The Lord Takes Us To Obedience School

The Second Sunday of Easter
I John 5:6a

The philosophy for dog obedience training has changed quite a bit in the last few decades. It used to be that many dog obedience schools operated by teaching the dog, “you better obey me, because I’m your master. And if you don’t obey me, bad things will happen.” And plenty of dogs were trained this way, and trained well. They obeyed, but they obeyed out of fear. But now there has been a shift in the thinking of many trainers, though some still do it the old way. If the old way was punishing disobedience, the new way could be characterized as rewarding obedience. In this new way of training, you don’t strike the dog, you don’t yell at him any more than a firm “no!” But whenever you catch him doing something good, he gets praise and rewards. The thinking here is that the dog is going to want to do the things that make you happy, because positive things happen to him when you are happy.

Both obedience philosophies get results, but they produce very different dogs. The old way produces a dog that is terrified to do the wrong thing. The new way produces a dog that is eager to do the right thing. And these two schools of thought work not just for dogs, but maybe you’ve seen children raised by these two ways. And this should be nothing new for us, since basically we are talking about the difference between Law motivation and Gospel motivation. In our lives, sometimes we do things, like hitting the brakes when you see a cop car, that would be obeying out of Law motivation. It is the fear of punishment that motivates you to slow down. But now let’s say that you are driving your children in the car with you. You are so happy for the gift of a family that God has given you, that you want to drive as carefully as possible, and so you don’t even think about breaking the speed limit. That would be Gospel motivation. You are motivated by thanks and love.

This morning, the Lord takes us all to obedience school. Sometimes, he uses the Law to motivate. But he would much rather use the Gospel to get his people to obey. That’s what he’s going to do this morning. We are going to look at Jesus, who is our motivator, our pattern, and our Savior. We will take a look at his brand of obedience, which consisted of two parts: the Active Obedience of Jesus, and the Passive Obedience of Jesus.
Part I
Every once in a while, there is a passage that you read from the Bible, you read it again, and you are still a little puzzled about what exactly it was saying. Maybe that’s what you thought when you heard our sermon text this morning, the first half of verse 6, where St. John writes, “This is the one who came by water and blood – Jesus Christ. He did not come by water only, but by water and blood.” What on earth does this passage mean, with Jesus and water and blood? Maybe you thought, “this passage must be talking about the Sacraments. Water – that must be a reference to Holy Baptism. Blood – that must be a reference to Holy Communion.” That would be a good guess, but that’s not what this passage is talking about. While it is true that Jesus does come to us through the waters of Baptism, and he does come to us through his blood in the Lord’s Supper, look at this passage again, “this is the one who came by water and blood.” St. John isn’t talking about something that happens in the present, he’s referring to something