Jesus is the Christian’s perfect example in everything and in every way. We often think of the love He showed, even to His enemies. Or, that He had the perfect perspective even in the midst of persecution, which is why Jesus could plead with the Father to forgive those who were in the very act of crucifying Him! We also think of Him being a flawless model of self-control. How He never gave into temptation. How He never had an outburst of wrath, although He had plenty of opportunities. In addition to this, we think of His perfect example in humility. Although He was God, He was willing to take on flesh and serve humanity. One example that we might conveniently forget, however, is His example of submission. If the Father asked Him to do it, He did it!
It’s fine and dandy to recall His example of submission and just move on, but I would like to highlight the fact that His submission to the Father was far from easy. I think when we see different commands that God has asked us to obey (i.e. Husbands, dwell with your wives with understanding OR wives, submit to your husbands) we might dismiss them because of their level of difficulty. We think things like, “Well, sure, in a perfect world, I could do that.” or “That certainly isn’t referring to me and my situation.” Isn’t it interesting that Jesus was more concerned with obedience than He was with the degree of difficulty the command was? He didn’t make excuses and He certainly didn’t justify disobedience. He submitted even when the task seemed insurmountable. Can you imagine being given a command to willingly lay down your life and give up your power all for people who hate you? Is that not a more challenging command than ANY of us have ever been given? Yet, Jesus whittled the situation down to a simple matter of obedience. When seeing it simply as to obey or disobey, Jesus chose wisely, as always.
Perhaps, you are in a difficult situation where obeying the Lord is not the easiest choice, in fact, it might even be the hardest choice! We can muddy the waters by adding all the peripheral information to the context, or we can simply whittle our situation down, like Jesus did, to a matter of obedience or disobedience. May we all follow Jesus’ impeccable example and choose to obey, even when it seems near impossible.
