The Irony of Pious Disobedience
There exists a curious phenomenon in the pious life: the moment when reverence becomes an obstacle to obedience, when the very sentiment we mistake for godliness proves to be its opposite. This paradox emerges most vividly in an episode so simple it is easily overlooked, John the Baptist’s initial refusal to baptize Jesus Christ.
On the surface, his objection possesses undeniable appeal to Christian sensibility. “I have need to be baptized of thee, and comest thou to me?” It reads like humility, even nobility. We recognize ourselves in John’s instinct, the impulse to shrink back, to hesitate, to acknowledge our own inadequacy before something greater. Yet here lies the deception: what appears as reverence is, in fact, an act of disobedience dressed in the garments of piety. John is not honoring Christ; he is obstructing Him. And his obstruction feels righteous because it wears the mask of self-abasement.
This inversion deserves our careful attention, for it reveals something about human nature that the pious prefer not to examine: we are far more likely to disobey God when we can convince ourselves that our disobedience springs from humility rather than pride.
The Substitution of Sentiment for Command
Consider what actually occurs in this moment. God Himself, in human form, stands before John, the greatest man and prophet born of a woman, with a clear directive. Not a suggestion. Not an invitation for discussion. A command: “Suffer it to be so now.” Yet John’s initial response is to refuse. The natural question is: why does John feel empowered to refuse? The answer reveals the nature of religious sentimentality, it operates by substituting our own judgments about what is fitting for the plain instructions of scripture.
John believes, sincerely, no doubt, that it would be unseemly for him to baptize the Christ. It, understandably, at first glance, violates his conception of proper order. And here is where the irony deepens: John is correct about the order of things in terms of human hierarchy. He is unworthy. The baptism does conventionally flow from lesser to greater. But here is John’s conceptual error, he has allowed his accurate perception of the moral and spiritual distance between himself and Christ to become a reason for disobedience rather than a reason for submission.
This error repeats itself throughout scripture in forms that should alarm us. Peter later commits the identical sin when he rebukes Christ for speaking of His coming death (Matthew 16:22). His motivation is protective love, noble in appearance. His judgment is reverent in intent. Yet the Lord’s response cuts through the sentiment: “Get thee behind me, Satan.” What looked like protection was, in fact, opposition to the will of God.
The mechanism is always the same: we feel something appropriate, we mistake that feeling for spiritual insight, and we substitute our emotional judgment for obedience to the clear word of God. The great spiritual danger in this is not the man who openly defies scripture. It is the man who disobeys while feeling pious about it.
The Question of Worth and the Nature of Obedience
What John failed to grasp in that moment, and what we, too, often fail to grasp is that obedience is not conditioned upon our sense of worthiness. This is a proposition worth lingering over, for it cuts against the grain of how we naturally think about moral action.
We tend to believe that we should only perform tasks for which we are suited, actions that accord with our station and our capacities. A servant does not presume to perform a master’s work. A child does not attempt what is the parent’s responsibility. This logic is sound in the natural order. But it becomes corrupted when we apply it to obedience to God. We begin to imagine that God, too, is constrained by these natural proprieties, that He would not ask us to do something we are “unqualified” for, or that our sense of inadequacy is itself a form of spiritual wisdom.
But notice what the Lord Jesus says in response to John’s hesitation. He does not argue. He does not attempt to convince John of his worthiness. Instead, He points to something else entirely: “thus it becometh us to fulfil all righteousness.” The issue is not John’s adequacy. The issue is obedience to the established order, the order that God Himself has set in place, not our perception thereof.
John 1:31 reveals this order plainly: “I knew him not: but that he should be made manifest to Israel, therefore am I come baptizing with water.” God had appointed this means. Jesus’ baptism was not a necessity for His own cleansing, He needed none, but a necessity for revealing Him to Israel. It was part of the pattern of manifestation, the established way by which the Messiah would be made known.
