DISOBEDIENCE shows itself in many ways in this sinful world. But its most daring and hateful form is when it is manifested against God and what He has commanded. This aspect of it has a long, bad history, and takes us back to that fateful day when our first parents, by their disobedience of God’s command, opened wide the floodgates of sorrow for the human race. God’s command was plain enough—”But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it”—and there was a definiteness in the threat fitted to arrest the attention of those to whom it was addressed—”For in the day thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.” In this act of disobedience the whole human race were involved, and they have shown by their thoughts and conduct that they have a nature that is averse to obey God. The words of Dr Charles Hodge are worthy of quotation in connection with this subject. “The first address of the tempter to Eve,” he says, “was designed to awaken distrust in the goodness of God, and doubt as to the truth of the prohibition. ‘Hath God indeed said, ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?’ or, rather, as the words probably mean, ‘Has God said, ye shall not eat of any tree of the garden?’ The next address was a direct assault upon her faith. ‘Ye shall not surely die,’ but on the contrary, become as God Himself in knowledge. To this temptation she yielded, and Adam joined in the transgression. From this account it appears that doubt, unbelief, and pride were the principles which led to this fatal act of disobedience. Eve doubted God’s goodness; she disbelieved His threatening; she aspired after forbidden knowledge” (Systematic Theology, II. 128). The elements that entered into the first act of disobedience made it peculiarly heinous in the sight of God. Wherever and whenever God’s word is doubted we are on the high road that leads to disobey the plainest and clearest commands of God. If we actually believed what God had said we could not willingly disobey Him. Doubt of God’s Word leads to the settled unbelief that God will not do what He said. But there never was a miscalculation made so fraught with tremendous issues to responsible beings than this. God shall do what He has said, whether it be in mercy or in judgment, whether in promise or in threat. Discontentment with her state found an entrance into Eve’s mind, and provided a fruitful soil for the cunningly-planned suggestion of Satan, and she succumbed to the appeal that in eating the forbidden fruit they would become as “gods knowing good and evil.” Immediately on the back of this suggestion the door of man’s heart was opened to pride, from which it is never to be dislodged, except in the case of God’s redeemed, and even there not completely until they pass into glory. Pride vaunts itself in the face of the great God, and makes man to believe he is something when he is nothing. Disobedience to God is heaven daring and heaven defying, and is the inalienable heritage of every son of Adam born into this world. Sometimes it manifests itself in the recklessness of speech and action which characterises the open and avowed enemy of God. At other times it shows itself in that heedless indifference to the clearest commands of God, which is apt to be lightly thought of. But any one who occupies a position in which he requires to give instructions to those under him will realise that one of the most hateful forms of disobedience is this very kind. It shelters itself behind a seemingly friendly exterior, but all the while there is absolutely no intention of giving any heed to the instructions delivered. While the disobedience which shows its real nature in acts of outrageous defiance to God has slain its thousands, this has slain its tens of thousands.
The Apostle, in calling attention to disobedience, in the Epistle to the Romans, says that while by “one man’s disobedience many were made sinners, so by the obedience of One shall many be made righteous” (Roms. v. 19). The obedience of the One who made many righteous is a glorious theme to all those who have been taught by the Holy Spirit, and know to their painful cost that they have a nature which gives abundant evidence of disobedience to God. Neither His infinite greatness nor His unsearchable goodness will tame this vagrant and wild occupant of the human heart; but when God’s Spirit comes to carry out His purpose then a work has been begun that will never cease until disobedience has not an inch to claim as its own in the heart of God’s redeemed.
This disobedience manifests itself against those authorities that God has set up in the Church, the State, and the Home.
-
In the Church.
God’s Church, from its very nature, should be the last place where disobedience would be expected. But what do we actually find? Open and flagrant defiance to God’s commands and precepts. Servants discontented with their position in His house seek to become masters where only one Master can of right be acknowledged. Christ is the head of the Church. But men have set up Popes, Cardinals, Archbishops, etc., and these have, alas! too often daringly disobeyed the Word of God. But disobedience to God not only manifests itself in churches with prelatic hierarchies, but also in those churches which disdain these high-sounding titles, and are content with the more humble designations of presbyters and pastors. What is the Higher Criticism, Modernism, and all the other heresies that ever disturbed the Church of Christ in the world but open and flagrant disobedience to the Head of the Church. His Church was never set up as a witness to doctrines which undermine its very foundations. And the men who are teaching doctrine of this kind are plainly declaring to the world that they do not intend to obey God. The same may be said of all those who offer as an excuse for their conduct the importance of having God’s house well filled, irrespective of the scripturalness of the means adopted. The people must be got at all costs, even by worldly means, if others fail. The Church is to be governed by what is desired by the people, and so these active ecclesiastics become the servants of men and cease to be the servants of God. They have not the courage, if they have the knowledge, to say, in the words of Peter and John, to all these disturbers of the divine order of things—”Whether it be right in the sight of God to hearken unto you more than unto God, judge ye” (Acts iv. 19).
