“He learned obedience.” -Hebrews 5:8
The secret of true obedience—let me say at once what I believe it to be—is the clear and close personal relationship with God. All our attempts at full obedience will fail until we gain access to His constant fellowship. It is God’s holy presence, consciously staying with us, that keeps us from disobeying Him.
Stop right: Let this paragraph sink in. “Then ask yourself: Have I been trying to obey God from a distance—relying on my own understanding, my own perspective, my own strength? Have I been assuming that obedience is something I can choose whenever it suits me? Have I mistaken my intentions for surrender? Have I convinced myself that I’m obeying while my heart is still leading the way? Have I been living as though obedience is an optional expression of faith instead of the very proof of it?
And most importantly, have I been trying to give God what only union with Christ can produce in me? Have I been trying to follow rules without pursuing the Ruler? Could this be why deep within, I am aware that I keep failing?
Defective obedience is always the result of a faulty life (without spiritual growth and understanding.) To rouse and spur on that defective life by arguments and reasons has its use, but their chief blessing must be that they make us feel the need of a different life, a life so completely under the power of God that obedience will be its natural outcome. The defective life, the life of broken and irregular fellowship with God, must be healed and make way for a full and healthy life; then full obedience will become possible. The secret of true obedience is the return to close and continual fellowship with God.
Think deeply: Am I treating the symptoms (my disobedience) or the disease (my broken fellowship with God)? What would it look like to focus on healing my relationship with God instead of hiding from Him, lying to myself, or just trying harder to obey?
Why Christ Had to Learn Obedience
“He learned obedience” (Hebrews 5:8). And why was this necessary? And what is the blessing He brings us? Listen: “He learned obedience by the things which He suffered, and became the author of eternal salvation to all those who obey Him.”
Suffering is unnatural to us and therefore calls for the surrender of our will.
Christ needed suffering so that in it He might learn to obey and give up His will to the Father at any cost. He needed to learn obedience so that, as our great High Priest, He might be made perfect. He learned obedience. He became obedient unto death, so that He might become the author of our salvation. He became the author of salvation through obedience, so that He might save those “who obey Him.”
Consider this carefully: If even Christ needed to learn obedience through a process, why do I expect it to be an assumption, or instant and easy for me? Am I willing to go through the same learning process He went through?
As obedience was with Him necessary to provide salvation, it is with us absolutely necessary to inherit salvation. The very essence of salvation is obedience to God. Christ, as the obedient One, saves us as His obedient ones. Whether in His suffering on earth or in His glory in heaven, whether in Himself or in us, obedience is what the heart of Christ is set upon.
On earth, Christ was a learner in the school of obedience; in heaven, He teaches it to His disciples here on earth. In a world where disobedience reigns unto death, the restoration of obedience is in Christ’s hands. As in His own life, so in us, He has undertaken to maintain it. He teaches and works it in us.
Ask yourself honestly: Have I enrolled in Christ’s school of obedience, or am I still trying to teach myself? Am I truly His student, or just an admirer of obedience from afar?
Let us try to think about what and how He teaches. It may be we shall see how little we have given ourselves to be pupils in this school, where alone obedience is to be learned. When we think of an ordinary school, the principal things we often ask about are: (1) the teacher, (2) the textbooks, (3) the pupils. Let us see what each of these is in Christ’s school of obedience.
I. THE TEACHER
“He learned obedience.” And now that He teaches it, He does so first and most by revealing the secret of His own obedience to the Father.
I have said that the power of true obedience lies in a clear personal relationship with God. It was so with our Lord Jesus. Of all His teaching, He said, “I have not spoken of Myself, but the Father who sent Me gave Me a commandment, what I should say and what I should speak. And I know that His commandment is life everlasting; whatever I speak therefore, even as the Father said to Me, so I speak.”
This does not mean that Christ received God’s commandment in eternity as part of the Father’s commission to Him at His entry into the world. No. Day by day, each moment as He taught and worked, He lived, as man, in continual communication with the Father, and received the Father’s instructions just as He needed them.
Pause and reflect: Do I think of God’s commands as something given once long ago, or as living communication He wants to have with me personally today, right now? What would change, and how, in my life if I expected to hear from God daily as Jesus did?