Here is where clear thinking becomes essential. Obedience does not wait for us to feel adequate. It does not pause to ask whether we are “worthy enough” to carry out God’s command. A soldier does not refuse his orders because he doubts his own ability. A servant does not hesitate from his master’s instruction because he questions his fitness. To imagine that our hesitation and our doubt are forms of humility is a delusion that has kept many people from the blessing that lies on the other side of simple obedience.
The Sequence: Why the Glory Follows, Not Precedes
There is a detail in this account that illuminates a truth many believers never quite grasp. The glory, the opening of the heavens, the descent of the Spirit, the Father’s voice, comes after the obedience. Not before. Not during the hesitation. After John “suffered him.”
This sequence matters profoundly. We often reverse it in our thinking. We imagine that we need to feel the power of God before we can obey; we need to sense His affirmation before we step forward; we need some inner assurance of our capability before we act. But the testimony of scripture suggests the opposite: the power comes after we have laid aside our objections and simply done what we are told.
“And Jesus, when he was baptized, went up straightway out of the water: and, lo, the heavens were opened unto him.” The moment of obedience is followed immediately, “straightway,” by the revelation of the Father’s favor. The Trinity is made manifest: the Father speaks His pleasure, the Spirit descends, the Son receives affirmation. But this does not occur while John is debating. It occurs when he steps out of the way.
There is a paradox worth observing here: the very act of obedience that John feared would diminish him, that would place him in the position of serving One he felt unworthy to serve, becomes the means by which he receives the greatest privilege of his life. He becomes the witness to the Father’s declaration of the Son’s identity. He becomes the vessel through which the Messiah is revealed to Israel. His reluctance nearly cost him everything; his obedience gave him everything.
This is not only a matter of practical prudence. It speaks to a deeper principle that the book of John expresses elsewhere: “If ye keep my commandments, ye shall abide in my love” (John 15:10). Obedience is not the price we pay for God’s favor. It is the channel through which His favor flows into our lives. When we argue with God, we cut ourselves off from the blessing. When we submit, we position ourselves directly beneath the opened heaven.
The Modern Absence of Unquestioning Obedience
There is something else worth noticing, something peculiar to our own age. We have grown accustomed to questioning every command, to analyzing every instruction, to asking for explanations and justifications before we consent to obey. This habit has infected our approach to scripture in subtle ways.
We read a clear command, to be baptized, to forgive, to speak truth, to live purely, and immediately our mind engages in a kind of internal negotiation. We ask whether the command applies to our particular circumstances. We wonder whether we have understood it correctly. We consider whether our intentions might be more “spiritual” than the literal obedience the text seems to require. All of this feels like careful discernment. In reality, it often amounts to the same thing John was doing: substituting our judgment for submission to what God has plainly said.
The Lord Jesus, though He was God in the flesh, did not avail Himself of this exemption. He submitted to the baptism of John. He walked the path of obedience to the established order. This detail is precisely the point. If the Master submitted Himself to the ordinance, how much more should the servant? If He saw fit to be baptized, not because He needed cleansing but because righteousness required it, what arrogance suggests that we have found a “higher way” that allows us to ignore what the scripture clearly commands?
There is a humbling thought here, one that modern Christianity largely avoids: true humility is not our feelings about ourselves. True humility is the simple willingness to do what we are told, without requiring the justification of feeling adequate, without demanding that we understand the full purpose, without insisting that we approve of the method God has chosen.
The Living Question
The real question this passage poses is not, “Will you try harder to obey?” It is far more searching: “When you next encounter a clear command of scripture, will you allow your feelings of inadequacy to become your reason for disobedience?” Will you, like John, substitute your own sentiment for God’s instruction? Will you mistake reluctance for wisdom? Will you allow the very impulse toward reverence to become the mechanism of your disobedience?
This is not a question that needs answering out loud. It is a question that must answer itself in the conduct of our lives, in the decisions we make when comfort and obedience diverge, in the choices we face when our own ideas seem more refined or more spiritual than the plain instructions of God.
The opened heavens are not reserved for the spiritually advanced or the sufficiently worthy. They wait for those who, like John, finally step aside and let God be God.
Pastor Thomas Irvin
George County Baptist Church
Lucedale, Mississippi
