The category of obedience helps us grasp what Jesus was doing in his life and death.
Sin, at root, is disobedience — disobedience to God, breaching his commands, violating his law.
‘It is finished.’ Everything the law demanded, everything the Father commissioned, has been fulfilled.
A Test Failed, a Test Passed
Adam, tested in the garden, failed to keep the command and law given him. He was, in a word, disobedient. He should have said ‘no’ to the devil, and not given in to the temptation to become his own god, determining ‘good and evil’ (Gen 3:1-5).1For more detailed discussion see Benjamin Dean, Great Truths – Sin and Death, 2.3, ‘Human Sin,’ available at https://www.greattruthsglobal.org/sin-and-death/
Christ came to reverse Adam’s disobedience by his own obedience — a pattern already anticipated in the Old Testament, most clearly in the figure of the LORD’s Servant (Isa 42:1; 43:10; 50:10; 52:13; 53:11), and confirmed in the New, where Paul describes the eternal Son as taking ‘the form of a servant’ (Phil 2:7).2For concise discussion of Old Testament teaching about covenant obligation to obedience, see Morris, Atonement, 24-26. See also, Jeremy R. Treat, ‘Covenant,’ in T & T Clark Companion to Atonement, 431-36. This obedience starts at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry when he did what Adam ought to have done. Jesus said ‘no’ to the devil when tempted in the wilderness (Luke 4:1-13). Luke highlights the comparison by introducing the temptation narrative with Jesus’ genealogy, from his stepfather Joseph back through to ‘son of Adam, son of God’ (Luke 3:23-38).
It Started Before the Cross
This obedience, then, begins long before it is ever tested at Calvary.
Christ came to fulfil the covenant, command and law of God, and his very entry into the world was itself an act of obedience to the Father, agreed upon in the counsel of eternity.
His whole work of salvation is best understood as an obedient service — a willing response — to the will of God the Father, who sent him. As Paul puts it: ‘God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law’ (Gal 4:4).
To be ‘born under the law’ was to be sent, and to come, in order to do the law — to submit to its authority and fulfil it entirely.
His sinlessness meant precisely this: that he never violated or broke God’s law in thought, word or deed. Christ’s work, considered under this heading, is obedience to the law of God.
Active and Passive, Revisited
It’s worth returning here to the distinction between Christ’s active and passive obedience.
The distinction has real use, marking a genuine difference between what he deliberately chose to do and what was inflicted on him. Active obedience refers, broadly, to Christ’s fulfilment of God’s law throughout his life; passive obedience to his passion and death.
Yet it can mislead if pressed too far, since Christ’s suffering and death were never passive in any straightforward sense. It must be insisted that in his death Christ was supremely active, laying down his life freely and of his own accord, rather than having it merely taken from him.
So his obedience spans his entire life and culminates on the cross. He was obedient both to the law’s demand and — in suffering and dying — to its curse, just as he was obedient to its blessing, receiving the reward of exaltation and glorification.
Three relations to one law: keeping it, bearing its penalty, receiving its reward. All three, in one life.
John’s Sharpest Focus
John’s Gospel brings this active obedience into sharp — perhaps sharpest — focus.
Jesus is actively obedient to the Father’s command and authority throughout, accomplishing the ‘work’ the Father gave him to do (summed up in John 17:4).
‘My food,’ Jesus said, ‘is to do the will of him who sent me and to accomplish his work’ (John 4:34). Again: ‘My Father is working until now, and I am working’ (John 5:17; also 5:20, 36; 10:25, 32, 37, 38). It is ‘the Father who dwells in me [who] does his work’ (John 14:11).
And his final word from the cross — a single word in the Greek, tetelestai — declares that obedience complete: ‘It is finished’ (John 19:30).
Everything the law demanded, everything the Father commissioned, has been fulfilled.
Not ‘I am finished.’ It is finished. A task completed, not a life merely ended.
A Pattern, Not Only a Doctrine
This definitive, once-for-all obedience of Christ is not merely a doctrine to be admired and understood. It is a pattern to be reflected by the Christian, as passages such as Philippians 3:10 and Colossians 2:11 make explicit:
‘Paul repeatedly presents Jesus’ sacrificial death as the supreme example of selfless obedience to God and sacrificial service to others. He urges believers to imitate Jesus’ example by prioritizing the needs of others above our own and by devoting ourselves to service to others.’3Hammet and Quarles, Work of Christ, 138.
Paul makes the same appeal directly, grounding the church’s practice and unity in the pattern Christ has already set:
‘So if there is any encouragement in Christ, any comfort from love, any participation in the Spirit, any affection and sympathy, complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind’ (Phil 2:1-2).4See Joseph Mangina, ‘Ecclesiology,’ in T & T Clark Companion to Atonement, 461-66.
Notice how the appeal works. Paul doesn’t say try harder to be unified. He points to what Christ has done and says: let that shape you.
Which holds the two things together properly. Christ’s obedience is first of all for us — reckoned to our account, the ground of our justification, something we could never have produced. And precisely because it is ours as gift, it becomes the pattern we grow into rather than the standard we’re measured against.
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- 1For more detailed discussion see Benjamin Dean, Great Truths – Sin and Death, 2.3, ‘Human Sin,’ available at https://www.greattruthsglobal.org/sin-and-death/ ↩︎
- 2For concise discussion of Old Testament teaching about covenant obligation to obedience, see Morris, Atonement, 24-26. See also, Jeremy R. Treat, ‘Covenant,’ in T & T Clark Companion to Atonement, 431-36. ↩︎
- 3Hammet and Quarles, Work of Christ, 138. ↩︎
- 4See Joseph Mangina, ‘Ecclesiology,’ in T & T Clark Companion to Atonement, 461-66. ↩︎