Does He not say, “The Son can do nothing of Himself but what He sees the Father do; for the Father shows the Son all things that Himself does, and He will show Him greater things”? “As I hear, I judge.” “I am not alone, but I and the Father who sent Me.” “The words that I speak, I speak not of Myself, but the Father who dwells in Me”? It is everywhere a dependence upon a present fellowship and operation of God, a hearing and a seeing of what God speaks and does and shows.
Our Lord always spoke of His relationship to the Father as the type and the promise of our relationship to Him and to the Father through Him. With us as with Him, the life of continual obedience is impossible without continual fellowship and continual teaching. It is only when God comes into our lives in a degree and a power which many never consider possible, when His presence as the Eternal and Ever-present One is believed and received, even as the Son believed and received it, that there can be any hope of a life in which every thought is brought into captivity to the obedience of Christ.
This is crucial—be honest: Do I believe it’s possible for God to be as real and present to me as He was to Jesus? Or have I settled for a distant, theoretical God? What fear or unbelief is keeping me from this kind of closeness?
The absolute need of continually receiving our orders and instructions from God Himself is what is meant in the words:
“OBEY MY VOICE, AND I WILL BE YOUR GOD.”
The expression “obeying the commandments” is very seldom used in Scripture; it is almost always “obeying Me,” “obeying or listening to My voice.” With the commander of an army, the teacher of a school, the father of a family, it is not the code of laws, however clear and good, with its rewards or threats, that secures faithful obedience; it is the personal living influence, awakening love and enthusiasm. It is the joy of constantly hearing the Father’s voice that will give the pleasure and the strength of true obedience. It is the voice that gives power to obey the word; the word without the living voice does not work.
Think about this: Am I relating to a list of rules, or to a living Person? Do I know the difference between reading God’s written words and hearing His living voice? When did I last truly hear Him speak to me?
How clearly this is illustrated by the contrast of what we see in Israel. The people had heard the voice of God on Sinai and were afraid. (Exodus 20:19) They asked Moses that God might no longer speak to them. Let Moses receive the word of God and bring it to them. They thought only of the commands; they did not know that the only power to obey lies in the presence of God and in His voice speaking to us. And so, with only Moses to talk to them and the tablets of stone, their whole history is one of disobedience, because they were afraid of direct contact with God.
Let me interrupt Andrew Murray for a brief moment: Isn’t it remarkable that when we look deeply enough, the Scriptures we once overlooked become the very ones God uses for our growth? When I didn’t know God, Exodus 20:19 meant nothing to me except that the Israelites were afraid. That was the extent of my understanding. Yet over the years, God has used that single verse—multiple times—to shape me, confront me, and teach me.
And this is how it is with everything God has spoken, from Genesis to Revelation. The deeper we grow, the more He draws meaning from passages we once thought were insignificant. Exodus 20:19 is a perfect example. It is a verse the modern Church rarely mentions and seldom preaches about. But its significance is far greater than we imagine.
For now, I won’t go into all the ways God has used it in my life—but I want you to know this: even the neglected verses carry weight, purpose, and revelation for our journey with Him. Nothing God has spoken is empty, and nothing is wasted.
Let’s go back to Andrew Murray. It is still the same today. Countless Christians find it far easier to take their teaching from men than to wait upon God and receive truth directly from Him. Their faith ultimately rests in the wisdom of men rather than in the power of God.
Be brutally honest: Am I like the Israelites, preferring to hear about God through others rather than hearing from Him directly? Do I rely more on podcasts, books, and sermons than on personal communion with God? Am I afraid or even indifferent to direct contact with Him?
Do let us learn the great lesson our Lord, “who learned obedience” by every moment waiting to see and hear the Father, has to teach us. It is only when, like Him, with Him, in and through Him, we constantly walk with God and hear His voice, that we can offer God the obedience He asks for and promises to work.
Out of the depths of His own life and experience, Christ can give us this and teach us. Pray earnestly that God may show you the foolishness of attempting to obey without the same strength Christ needed, may make you willing to give up everything for the Christlike joy of the Father’s presence all day long.
