Biblical Essays
WHEN DUTY BECOMES DESIRE
Dr. James E. “Gene” Priest once preached a sermon titled, “When Duty Becomes Desire.” It had a powerful effect, clearly explaining how spiritual life often functions at the level of duty. He pointed out: “Duty is not a bad word. But the service of God must become more than duty to be either meaningful or sustained.” We need to deeply rethink the nature of spiritual life and growth.
Our close personal relationships always face the issue of duty, i.e., obligations, responsibilities. Only in humankind’s relationship with God, do we tend to begin with duty. Perhaps this explains why legalism has such a long and fabled legacy across the centuries of church history. But what if we take another point of departure? “My own attachment to parents, wife, or children could never be thought of as being rooted in duty. All of them begin with desire. There is a natural longing within me that reaches in the direction of someone else. As those relationships matured, I learned and performed various duties of obedience, nurture, or protection. From these fulfilled obligations has come an undeniable sense of satisfaction and delight” (Priest).
Some Christians have felt their obedience to God “burdensome” (cf. 1 John 5:3b), indicating a serious flaw in their original turn to Him. They were taught to mollify an angry God or to barter with a businessman God rather than to admire, love, and desire a captivating, winsome, loving God. So they started down the path of checking off commandments with a low motivation – eventually degenerating into legalism or simply failing altogether. “Begin with a true knowledge of God’s character and actions, and He is utterly desirable for His holiness and grace. One who sees this clearer vision of the Lord says: ‘Whom have I in heaven but You? And earth has nothing I desire besides You’ (Ps. 73:25). One who hears the story of Jesus’ redemptive love at Calvary thinks of the Son of God in terms of Bach’s ‘joy of man’s desiring.’ The performance of one’s duties to this God would hardly be a burden” (Priest).
Against Madison Avenue’s misdirection of our desires toward deodorant, beer, or more expensive cars, heaven’s directives channel our legitimate desire for God into eager and unforced compliance.
The end of this process is a sense of peaceful delight in God, leading to a true experience of salvation. In other words, when your soul has thirsted for God as a deer pants for steams of water, the satisfaction of knowing Him and surrendering to Him is the ultimate fulfillment.
