It’s almost 46 years later and I still remember a conversation in an old pickup truck as I was being driven to a beach party where we were gathering with other “college and career” folks from our small church. I was still a “pretty fresh” born again-er — recently saved by faith but with a very limited understanding of what I believed. While we were driving, the brother behind the wheel felt led to inform me that now that I was a Christian there were certain behaviors which would no longer be appropriate for me to engage in. He was pretty straight. I was a little shocked. And yet, who was I to disagree? So, being new to the faith I received his counsel on how I should function. You could say that I “obeyed from the head.”

You could say that because of something Paul writes in Romans 6 which speaks to another way to speak of obedience.

Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness? But thanks be to God, that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed, and, having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness.

(Romans 6:16-18 ESV)

While that pep talk in that pickup truck so long ago was useful in helping me to get off on the right foot in my Christian walk, I’m reminded this morning that I was not redeemed just to obey from my head. Instead, as a new creation through the gospel of Jesus Christ (2Cor. 5:17) I was redeemed so that I might become obedient from the heart.

Obedient from the heart. Chew on that for a bit. My Christian walk not meant to be just some new game with a new set of rules. Instead, meant to be a new journey propelled by a new set of desires. Not about being forced to bow the knee in order to legally comply to some ancient law, but of freely bowing the knee — of wanting to give myself to the One who gave Himself for me — as a loving confession of embracing a new life.

Obedient from the heart. Not according to what seems right in my own eyes, or convenient within the context of how I want to live my life, but according to the standard of teaching to which you were committed. Heart obedience through hearing the word. Obedience being the fruit of a response catalyzed by the Scripture we read. Obedience as an expression of love fashioned according to what we’ve learned. If we’re not in the Word, if we’re not under the authoritative teaching of God’s Divine-Breathed counsel, then whatever obedience we might exhibit will be, at best, head-based obedience.

We were saved for more than a by rote, mechanical obedience. We were saved for a flourishing obedience — a heart-fueled obedience manifesting a new man, a new woman, in Christ even as we are being conformed into the likeness of Christ (Rom. 8:29). And that happens when, by the Scripture-illuminating, life-transforming work of the Spirit, we become obedient from the heart.

Have Your way, Lord. Do the heart work that needs to be done so that I might desire to live in the way You desire.

By Your grace. For Your glory.