What’s your next step: Will you commit today to seeking direct communion with God—not just reading about Him, but actually waiting in His presence to hear His voice? What would you need to sacrifice to make this happen?
I. THE TEXTBOOK
Christ’s direct communication with the Father did not make Him independent of Holy Scripture.
In the divine school of obedience, there is only one textbook, whether for the Elder Brother or the younger children. In His learning obedience, He used the same textbook we have. Not only when He had to teach or to convince others did He appeal to the Word—He needed it, and He used it for His own spiritual life and guidance.
From the beginning of His public life to its close, He lived by the Word of God. “It is written” was the sword of the Spirit with which He conquered Satan. “The Spirit of the Lord God is upon Me”—this word of Scripture was the consciousness with which He opened His preaching of the gospel. “That the Scripture might be fulfilled” was the light in which He accepted all suffering, and even gave Himself to death. After the resurrection, He explained to the disciples “in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself.”
Ask yourself: Do I use Scripture the way Jesus did—as my weapon, my identity, my explanation for suffering? Or is it just information I collect? What’s the difference in how Jesus related to Scripture versus how I do?
In Scripture, He had found God’s plan and path for Him marked out. He gave Himself to fulfill it. It was through the use of God’s Word that He received the Father’s continual, direct teaching.
In God’s school of obedience, the Bible is the only textbook. That shows us the attitude in which we are to come to the Bible, with the simple desire in it to find what is written concerning us about God’s will, and to do it.
Scripture was not written to increase our knowledge but to guide our conduct; “that the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly equipped for every good work.” “If anyone wills to do, he shall know.” Learn from Christ to consider everything there is in Scripture of the revelation of God, His love, and His counsel, as simply helping toward God’s great end: that the man of God may be fitted to do His will as it is done in heaven; that man may be restored to that perfect obedience on which God’s heart is set, and which alone is blessedness.
Challenge yourself: Why do I read the Bible? To know more, or to do more? Am I a collector of biblical knowledge or a doer of God’s Word? What percentage of what I know from Scripture am I actually obeying?
In God’s school of obedience, God’s Word is the only textbook. To apply that Word in His own life and conduct, to know when each different portion was to be taken up and carried out, Christ needed and received divine teaching. It is He who speaks in Isaiah, “The Lord God awakens morning by morning, He awakens My ear to hear as the learned; the Lord God has opened My ear.”
Even so does He who thus learned obedience teach it to us, by giving us the Holy Spirit in our hearts as the divine Interpreter of the Word. This is the great work of the indwelling Holy Spirit—to draw the Word we read and think upon into our heart, and make it quick and powerful there, so that God’s living Word may work effectively in our will, our love, our whole being. It is because this is not understood that the Word has no power to work obedience.
Reflect deeply: Do I depend on the Holy Spirit to teach me Scripture, or do I trust my own understanding? When I read the Bible, am I asking the Spirit to make it alive in me, or just trying to figure it out with my intellect?
Let me try to speak very plainly about this. We rejoice in the increased attention given to Bible study and in testimonies of the interest awakened and the benefits received. But let us not deceive ourselves. We may delight in studying the Bible; we may admire and be charmed with the views we get of God’s truth; the thoughts suggested may make a deep impression and awaken the most pleasing religious emotions; and yet the practical influence in making us holy or humble, loving, patient, ready either for service or suffering, may be very small. The one reason for this is that we do not receive the Word as it truly is—as the Word of a living God, who must Himself speak to us and into us, if it is to exert its divine power.
This is convicting—answer honestly: How much Bible knowledge do I have that hasn’t changed my actual behavior? Am I fooling myself, thinking that because I study Scripture, I’m growing, when my life shows little transformation?
The letter of the Word, however we study and delight in it, has no saving or sanctifying power. Human wisdom and human will, however hard they try, cannot give or command that power. The Holy Spirit is the mighty power of God: it is only as the Holy Spirit teaches you, only as the gospel is preached to you by man or by book “with the Holy Spirit sent down from heaven,” that it will really give you, with every command, the strength to obey, and work in you the very thing commanded.
