Life is filled with expectations.
We expect things from other people and various events. We go to a movie; we expect to be entertained. We visit a restaurant; we expect to eat a good meal with good service and good atmosphere. We ask someone to meet us somewhere; we expect them to be there.
People have expectations of us. We have expectations for ourselves. Sometimes, we exceed those expectations; sometimes, we meet them; sometimes, we fall short.
Life is filled with expectations. It helps to know what others expect from us, to give us an idea of where we need to be and what we need to do. We also need to know if the expectations are too high, so we can determine whether or not we want to aspire to meet those expectations. There are times high expectations can challenge us to achieve new heights. Other times, we need to recognize that the high expectation is unrealistic and either try to negotiate the expectation or walk away from it.
Life’s greatest disappointments are when we fail to live up to our own expectations. We set goals for ourselves and, for whatever reason, we fail to achieve them. How we respond to those disappointments help define us and set us on new paths, sometimes good, sometimes bad.
The most important expectations we need to live up to are Jesus’ expectations for us. Jesus’ expectations for us can make us better people, but we have to have a realistic understanding of what He expects from us.
So what does Jesus expect of us?
He Expects Us to Have Faith in Him
“The work of God is this: to believe in the One He has sent” (John 6:29).
At the very center of the Gospel is the need to have faith—to believe—that God’s love sent His Son to not only die for our sins and give us eternal life, but to also show us and enable us to walk in fellowship with God.
When Jesus was approached by Nicodemus, Jesus told him that the only ones who will see the kingdom of God are those who are born again. The following dialogue includes these statements: “Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the desert, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, that everyone who believes in Him may have eternal life” (John 3:15). Later, as John the Baptist testifies about Jesus, he concludes with the statement, “Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life, but whoever rejects the Son will not see life, for God’s wrath remain on him” (John 3:36).
Later on, in his first letter, John writes, “And this is [the Father’s] command: to believe in the name of His Son, Jesus Christ, and to love one another as He commanded us” (1 John 3:23).
The entire relationship between Jesus and His followers is one of faith. Jesus doesn’t ever make the statement or perform the miracle that concretely proves His role as God’s Son and Savior of the world. It is a walk of faith to follow Jesus.
But just as it’s a walk of faith, the expectation is that our faith will be in Jesus and no one else. The faith must be absolute. The verses cited above are only a sampling of the requirement of God that we must put our faith in Jesus as Savior and Lord. To proclaim Jesus a great teacher or a prophet but not quite the Savior is to miss the point of Jesus. The faith must be that Jesus alone is from God the Father, and that Jesus alone can and does provide the atonement for our sins.
Without that faith, there can be no relationship. We can be dedicated church goers, devotedly quote Jesus’ teachings and express our commitment to those teachings, but without the faith that Jesus died for our sins, that He rose again and that He is the Way, the Truth and the Life, there can only be disappointment and disaster. Jesus concludes the Sermon on the Mount with the words, “Many will say to Me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your name, and in Your name drive out demons and perform many miracles?’ Then I will say to them plainly, “I never knew you. Away from Me, you evildoers’” (Matthew 7:22-23). The ones who are saying, “But didn’t we . . . “ are the church goers, not the skeptics or disbelievers. They are the ones who played the game of church really well, but never had the faith that Jesus expects.
He expects us to have faith in Him.
He Expects Us to Put Him First
When God gave the Ten Commandments to Israel, He began with the statement, “I am the Lord your God, Who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. You shall have no other gods before Me” (Exodus 20:2). From the beginning, God has expected us to place Him first in our lives. God refers to Himself as a “Jealous God” in numerous passages, will not and does not accept second place in our lives.
