Whenever I get invited to a meeting at work, I’ll read the email or calendar description, but I still want to call the person and ask, what’s this meeting for? Does that make any sense? Can you relate?

When I do call the person, I find out they’re under a lot of pressure from some external source which they can’t name in the meeting description. Or there’s some internal opposition that they’re dealing with. Or they have some ambitious dream that is too vulnerable to spell out. Or they heard from God to call the meeting and they don’t even know why. Or… lots of reasons, and all more interesting, more helpful and more meaningful than what was written in the invitation. Then I can fully participate.

Without talking with God, the Bible can feel like an impersonal email. Even though we have plenty of context from all the rest of scripture, without hearing personally from God, it’s hard to make sense of. Like, some of it seems contradictory. Different things apply in different circumstances. Etc. We need King Jesus to tell us what the passage is about. Not just generally. In our lives. Today.

Discipleship often sounds like this:
“Obey the Bible. Follow the principles. Apply the text.”

But that’s not how the Bible speaks.
Not once did Jesus say, “Obey the Scriptures.”
Not once did the prophets say, “Submit to the law.”
Not once did God call His people to impersonal compliance.

He said:

“Walk after Yahweh your God. Fear Him, keep His instructions, listen to His voice, serve Him, and hold fast to Him.” — Deuteronomy 13:4 (from the Hebrew)

It’s personal. Always personal.

Only in the past few centuries “obey” began to mean something else in English — something colder, harsher, more detached. Let’s look at the evolution of this word.

Hebrew could have built a religious vocabulary like Babylon’s legal tradition — with verbs like to decree, to compel, to bind by statute, to punish noncompliance. But it didn’t. Instead, it chose relational verbs: hear, love, walk with, cling to, keep. In fact, there’s no Hebrew word for “obey” the way we use it today — no sterile verb for following instructions without relationship. The word is שָׁמַע (shama) — to listen with the intent to respond. So “hear” included “obey”.

Aramaic had imperial decree-language (like pitgam, dath), but Jesus and the prophets spoke in covenant terms: hear, keep, do, serve, cling.

Greek had nomos (law), phylassō (observe rules), teleō (fulfill duties), peitharcheō (comply with authority) — but the New Testament chooses verbs like listen, walk, love, keep, follow.

Latin had observare, praeceptum servare, legem custodire — but the Vulgate prefers oboedire (literally, “listen toward”).

Old English had obeġan — to bend, bow, submit, yield, rooted in humility before a personal voice. It later borrowed obey from Latin oboedire. But over the next thousand years, “obey” slowly shifted — and today, it sounds like impersonal rule-following.

Modern English no longer has a word for “listen toward.”
So we say “obey”, and it sounds legalistic, impersonal, harsh, imposed, dry — all the things it was never meant to be. No one thought that way for thousands of years. And what we’ve got is not an improvement.

The best we can do now is “hear and obey” which gets closer to the heart of it. This phrase would have been redundant back when hear meant obey, but became necessary in the 18th and 19th centuries when those words began having separate meanings.

So wherever you see “obey” in the Bible, you can confidently read it as listening to God and responding. Not following rules or principles.

It’s always relational. Always has been.