Obedience heals the will. That’s the short answer. But it’s worth unpacking what that means, because obedience in Orthodoxy isn’t what most people think it is.
When Adam disobeyed in the Garden, he didn’t just break a rule. He broke something inside himself. His will turned away from God and toward himself, and we’ve all inherited that brokenness. We want what we want when we want it. Our wills are sick, and obedience is part of the cure.
Christ reversed this. He “learned obedience through what he suffered,” as Hebrews tells us, and his obedience unto death opened the way back to the Father. When we practice obedience in our spiritual lives, we’re not earning God’s approval. We’re conforming ourselves to Christ, letting his life reshape ours. It’s therapeutic, not transactional.
What Obedience Actually Looks Like
In Orthodox life, obedience is usually relational. It’s given to a spiritual father or mother who knows you, who can see your blind spots and guide you through them. This isn’t about blind submission to some guru. It’s about trusting someone wiser and more experienced to help you see where pride is hiding, where your passions are running the show, where you’re fooling yourself.
A spiritual father might tell you to keep a prayer rule you don’t feel like keeping. Or to fast when you’d rather not. Or to forgive someone you’d prefer to stay angry at. These aren’t arbitrary commands. They’re prescriptions for healing, tailored to what your soul actually needs. And here’s the thing: your soul usually needs something different from what you think you need.
The Desert Fathers have a famous story about this. A young monk was told by his elder to water a dead stick every day. Absurd, right? But he did it. For years. And eventually it sprouted and grew. The point wasn’t the stick. The point was that obedience was training his will, stripping away his pride, teaching him to trust something beyond his own judgment. That’s how the spiritual life works. You can’t think your way into humility. You have to practice it.
Not Legalism
But obedience in Orthodoxy isn’t legalism. Legalism is external, focused on rules for rules’ sake. Orthodox obedience is internal, focused on transformation. The goal isn’t to follow a checklist so God will be pleased with you. The goal is union with God, theosis, and obedience is one of the ways we cooperate with grace to get there.
This matters especially if you’re coming from a background where religion felt like a burden of dos and don’ts. Fasting isn’t about earning points. Confession isn’t about groveling. Prayer rules aren’t about checking boxes. They’re all disciplines that train the will, open us to grace, and gradually heal the passions that keep us trapped in ourselves. A good spiritual father knows this. He won’t pile on rules to crush you. He’ll give you what you can handle, what will actually help.
And obedience always has limits. You don’t obey a command that contradicts the Gospel or the Church’s teaching. You don’t obey abuse. Spiritual fatherhood is a gift, not a power trip. If someone’s using “obedience” to control or manipulate, that’s not Orthodox spirituality. That’s something else entirely.
The Pride Problem
Obedience matters so much because pride is the root problem. It was Lucifer’s sin, Adam’s sin, and it’s ours. We want to be our own gods, make our own rules, trust our own judgment above all. And that’s exactly what keeps us from God.
Obedience is the antidote. When you submit your will to a spiritual father, to the Church’s fasting rules, to the call to forgive, you’re saying, “My way isn’t the only way. I’m willing to be wrong. I’m willing to be corrected.” That’s humility in action. And humility is the doorway to everything else: repentance, love, prayer that’s more than just talking to yourself.
I know people in Beaumont who’ve struggled with this. They grew up Baptist or Church of Christ, where you made a decision for Jesus and that was that. The idea of ongoing obedience to a spiritual father feels foreign, maybe even dangerous. But it’s not about giving up your freedom. It’s about finding it. Real freedom isn’t doing whatever you want. It’s wanting what’s good, what’s true, what leads to life. And most of us don’t get there on our own.
Practical Stuff
So what does obedience look like day to day? It’s simpler than you might think. Go to confession regularly and actually do what your priest suggests. Keep the fasts the Church gives us. Show up to Liturgy. Pray your morning and evening prayers even when you don’t feel like it. Listen to your spouse, your parents, your pastor. These aren’t exotic monastic practices. They’re ordinary disciplines that slowly, over years, reshape who you are.
Metropolitan Kallistos Ware writes about obedience as a school of love. You learn to prefer someone else’s will to your own, and in that preference you discover you’re not the center of the universe. That’s freeing. And it prepares you for the ultimate obedience, which is saying yes to God’s will even when it’s hard, even when it costs you something.
If you’re new to Orthodoxy or just exploring, this might sound intimidating. It shouldn’t. Start small. Find a priest you trust and ask him to be your spiritual father. Tell him what you’re struggling with. Listen to what he says. Try it. You don’t have to be a monk or a saint. You just have to be willing to let God work on you through the ordinary means he’s given: the Church, the sacraments, the wisdom of those who’ve gone before.
Obedience isn’t the whole of the spiritual life. But it’s the hinge everything else turns on. Without it, we stay stuck in ourselves. With it, we start to become something new.
