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The proposition is one which receives an unanimous assent. It is a truth seen by intuition. If there be a God, and He has any will respecting our conduct, we ought to obey Him. We owe Him obedience on every account. He is our Maker, Proprietor, Benefactor, and a Being infinitely perfect, incapable of willing anything inconsistent with the strictest rectitude. We ought to obey Him. Ought we! Then why have we disobeyed Him? Out of thy own mouth will lie judge and condemn us. But since there are mistakes as to what obedience is and is not, let us —

I. DRAW SOME DISTINCTIONS.

1. The mere doing of what God commands does not constitute obedience, unless we also abstain from what He forbids. Negative precepts are as obligatory as positive precepts.

2. Obedience must be universal. It must not only have respect to all that is forbidden and required. The same reasons exist why we should be conformed to the whole will as to any part of the will of God. If, therefore, any one disobeys God in any respect, he forfeits the character of obedience; and hence it is written, "cursed is every one who continueth not in all things written in the book of the law to do them."

3. To obey God is not simply to act according to His will, but because it is His will. An accidental conformity of the will of man to the will of God is not obedience. It must be intentional. An atheist may do what God requires, but you would not therefore say that he obeys God. A man may do some things which God requires from some inferior consideration. Thus some are scrupulously honest, because dishonesty is disgraceful, or an inherent principle of integrity, and not out of regard to the Supreme Lawgiver. The very same elements go into the constitution of filial obedience. A dutiful son is one who does what his parent instructs, not because it falls in with his own inclination, or because he is to gain anything by it, but out of regard to the will of his parent. It is apparent, then, that there may be a great deal of morality and right acting among men where there is no obedience to God.

4. A doing according to God's will, out of a regard to God, does not alone constitute obedience. It depends on the nature of the regard. The regard may be servile — dread of the effects of God's displeasure at disobedience. It may be mercenary — expectation of reward for obedience. But the regard that is had to God in all acceptable obedience is the union of respect and love.

5. Obedience, to be acceptable, must be internal as well as external. External actions are really but the expression of obedience. In what is the law of God summarily comprehended but in a twofold exercise of the heart? "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and thy neighbour as thyself." All pious and charitable acts must, in His account, pass for nothing, unless they are the expressions of love, the obedience of the heart

II. CHARACTERISTICS OF OBEDIENCE. It must be —

1. Constant; not occasional and interrupted. There exist the same imperative reasons why God should be obeyed at all times, as at any time. And the love of God, the principle of obedience, is not a fitful and feverish excitement, but a regular and healthful pulsation.

2. Unconditional. We ought to obey God, whatever the difficulty, the circumstances, or the consequences. There is no power of dispensation. And yet how many exceptions are taken on the mere score of inconvenience — e.g., as regards the Sabbath law. And must the laws of the great and dreadful God, whose majesty is such that all nations are before Him as nothing, bend to human convenience? What! is it our duty to obey God only when it is convenient and agreeable, or when it does not seem to interfere with any of our secular interests?

3. Supreme and primary, and not subordinate and secondary. This obligation takes the precedence of every other. They must bend to it. It will bend to none. Whoever is disobeyed, God must be obeyed.

4. Immediately, without hesitation. Delay is disobedience, even though it should be accompanied with the determination to obey hereafter. Is God's law fulfilled by good resolutions and dutiful purposes?

5. Unquestioning. We have no right to ask the reason of His commands, or their utility. It is enough that He commands. Some little Sunday-school girls were questioned in reference to the petition, "Thy will be done," etc. "How do angels in heaven do it?" "Immediately," said one; "actively," said another; "unitedly," replied a third; and then there was a pause, when one little girl said '"without asking any questions."

6. Submission. The reasons for obedience to God's perceptive will are the same as those for submission to His providential will. "Thy will be done," means "be Thy purposes accomplished, as well as be Thy commands obeyed."

7. Sinlessness is necessary to the perfection of obedience, but not to its reality. Yet the desire and prayer, and aim and effort, and struggle to be free from it is.

(W. Nevins, D. D.)

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KJV: Then Peter and the other apostles answered and said, We ought to obey God rather than men.

WEB: But Peter and the apostles answered, "We must obey God rather than men.