Jesus, as God made flesh, has the same expectation in our relationship with Him. “If anyone comes to Me and does not hate his father and mother, his wife and children, his brothers and sisters—yes, even his own life—he cannot be My disciple” (Luke 14:26). We read these words from Jesus and may think they’re harsh, or that they are inconsistent with Jesus’ command to love one another (cf. John 13:34), but such an interpretation is inaccurate. Jesus is saying that our love and devotion to Him must be so complete that all other relationship are, in comparison, secondary. Jesus’ statements to His mother, Mary, and to John as Jesus hung on the cross show us that Jesus clearly loved His mother. His willingness to hang on that cross reveals His deep love for the Father and for us. Jesus’ point in Luke 14 is that He expects us to put Him first in our lives.
Jesus expects us to put Him first.
He Expects Us to Obey Him
“Why do you call Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ and do not do what I say?” (Luke 6:46).
Most of us are familiar with the story character who is a quasi-dictator in their expectations and demands—the stern coach who believes in winning at all cost and expects his players to feel the same way. The boss who only cares about the bottom line and doesn’t care how we get to the deal done, just as long as it’s done.
It would be easy to look at Jesus’ expectations of our absolute obedience to be one of a thoughtless drone doing whatever we are told to do and doing it in the name of Jesus. The only problem with such an idea is that it completely denies the personality of Christ and the way He demonstrated the life of obedience in the way He related to God the Father.
Yes, Jesus expects us to do what He tells us to do, but it is a relationship built upon trust and love. “If you love Me, keep My commands. And I will ask the Father, and He will give you another advocate to help you and be with you forever—the Spirit of truth” (John 14:15-17a) is a promise of a life of obedience being an act of love for Christ. The result is the promised filling of the Holy Spirit. Jesus goes on to say a little later in the passage, “Anyone who loves Me will obey My teachings. My Father will love them, and We will come to them and make Our home with them” (John 14:23).
Later in the Gospel according to John, the resurrected Christ walks along the shore of Lake Galilee with Peter and the other ten disciples (Judas had committed suicide when he realized his mistake in betraying Jesus). In the discussion with Peter, Jesus asks the disciple three times, “Peter, do you love Me?” After Peter assures Jesus of his love, Jesus’ response is, “Feed My lambs;” “Take care of My sheep;” and, “Feed My sheep” (cf. John 21:15-17). In each of these exchanges, Jesus ends with the command that Peter do what Jesus calls him to do.
Jesus’ expectation that we obey Him may lead us to believe that obedience is a necessary part of salvation—that we must not only have faith in Jesus, but we must work toward that salvation. Nothing is further from the truth. Salvation and our relationship with God through Jesus is built solely on the faith element—we are saved because we believe. The works come after the faith. The faith in Jesus is expressed in how we trust that His ways are the best ways, really the only way. As we come to know Jesus, we realize that He always has our best interest at heart, and because of that, we know that His commands are to bring glory to Him and growth to us.
The obedience in order to be filled with the Holy Spirit or to have the Father and Son dwell with us is to misunderstand the word “if.” “If you love Me” is better understood as, “Because you love Me,” and the promise of God’s presence within us through His Holy Spirit is not conditional, but consistent with the overall relationship. We love Jesus, so we obey Him. He loves us not because we obey Him, but because that is who He is, and He fellowships with us through His Spirit. The promise of Jesus to always be with us found at the end of the Gospel according to Matthew is the reality that the Spirit never leaves His people.
Once we realize that Jesus’ love is an unconditional love, that we are a new creation made by the Father for a ministry consistent with Jesus, and once we realize the life of obedience is one of constant fellowship with the Father and the Son through the Spirit, then the life of obedience becomes natural for us. We want to obey Him because we know He is right.
And it should come as no surprise that Jesus expects us to be obedient.
Conclusion
There are a lot of expectations that Jesus has for us, more than are covered in this short essay. But the reality is that Jesus’ expectations for us are consistent with the actions of One who surrendered His glory to live with us and to die for us. Because Jesus is who He is, His expectations are that we will grow in Him and become more like Him each day.
© 2019 Glynn Beaty