How Do We Obey The Prophet And Should We?
We receive the religion of God through his messenger. Of course he is obeying God also. The issue is that we do not receive revelation directly so it is in fact a technicality that when we follow God through the Quran that we are obeying the messenger. This is outlined in 4:80 where obeying both entities is shown to have overlap. The Quran is clear that we have to obey the messenger. This is because he has been given this authority from God himself to be obeyed in matters of religion. As you mentioned the terminology is ‘obey the messenger’. So this should be clear that we must follow him in his religious capacity as a ‘messenger’.