With man, knowing and willing, knowing and doing, even willing and performing, are, for lack of power, often separate and even at odds, never in the Holy Spirit. He is at once the light and the might of God. All He is and does and gives has in it equally the truth and the power of God. When He shows you God’s command, He always shows it to you as a possible and a sure thing, a divine life and gift prepared for you, which He who shows is able to give.
Here’s the breakthrough question: Have I been trying to obey in my own strength what only the Holy Spirit can accomplish in me? Am I willing to stop striving and start depending?
Beloved Bible students! Do learn to believe that it is only when Christ, through the Holy Spirit, teaches you to understand and take the Word into your heart, that He can really teach you to obey as He did. Do believe, every time you open your Bible, that just as surely as you listen to the divine, Spirit-breathed Word, so surely will our Father, in answer to the prayer of faith and humble waiting, give the Holy Spirit’s living operation in your heart. Let all your Bible study be a thing of faith. Do not only try and believe the truths or promises you read. This may be in your own power. Before that, believe in the Holy Spirit, in His being in you, in God’s working in you through Him. Take the Word into your heart in the quiet faith that He will enable you to love it, and yield to it, and keep it; and our blessed Lord Jesus will make the book to you what it was to Him when He spoke of “the things which are written concerning Me.” All Scripture will become the simple revelation of what God is going to do for you, and in you, and through you.
Your commitment: Before your next Bible reading, will you stop and pray, asking the Holy Spirit to make the Word alive and powerful in you? Will you read expecting not just information but Transformation?
III. THE PUPIL
We have seen how our Lord teaches us obedience by revealing the secret of His learning: unceasing dependence on the Father. We have seen how He teaches us to use the Sacred Book as He used it, as a divine revelation of what God has ordained for us, with the Holy Spirit to explain and enforce. If we now consider the place the believer takes in the school of obedience as a pupil, we shall better understand what Christ the Son requires to do His work in us effectively.
In a faithful student, several factors go into shaping his feelings toward a trusted teacher. He submits himself entirely to his leading. He places perfect trust in him. He gives him just as much time and attention as he asks.
When we see and agree that Jesus Christ has a right to all this, we may hope to experience how wonderfully He can teach us an obedience like His own.
1. The true pupil yields his master wholehearted and unhesitating submission
The true pupil, say of some great musician or painter, yields his master wholehearted and unhesitating submission. In practicing his scales or mixing his colors, in the slow and patient study of the basics of his art, he knows that it is simply and fully wisdom to obey.
It is this wholehearted surrender to His guidance, this complete submission to His authority, Christ asks. We come to Him, asking Him to teach us the lost art of obeying God as He did. He asks us if we are ready to pay the price. It is entirely and utterly to deny self! It is to give up our will and our life to death! It is to be ready to do whatever He says!
Let me interrupt Andrew Murray once more: Here is why I know what he said above about commitment is true. I had never heard a single sermon on surrender, and I had no idea it was important to God. So, naturally, I turned to my mentors—the pillars of the Church, the ones I trusted. When I told them that God had asked me to surrender, the reaction shocked me. It caused tension, misunderstanding, and even mistreatment. One of them later called to apologize.
While I try to forget the insults, one thing one of them said never left my mind. I was told flatly that there was no such thing as ‘an extra surrender. This person insisted that whatever surrender occurs at the moment we receive salvation is the only surrender we ever need. But something in me knew that wasn’t true. I knew I had heard God, and I could not dismiss His voice simply because my mentors disagreed.
So I bypassed them and went directly to God. I was new to the faith. They had walked with Christ for over sixty years. Yet I discovered that God was right—and they were not.
What I did not know then, He later taught me: there is more than one level of surrender, because we surrender according to how much we know Him. As our knowledge of God deepens, our capacity to yield deepens with it. In fact, this year—July 2025—the Lord asked me to surrender again. I truly believed I was done with that kind of surrender, that I had already laid everything on the altar. But He showed me there was still more of me that needed to bow and commit.
The saddest part is this: my mentors should have known this. The Holy Spirit should have revealed it. But God later showed me why it is true—and He pointed me to the life of Abraham as proof. Abraham surrendered in stages. Step by step. Call by call. And Revelation by revelation.Surrender grows with the knowledge of God.
