Mark 10:17-45, Obedience Training

What does Christian obedience look like? Often we think it means keeping God’s laws of love towards neighbors, of not stealing or lying or committing adultery. It certainly includes those things, but in today’s message, Jesus calls a rich young man to radical obedience, to give up everything for the sake of following Christ. Above all Jesus was calling the man to a relationship with him. Our Lord actively obeyed all of the commands of God perfectly, even submitting himself to death on a cross. Christ’s death and active obedience paved a way for people to do what is impossible: to respond to his great work in us not in self-boasting but in thankful obedience.