For those who are led by the Spirit of God are the children of God.

Romans 8:14 (NIV)

As Christians, we know we are called to lay down our lives. But what are we to lay down our lives to? I mean, in what way is laying down one’s life accomplished?

When I was much younger, a well-meaning (or not-so-well-meaning: I have not figured it out yet) church ministry told me laying down one’s life meant doing exactly what the Bible commanded me to do, which, many years later I realized, meant doing exactly what they commanded me to do. They wanted to control my life, and I assumed God wanted to control my life as well. He wanted me to tirelessly go about doing whatever His Word tells me to do. If Jesus said, you will remain in me if you obey my commandments,” then I was going to obey his commandments: every single one of them.

But I began to realize something unique about the Christian life: We are really not called to obey a Book. We are called to obey a Person. This began to dawn on me as I meditated on such passages as Romans 8, which states we are set free from the law of sin and death as we obey the Spirit.¹ Interestingly, the law of sin and death is not about sinning: it is about trying not to sin.² We are only successful in the Christian life to the degree we are led by and surrendered to the Spirit. It is to the Spirit of God we lay down our lives.

Which means when Jesus says, “If you keep my commands, you will remain in my love,”³ he is not talking about whatever commandments we find in the Bible. He is talking about what he commands us to do through the personal and intimate relationship he has made possible by the Holy Spirit. It is this obedience that Jesus not only desires but makes all other things possible.

1. Romans 8:1-4 ↩︎
2. See Romans 7 ↩︎
3. John 15:10 ↩︎