On Sunday I said that following Christ is hard because Christ is a King who "inconveniences" His children with various demands. And one of the things He demands is obedience. Now you might ask, "Just how is obedience an inconvenience?"
Obedience is an "inconvenience" because it requires submission and transformation.
Many will take Christ as the peacefully sleeping baby in Bethlehem. Many will accept Jesus as the wise (and even witty, as He mentally out-duels the religious leaders) teacher. Most love to accept Him as the gentle Shepherd who rescues wandering sheep out of difficulty.
Few want to accept Him as the whip-wielding, table-turning authority of the temple (John 2:13-22). We know this from the way the leaders responded to Him that day ("What sign do you show us as your authority for doing these things?" Jn. 2:18). We know it from the way the responded to Him halfway through His ministry ("As a result of [what Jesus said] many of His disciples withdrew and were not walking with Him anymore," Jn. 6:66). And we know it from the final verdict about Jesus' ministry ("though He had performed so many signs before them, yet they were not believing in Him," Jn. 12:37). Jesus remained unwanted because He remained a demanding King.
The demands of Christ are for His glory, yes. But they are also for our good. It is good and great and joy for us when we glorify God in and through our obedience. Obedience from the heart (genuine repentance rather than mere outward conformity) will produce a transformation of life that will free us from the bondage of sin so that we might experience real joy and delight in God.
Is the call to obedience hard? Is it confrontational? Yes and yes. But as John Piper notes in What Jesus Demands from the World, "...the Son of Man came to save people from their suicidal love affair with possessions (and every other idol) and to lead them into a kind of impossible obedience that displays the infinite worth of Jesus." The demand of obedience is not just a demand; it is the means by which we are separated from our trite and superficial idols. So we are confronted by a hard demand that produces good. You might just call that a "convenient inconvenience."
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