "We all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as by the Spirit of the Lord."

What kind of God do you have? The punitive carrot and stick God is not the God of the New Testament. Our God calls us to an obedience born of love, and by faith and grace gradually transforms us so that the obedience of love becomes the natural response of our lives. ~ Father Rob +

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