"No one can make me do anything."
I have heard this more times than I can count. Usually the person who says it turns right around and goes to the DMV to renew his driver's license because he got a reminder in the mail, pays his taxes by April 15, and drives the speed limit—whenever there is a trooper behind him or on the side of the road. What he means is, as long as it's something that won't put me in jail or cost me a ton of money or take away an important privilege, you can't make me do it if I don't want to. And there is the key—he doesn't want to do that thing so he won't. Unfortunately, this is a very American attitude. People who live under a dictatorship wouldn't dream of uttering those words.
I suppose for the ordinary person that attitude is to be expected. But when it comes out of the mouths of Christians, I wonder what exactly they think Christianity really is and why they would ever follow a Leader who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross (Phil 2:6-8). He didn't especially want to do all that; he asked three times that he not have to, but he always ended that prayer, Thy will be done. Not his will, but God's. Christianity is a religion of submission and yielding one's rights and liberties. Anyone who thinks he can still do the will of God without putting the needs and desires of others ahead of his own does not understand what it means to be a disciple of the Lord.
God tells us to obey the civil government (Romans 13:1-7). He tells us to obey the elders of the church (Heb 13:17). He tells the younger men to submit to the older ones (1 Peter 5:5) and he tells us that all of us should submit to one another in our personal liberties if a man's soul is at stake (Romans 14, 1 Corinthians 8). And then he tells us that if we love him we will keep his commandments (John 14:15), and that includes all those submission commandments.
I wonder what the one who still utters that phrase above thought he was doing when he was baptized. Sometimes I think we fail to mention that it's not just a ceremonial washing to get rid of sins, it is a ritual showing that we are pledging to devote our lives to the Lord, including our opinions, our preferences, our desires, and our attitudes. If that isn't being done, then all that person did was get wet.
But you know, that person is right. No one can make him do anything. It's up to him to learn to want to.
Now we that are strong ought to bear the infirmities of the weak, and not to please ourselves. Let each one of us please his neighbor for that which is good, unto edifying. For Christ also pleased not himself; but, as it is written, The reproaches of them that reproached thee fell upon me (Rom 15:1-3).
Dene Ward
I have heard this more times than I can count. Usually the person who says it turns right around and goes to the DMV to renew his driver's license because he got a reminder in the mail, pays his taxes by April 15, and drives the speed limit—whenever there is a trooper behind him or on the side of the road. What he means is, as long as it's something that won't put me in jail or cost me a ton of money or take away an important privilege, you can't make me do it if I don't want to. And there is the key—he doesn't want to do that thing so he won't. Unfortunately, this is a very American attitude. People who live under a dictatorship wouldn't dream of uttering those words.
I suppose for the ordinary person that attitude is to be expected. But when it comes out of the mouths of Christians, I wonder what exactly they think Christianity really is and why they would ever follow a Leader who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross (Phil 2:6-8). He didn't especially want to do all that; he asked three times that he not have to, but he always ended that prayer, Thy will be done. Not his will, but God's. Christianity is a religion of submission and yielding one's rights and liberties. Anyone who thinks he can still do the will of God without putting the needs and desires of others ahead of his own does not understand what it means to be a disciple of the Lord.
God tells us to obey the civil government (Romans 13:1-7). He tells us to obey the elders of the church (Heb 13:17). He tells the younger men to submit to the older ones (1 Peter 5:5) and he tells us that all of us should submit to one another in our personal liberties if a man's soul is at stake (Romans 14, 1 Corinthians 8). And then he tells us that if we love him we will keep his commandments (John 14:15), and that includes all those submission commandments.
I wonder what the one who still utters that phrase above thought he was doing when he was baptized. Sometimes I think we fail to mention that it's not just a ceremonial washing to get rid of sins, it is a ritual showing that we are pledging to devote our lives to the Lord, including our opinions, our preferences, our desires, and our attitudes. If that isn't being done, then all that person did was get wet.
But you know, that person is right. No one can make him do anything. It's up to him to learn to want to.
Now we that are strong ought to bear the infirmities of the weak, and not to please ourselves. Let each one of us please his neighbor for that which is good, unto edifying. For Christ also pleased not himself; but, as it is written, The reproaches of them that reproached thee fell upon me (Rom 15:1-3).
Dene Ward
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