Mike Focht 3/7/2025
God gives incredible promises to obedient sons and daughters. Obedience always results in blessings from God—temporal and eternal blessings. That said, many Christians have not experienced the blessings God promised because their obedience is not biblical. It is a synthetic imposter that they have convinced themselves is true obedience, which God knows is not and cannot accept and bless as such.
One of these synthetic imposters is partial obedience. In this situation, God commands something, and we offer Him part of what He has commanded as true and complete obedience. God commanded King Saul to destroy the Amalekites and their possessions, but we are told: But Saul and the people spared Agag and the best of the sheep, the oxen, the fatlings, the lambs, and all that was good, and were unwilling to utterly destroy them. But everything despised and worthless, that they utterly destroyed (1 Samuel 15:9).
Instead of obeying, Saul partially obeyed, and was later shocked when Samuel rebuked his partial obedience as stubbornness and rebellion. Like Saul, we are all apt to obey the easy things but disobey when things cost us. God does not give us the option of à-la-carte obedience. An employee cannot pick and choose which of his boss’s instructions to follow. If God is not my Master, He does not have my obedience.
Partial obedience keeps our flesh from being crucified. Our flesh can be very obedient so long as it does not have to be fully obedient. If the flesh is given space to pick and choose what type of obedience to offer, it can look very Christiany. And the flesh loves to look religious! The flesh’s partial obedience will never curb our lusts, hurt our reputations, change our plans, shift our priorities, humble our pride, deny or crucify self.
Like Saul, those who offer God partial obedience gladly give God the worst and keep the best for themselves. Partial obedience is not biblical obedience. Partial obedience is a synthetic imposter. Too many Christians are confused about their lack of blessing when offering God partial obedience instead of true obedience. Partial obedience will always receive God’s fitting rebuke. True obedience will always receive God’s promised blessing.