The Will of God (Part 1)
In five of Paul’s letters—1st and 2nd Corinthians, Ephesians, Colossians, and 2 Timothy—he refers to himself as “an apostle by the will of God.” When Jesus taught his disciples how to pray, one of the lines is, “Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” (Matthew 6:10) In Mark 3:35, Jesus says, “whoever does the will of God, this is My brother, and sister, and mother.”
So what is “the will of God”? And how do we do His will? Indeed, how do we even know His will so that we may do it?
Today I will look at those first two questions.
In 1 Thessalonians 4:3, Paul says, “For this is the will of God, your sanctification; that is, that you abstain from sexual immorality. . . .” And in 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18, he adds: “Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, in everything give thanks; for this is the will of God for you in Christ Jesus.”
Peter says this in 1 Peter 2:13-15: “Submit yourselves for the Lord’s sake to every human institution, whether to a king as the one in authority, or to governors as sent by him for the punishment of evildoers and the praise of those who do right. For such is the will of God, that by doing right you silence the ignorance of foolish people.”
Then he adds this in 1 Peter 4:1-2: “Therefore, since Christ has suffered in the flesh, arm yourselves also with the same purpose, because the one who has suffered in the flesh has ceased from sin, so as to live the rest of the time in the flesh no longer for human lusts, but for the will of God.”
And John tells us this in 1 John 2:15-17: “Do not love the world nor the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the boastful pride of life, is not from the Father, but is from the world. The world is passing away and also its lusts; but the one who does the will of God continues to live forever.”
Are you getting the idea here? Ultimately, the “will of God” is that we love him and obey him. Doing the will of God means trying to do what he wants us to do. Of course, that means we need to know what he wants us to do—and that brings us to that third question. How do we know His will so that we may do it?
I’ll talk about that in my next blog entry.
0 Comments