It is easy to pretend that you are willing to submit unconditionally to God by claiming you live at the principles level. Your willingness to obey a set of rules serves as a test against using principles as an excuse to avoid obeying rules. A person capable of living by principles is more than capable of living by rules. Unconditional submission to God never occurs in a person unwilling to first submit fully to a set of rules.
While a willingness to submit fully to a set of carnal rules is a useful tool in measuring your willingness to submit unconditionally to God, perfect obedience to a set of carnal rules does not indicate unconditional submission to God. It is possible to be fully obedient to a set of carnal rules without being willing to learn or obey principles. In the time of Jesus, there were many Jews willing to live the letter of the law of Moses, but unwilling to live the spirit of the law of Moses.1 Many baptismal candidates have willingly subjected themselves to initial rules, only to fail to continue to obey God as he taught them more about himself.2
Unconditional obedience to God, in its fullest sense, is only possible at the level of character. At the rules and principles levels, obedience to God is based at least in part on your appraisal of value in what God is asking of you. Unconditional obedience to God at the character level occurs when your decision to follow his instructions comes fully from your belief in the merits of God rather than your belief in the merits of the particular instruction.3 When you truly believe that because God is more loving, wise, and benevolent than you, you have no reason to hesitate to gladly obey him in all things, no matter how difficult, painful, or bad the effect of doing so may seem in the moment.
Footnotes
- 1. But woe unto you, Pharisees! for ye tithe mint and rue and all manner of herbs, and pass over judgment and the love of God: these ought ye to have done, and not to leave the other undone (Luke 11:42) And Jesus answering spake unto the lawyers and Pharisees, saying, Is it lawful to heal on the sabbath day? And they held their peace. And he took him, and healed him, and let him go; And answered them, saying, Which of you shall have an ass or an ox fallen into a pit, and will not straightway pull him out on the sabbath day? (Luke 14:3-5) ↩
- 2. A sower went out to sow his seed: and as he sowed, some fell by the way side; and it was trodden down, and the fowls of the air devoured it. And some fell upon a rock; and as soon as it was sprung up, it withered away, because it lacked moisture. And some fell among thorns; and the thorns sprang up with it, and choked it. And other fell on good ground, and sprang up, and bare fruit an hundredfold. And when he had said these things, he cried, He that hath ears to hear, let him hear. (Luke 8:5-8) ↩
- 3. This is how a person “...[puts] off the natural man and [becomes] a saint through the atonement of Christ the Lord, and becometh as a child, submissive, meek, humble, patient, full of love, willing to submit to all things which the Lord seeth fit to inflict upon him, even as a child doth submit to his father.” (Mosiah 3:19) ↩