From The Commands by Michael Phillips. Read by Michael Kimball. More information on this and similar writings may be found at Father of the Inklings. Visit Amazon to purchase The Commands and other books by Michael Phillips. 

Throughout the Gospels, Jesus urges obedience to his Commands in many ways and with a great variety of words, phrases, metaphors, and parables. 

What is the "fruit" we are to bear as the Lord's disciples? How will our lives "glorify" God the Father? 

The debate is long standing in Christendom about what exactly "sanctification" is and how it comes about. 

It was not until after much reflection that it slowly dawned on me what an intriguing and perhaps prophetic word this is from the mouth of Jesus. 

The image Jesus is alluding to here is familiar from many sermon illustrations. The farmer guiding his single plow behind donkey or horse or ox desires to plough a precisely straight furrow from one end of the field to the other. 

Count the cost and Don't look back are in a sense two ways to say the same thing. 

At first glance, this may seem but a restating of the command we considered previous to the last. Are we splitting hairs to differentiate between the two? 

It will be unpopular, in this time when obedience to the marital commands of Scripture has grown so lax within Christendom, to read this command from the mouth of Jesus as strictly forbidding divorce. 

The profound example of the Apostle John's life is as powerful as the words he recorded of Jesus' farewell conversation and charge to his disciples in the upper room.