Highest Motive For Obedience

“I delight to do thy will, O my God: yea, thy law is within my heart.” (Ps 40:8 AV)

There are several ways we can look at obedience.  And none of them wrong.  We can look at obedience as a means to avoid harsh consequences for failure.  That motive is fear.  We fear what will happen if we are not obedient.  That is the basic and simplest motive for walking in the law of God.  Then there is duty.  It is our obligation to do the right thing.  This is more a matter of the intellect.  It is right because it is right.  Integrity has a lot to do with this motive.  This motive finds satisfaction in accomplishing something and reaching a goal.  This is a higher motivation than fear.  But the greatest of all motivations is delight.  A simple enjoyment to please the LORD with no presumption of personal benefit.  There is personal benefit and we know this.  But the purpose is pure delight.  Simply to know that we have pleased the LORD by doing as He asks.  This is the highest form of motivation.

Few saints get to this point in their walks with God.  We all start out at level one.  This was the reason we accepted Christ to begin with.  The Holy Spirit brought us under conviction.  He revealed to us our sin and the consequences of it. The truth of a devil’s hell shook us to the core.  We were overwhelmed with guilt and fear.  This fear of consequences still continues.  No matter how old in the LORD we get, there are certain things we do not do because we fear what might come of it if we do.  As we grew in the knowledge of the word of God, the Holy Spirit convinced our minds of the holy nature of right.  We compared right from wrong and He gave us a heart that would desire to do right because we didn’t want to be wrong.  Failure was the fear hear.  Not of consequences, but of not being right.  This is where most of us reside.  But there is a greater motive offered.  The motive to please the LORD in all that we do.  The motive of delight.  Not because our bodies fear the physical consequences of sin.  Not because our minds are tormented by failure.  Rather, because our hearts wish to show our appreciate, love, and honor to the God who made and saved us!  This is our goal.