"Elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through sanctification of the Spirit, unto
obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ" (1 Peter 1:2).

It is essential for the true character of our path as Christians that we should lay hold of what this
obedience of the Lord Jesus Christ was. The character of Christ’s obedience was different from
legal obedience. If my child wants to do something, and I forbid it, and the child promptly obeys,
I speak of its ready obedience. Christ never obeyed in this way; He never had a desire checked
by an imposed law. It was never needed to say to Him, "Thou shalt not," when He willed to do
something. He acted because the Father willed it. That was His motive, the only cause of His
acting. He lived by every word that proceeded out of the mouth of God. When there was none,
He had nothing to do. Hence the will of God, whatever it was, was His rule.

This is the true character of the obedience of Jesus Christ and of our obedience as Christians_that
the will of God is the reason, the motive, for doing a thing. We are sanctified to the obedience of
Jesus Christ, to obey as He obeyed. When Satan came and said to Him, "Command that these
stones be made bread" (Matt. 4:3), He answers, "Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every
word … of God" (verse 4). His actual Me, as carried out in conduct, flowed from the Word of
God, which was His motive for doing it; if He had not that, He had no motive. If I have no motive
but, my Father’s will, how astonishingly it simplifies everything! If you never thought of doing
a thing unless it was God’s positive will that you should do it, surely three-quarters of your
questions and perplexities would at once disappear! This is the practical truth as to ourselves; yet
we clearly see that such was the obedience of Christ.

This, too, is the principle of real godliness, because it keeps us in constant dependence upon God,
and constant reference to God. It is an amazing comfort for my soul to think that there is not a
single thing all through my Me in which God as my Father has not a positive will about me to
direct me; that there is not a step from the moment I am born (though while we are unconverted
we understand nothing about it) in which there is not a positive path or will of God to direct me
here. I may forget it and fail, but we have in the Word and will of God that which keeps the soul,
not in a constant struggle against one thing and another, but in the quiet consciousness that the
grace of God has provided for everything_that I do not take a step that His love has not provided
for. It keeps the soul in the sweet sense of divine favor and in dependence upon God, so that like
David we can say, "Thy right hand upholdeth me." Moses does not say, "Show me a way through
the wilderness," but "Show me now thy way" (Exod. 33:13). A man’s ways reveal what he is;
Gods way shows what He is.

In its path the heart gets separated more and more intelligently to God, and gets to understand
what God is. If I know that God likes this and likes that along my path, it is because I know what
He is; and besides its being the right path and causing us thus to grow in intelligent holiness of
life, there is godliness in it too. The constant referring of the heart affectionately to God is real
godliness and we have to look for that. We have it perfectly in our Lord:"I knew," He says, "that
Thou hearest Me always" (John 11:42). There is the confidence of power and reference to God
with confiding affection. If I know that it is His path of goodness, His will that is the source of

everything to me, there is then the cultivation of a life consistent in its ways with God; communion
is uninterrupted because the Spirit is not grieved. This is the obedience of Jesus Christ, to which
we are set apart.

(From "The Path and Character of the Christian," in Collected Writings , Vol. 16.)