“‘This is what the LORD Almighty, the God of Israel, says: Go ahead, add your burnt offerings to your other sacrifices and eat the meat yourselves! For when I brought your forefathers out of Egypt and spoke to them, I did not just give them commands about burnt offerings and sacrifices, but I gave them this command: Obey me, and I will be your God and you will be my people. Walk in all the ways I command you, that it may go well with you. But they did not listen or pay attention; instead, they followed the stubborn inclinations of their evil hearts. They went backward and not forward. Jeremiah 7:21-24 (NIV)
Professing Jesus as Lord of our lives and living as Jesus is Lord of our lives are to go together – they are joined. Hand in hand. There is no professing without conforming or conforming without confessing – true confession remains in the process of conforming to Jesus and without Jesus there is no indwelling Holy Spirit equipping us to conform. Flesh will fail us here as it can never consistently conform us to Jesus, it lacks the power. What good is outward profession with no heart change, no inward transformation, no fruit produced, no evidence that Jesus is within the vessel conforming it into His image through the power of the Holy Spirit? Many desire salvation to be saved from destruction but have no desire to be saved from sinning. Jesus was to be the firstborn among many brothers and those who claim to live in Him are to walk as He walked. Not perfectly, mind you, but most assuredly on a path upward - progressively becoming more and more like our Savior.
Obedience is for us. The life of sin and self always leads to destruction as Scripture attests to over and over again. God has provided for us through the power of His Spirit to be set free from “the law of sin and death”. We are not to go back to the wallowing in the pig pen of our own poor choices. It matters greatly how we live this one life that we have been given. We are no longer to live according to the sinful nature rather by the indwelling power of the Holy Spirit Who conforms us in incremental measures to the Lord Jesus Christ. The mind of sinful man is death and is hostile toward God but the mind controlled by the Spirit is both life and peace, Paul tells us in Romans 8. The Spirit is the Agent of life and the Word of God is the means. God has not left us as orphans, He gives us everything we need to live a life of holiness that is pleasing in His sight.
“Why do you call me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ and do not do what I say? I will show you what he is like who comes to me and hears my words and puts them into practice. He is like a man building a house, who dug down deep and laid the foundation on rock. When a flood came, the torrent struck that house but could not shake it, because it was well built. But the one who hears my words and does not put them into practice is like a man who built a house on the ground without a foundation. The moment the torrent struck that house, it collapsed and its destruction was complete.” Luke 6:46-49 (NIV)