-
The State.
God has ordained the powers that be for His own wise purposes. And the ruling power is an ordinance of God. The civil magistrate * has no right to interfere with matters pertaining to the conscience, for God alone is Lord of the conscience, but the sphere of His authority is very wide and the duty of subjects very plain, as our Confession points out—”It is the duty of the people to pray for magistrates, to honour their persons, to pay them tribute and other dues, to obey their lawful commands, and to be subject to their authority for conscience sake. Infidelity, or difference in religion, doth not make void the magistrates’ just and legal authority, nor free people from their due obedience to him” (chap. xxiii., sec. iv.). The civil magistrate may be very far from what a Christian would like him to be, but that does not free the subject from due obedience to him, provided he does not interfere with the just and scriptural claims of the conscience. There are movements in this country which have as their undisguised aim the overthrow of the authority that God has set up, and though the agitators came very near once or twice in gaining their end, God in His providence baffled them, and turned all their counsels to foolishness. To this movement is to be traced to a large degree the incessant strife between master and servant, between employer and employed. Scripture teaches that it is the duty of the master to be just to his employees, and the employees to be honest to their masters. No Christian worthy of the name would wish to see the labouring man ill paid and overwrought, while the employer reaps all the fruit of his toil. The language of Scripture is particularly strong on this point when it counsels those who kept back the hire of the labourers by fraud “to weep and howl” for the miseries that shall come upon them (James v. 1). But while justice ought to be done between man and man, the movement we have in our mind’s eye has other purposes in view, and behind the specious plea of fighting the cause of the working man it is out to smash the constituted authority in this country, and the working man is the hammer that this sinister power is holding in its hand.
* Civil magistrate here means the ruling power. “Magistrate” in this sense is not to be limited to the more familiar use such as when applied to a justice of peace, etc.
-
The Home.
God did not leave it to men to decide the relative places to be occupied by the sexes, neither did He leave it with men to decide what position of authority should belong to husband and wife respectively. He decided this matter Himself, and His Word is quite clear on that point. And we have no hesitation in saying that no Christian woman will ever consider it a degradation to occupy a position assigned to her by God, however much this may be resented by those belonging to the devil’s brigade. The modern feminist movement is spoken of as a revolt against Victorian ideals. That might or might not be a bad thing, but it becomes indubitably bad if it is a revolt against what God has ordained as to the relationships of superiority and inferiority that ought to be recognised between the sexes. To such an extent has this revolt influenced society and the Church that in the Revised English Prayer Book the bishops have decided to leave out the word “obey” in the marriage service. To say, as many say, that it is better to do this as so many women never intend to pay any heed to their promise made on their bridal day, is as inconsequent as to say because millions of people in this country do not obey the fourth commandment, therefore, it should be deleted from the Decalogue. The spirit that is behind this movement, wherever it came from, is not from heaven. But when all is said and done, the exhortation still stands: “Therefore as the church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in every thing” (Eph. v. 24).
Another sphere in which the spirit of disobedience is very clearly seen in modern times is the defiance of parental authority. It manifests itself in different ways, sometimes by discontent at legitimate and prudent restraints set to the desires and conduct of the young. Parents, of course, are to remember the scriptural injunction: “Provoke not your children to wrath,” and to use discretion in dealing with their offspring, but children are to remember that they are specially commanded by God to honour their parents, and disobedience to parents is given as one of the sure signs of the “perilous times” (II. Tim. iii. 2). Children are called upon to obey their parents in the Lord, and those who have Christian parents should consider it an inestimable blessing from God. No parent has a right to interfere with the just and scriptural claims of conscience, but their authority should be recognised and their advice obeyed where it is manifestly in accordance with God’s Word. Rejection of counsel founded on this sure foundation is rejection not simply of a father’s or mother’s counsel, but of God’s. No standard acknowledged by the concerted opinions of the young can sweep away God’s command as to the respect and honour they owe their parents and the obedience to them which God has ordained should be rendered by them—”Children obey your parents in the Lord; for this is right” (Eph. vi. 1).