What disobedience ultimately is

What is disobedience?

Ask any child or teen and you will likely get a response something like, “not doing what I was told to do.”  That answer is not significantly different from what most adults might say — “disobedience is a failure to do something commanded by a superior or authority figure in one’s life.”

But as Moses recounted for Israel the potential blessings for the nation’s obedience as it entered the promised land — and the potential cursings for disobedience — he also noted in passing what disobedience really is:

“The LORD will send upon you curses, confusion, and rebuke, in all you undertake to do, until you are destroyed and until you perish quickly, on account of the evil of your deeds, because you have forsaken Me.” [Dt. 28:20]

Evil deeds, Moses says, ultimately are a result of forsaking God.  Men do evil and disobey the authority of God because they have rejected His authority in their lives.  Israel — and every man — will be led to disobey God when they reject their relationship with God.

Disobedience, then, is not merely a wrong action; disobedience is a wrong relationship, a repudiation of fellowship with God, a resistance to intimacy with Him, a replacement of His friendship with friendship with the world.  The sin is not only in the action, but what the action represents — a rejection of God.

John Newton said it this way:

The exceeding sinfulness of sin is manifested, not so much by its breaking through the restraint of threatenings and commands, as by its being capable of acting against light and against love…

We disobey, because we are not satisfied with God and our fellowship with Him.  Disobedience occurs by the work of our hands when a discontentment with God arises in our souls.