Why is surrender so important to God? Because surrender is the only thing God cannot give to Himself. He can give us life, breath, grace, mercy, strength, wisdom—but He cannot force our will. Love must be freely returned, or it is not love. God values surrender because it is our proof of love. Anyone can say they love God. Anyone can admire Him, sing to Him, or talk about Him. But surrender is love in its purest form—the laying down of our will for His. Surrender invites God’s life into us.
We can claim salvation without ever living in its power. Believe the right things yet remain unchanged. But when the will bows, the life of Christ flows. God does not pour His life into a closed vessel. Our surrender gives God the legal right to form Christ in us. God respects human will—even when we use it against Him. He will not violate the freedom He gave. So He waits for the invitation: “Lord, have Your way.” Surrender is the only posture that matches the magnitude of the Father and Son’s gift to us.
Let’s go back to Andrew Murray: The only way of learning to do a thing is to do it. The only way of learning obedience from Christ is to give up your will to Him and to make doing His will the one desire and delight of your heart.
Unless you take the vow of absolute obedience as you enter this class of Christ’s school, it will be impossible for you to make any progress.
This is the moment of decision: Am I willing to take a vow of absolute obedience to Christ right now? Not partial obedience, not eventual obedience, but absolute obedience starting today? What is holding me back?
2. The true scholar trusts his master completely
The true scholar of a great master finds it easy to give him this complete obedience simply because he trusts him. He gladly sacrifices his own wisdom and will to be guided by a higher one.
We need this confidence in our Lord Jesus. He came from heaven to learn obedience so that He might be able to teach it well. His obedience is the treasury out of which, not only the debt of our past disobedience is paid, but out of which the grace for our present obedience is supplied. In His divine love and perfect human sympathy, in His divine power over our hearts and lives, He invites, He deserves, He wins our trust. It is by the power of a personal admiration and attachment to Himself, it is by the power of His divine love, indeed poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit and awakening within us a responsive love, that He awakens our confidence and communicates to us the true secret of success in His school.
As absolutely as we have trusted Him as a Savior to atone for our disobedience, so let us trust Him as a Teacher to lead us out of it. Christ is our Prophet or Teacher. A heart that enthusiastically believes in His power and success as a Teacher will, in the joy of that faith, find it possible and easy to obey. It is the presence of Christ with us all day long that will be the secret of true obedience.
Examine your trust: Do I trust Christ as much to teach me obedience as I trust Him to forgive my disobedience? Have I believed He can save me, but doubted He can change me? Where does my confidence in Him break down?
3. A scholar gives his master the time and attention he requires
A scholar gives his master just as much of his attendance and attention as he asks. The master decides how much time must be devoted to personal interaction and instruction.
Obedience to God is such a heavenly art, our nature is so utterly strange to it, the path in which the Son Himself learned it was so slow and long, that we must not wonder if it does not come at once. Nor must we wonder if it needs more time at the Master’s feet in meditation, and prayer, and waiting, in dependence and self-sacrifice, than most are ready to give. But let us give it.
Be honest about your schedule: How much time am I actually giving to learning obedience from Christ? Am I giving Him the leftovers of my day, or the best? What does my calendar say about whether I’m truly His student?
In Christ Jesus, heavenly obedience has become human again, obedience has become our birthright and our life-breath: let us cling to Him, let us believe and claim His constant presence. With Jesus Christ, who learned obedience as our Savior, and with Jesus Christ, who teaches obedience as our Master, we can live lives of obedience. His obedience—we cannot study the lesson too earnestly—His obedience is our salvation; in Him, the living Christ, we find it and partake of it moment by moment.
Let us beg God to show us how Christ and His obedience are actually to be our life every moment: that will then make us pupils who give Him all our heart and all our time. And He will teach us to keep His commandments and abide in His love, even as He kept His Father’s commandments and abides in His love.
Final, life-changing questions: Am I ready to become a true pupil in Christ’s school of obedience? Will I give Him my complete submission, my full trust, and all the time He requires? What specifically needs to change in my life starting today for this to become a reality?
Your action step: What one thing will you do this week to practice being Christ’s pupil? Will you set aside daily time to wait in His presence? Will you ask the Holy Spirit to speak to you through Scripture? Will you obey the one thing you already know He’s asking you to do?
