No longer a tourist, now a pilgrim . No longer consumers measuring all of life by what we can get out of it, but now disciples who belong to Jesus Christ. Our Lord gives us two words that capture the essence of discipleship and that cannot be separated. Our response to God's choosing is falling in love with God and the test of our love is in our obedience. Love motivates the keeping of the commandments, and indeed love is the substance of Jesus' commandments.
Obedience is the test of love and love is the content of obedience .
In both Jesus is our guide and mediator. We don t want to be accountable to anyone. American individualism tells us to shape our own spiritual life. So Jesus and the Christian faith and the Christian church are threats to this wave of individualism that resists the idea of obeying any authority outside of the self. When Jesus calls us to love and obey, we need to know he is calling us to go against the grain of our culture and our instincts.