The point of obedience is to produce joy in the life of a believer as he learns to find the greatest satisfaction in God rather than in the temporal and vain pleasures of this present age (Titus 2:12).
John Piper writes well on this topic when he pens the following:
The point I have been laboring to clarify here is that God's pleasure in obedience is good news because that obedience that pleases him is the obedience of faith. Another way to put it would be to say that God is happy with our obedience when our obedience is the overflow of our happiness with God. God is delighted with our obedience when it is the fruit of our delight in him. Our obedience is God's pleasure when it proves that God is our treasure. This is good news, because it means very simply that the command to obey is the command to be happy in God. The commandments of God are only as hard to obey as the promises of God are hard to believe. The Word of God is only as hard to obey as the beauty of God is hard to cherish. [The Pleasures of God, p. 257.]He adds to that in his new book, What Jesus Demands from the World:
My conviction is that if we are willing to find in him our supreme joy, his demands will not feel severe but sweet. They would land on us the way the Lady's commands landed on the beasts in C. S. Lewis's novel Parelandra: "The beasts would not think it hard if I told them to walk on their heads. It would become their delight to walk on their heads. I am His beast, and all His biddings are joys." [p. 24]So obedience is a demand, but it is a demand that brings the greatest joy imaginable. It is severe, but it is a severity that produces mercy and grace. Obedience and submission is for His glory and our good.
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