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Assurance and Obedience

This is the love of God, that we keep His commandments;
and His commandments are not burdensome (1 John 5:3).


Our apostle gives us this further evidence to promote assurance. Obedience is the grand test of love.

If you are living after your own will, and pay no homage to God, you are not his. If you never think of the Lord Jesus as your Master, and never recognize the claims of God, and never wish to be obedient to his will, you do not have eternal life.

If you desire to be obedient, and prove that desire by your actions, then you have the divine life within you. Judge yourselves. Is the tenor of your life obedience or disobedience? By the fruit you can test the root and the sap.

But note, that this obedience must be cheerful and willing. No doubt some for a while obey the commands of God unwillingly. They do not like them, though they bow to them. They fret and grizzle because of the restraints of piety; and this proves that they are hypocrites.

What you wish to do you practically are doing in the sight of God. If you enjoy the pleasures of the world, you are of the world, and with the world you will be condemned. If God’s commands are grievous to you, then you are a rebel at heart. Loyal subjects delight in the royal law.

We delight in the law of God after the inward man. Do you feel that you love the ways of God, that you desire holiness, and follow after it joyfully? Then, dear friends, you have eternal life, and these are the sure evidences of it.

Obedience, holiness, delight in God never came into a human heart except from a heavenly hand. Wherever they are found they prove that the Lord has implanted eternal life, for they are much too precious to be buried away in a dead soul.


~ Charles Spurgeon