Commitment
Commitment is a response to love. True commitment doesn’t start from our commitment to God but from His commitment to us and our response to His love.
We love Him because He first loved us. 1 John 4:19 (NKJV)
God has first committed Himself to us; we only love Him because He first loved us. We could not love God first, but He loved us even when we were completely unlovable (Romans 5:8). His love was and is given by His determined purpose. If we, therefore, preach that we must love God first and then the Lord will respond to us, it violates everything in the Gospel. God demonstrated His commitment to us in Jesus and in His finished work on the cross. So, commitment is not a prerequisite for relationship with God but rather a result of relationship with God.
God the Father committed the most precious person, His only Son, so that we could have an intimate relationship with Him.
For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. John 3:16 (NKJV)
Directly applying this verse on a personal level, it could thus be understood as, “For God so loved me, that if I was the only one in the entire world, God would give His most precious and only Son so that I would not perish, but have everlasting life.” Now that’s commitment!
If that was not enough, God has even worked out a plan and a purpose for our lives.
For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the Lord, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope. Jeremiah 29:11 (NKJV)
God has a plan for our lives and it is always good. The evil we may experience doesn’t come from God. As we follow God’s plan for our lives, we can be assured of the outcome. There will be an expected future. The apostle Paul said that he knew, when he came to the Romans, that he would come in the fullness of God’s blessing (Romans 15:29). Those who follow God’s plan with all their hearts are not promised an absence of difficulties, but they are promised victory and an expected end. This verse in Jeremiah was spoken to Israel while they were in exile. They were under the judgment of God and yet He still had good plans for them that would cause them to prosper.
All meaningful relationships have commitment as a foundation.
Now therefore, fear the Lord, serve Him in sincerity and in truth, and put away the gods which your fathers served on the other side of the River and in Egypt. Serve the Lord! And if it seems evil to you to serve the Lord, choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods which your fathers served that were on the other side of the River, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you dwell. But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord. Joshua 24:14 – 15 (NKJV)
Holiness is our response to God’s commitment to us. The Hebrew word translated holiness, “qodesh”, means to cut or to separate for purpose. God exhorts us to be holy as He is holy (1 Peter 1:16). Every born-again believer has a purpose and calling in Christ Jesus. So, what is our purpose?
- Fellowship with the Father.
And this is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent. John 17:3 (NKJV)
…that which we have seen and heard we declare to you, that you also may have fellowship with us; and truly our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ. 1 John 1:3 (NKJV)
- Witness to the resurrection (make disciples).
But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be witnesses to Me is Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth. Acts 1:8 (NKJV)
For I delivered to you first of all that which I also received: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He rose again the third day according to the Scriptures.
1 Corinthians 15:3-4 (NKJV)
The tense used for the phrase “rose again” conveys a past action with a continuing effect today. We are living in, and are witnesses to, the resurrection power of Jesus.
- Godliness.
We are called and set apart to live a life of godliness.
But reject profane and old wives’ fables, and exercise yourself toward godliness. 1 Timothy 4:7 (NKJV)
- The high calling of God.
Not that I have already attained, or am already perfected; but I press on, that I may lay hold of that for which Christ Jesus has also laid hold of me. Brethren, I do not count myself to have apprehended; but one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.
Philippians 3:12-14 (NKJV)
Let’s allow His love to motivate us towards true commitment and yielding to the purposes and plans that God has for our lives!