“Father, if Thou be willing, remove this cup from Me; nevertheless, not My will, but Thine be done.” Luke 22: 42.

Gethsemane! The inmost sanctuary of the life of our Lord and of His great redemption. In some respects more mysterious than even Calvary. Of the visible suffering and sacrifice on the Cross, the garden opens up the inner meaning and power. And of all the suffering of Gethsemane, “Not my will, but Thine be done,” was the key. It shows us what the sin was that made the great sacrifice a necessity, our self-will; what the disposition was that gave the sacrifice its worth, the surrender of the will to receive God’s will; what the redemption was that it effected, the conquest and atonement of our self-will; and what the salvation it actually brings, the impartation of a will given up to God. Come, my soul, be still, and worship in holy fear, as you see what it cost your Lord to speak the words you so easily say. Learn from Him what fulness of meaning and blessing there is to be found in them.

The sin Christ dies for. — Why is the Son of God here on His way to the death of the Cross? What is it that costs Him all this agony and suffering? It is sin that needs this sacrifice; it is to take away sin that He is here. And the first part of His work in taking it away is that He Himself resist and conquer it. It is this death-struggle with sin that cost Him the agony. All through His life He had been “tempted in all things like as we are, yet without sin.” In this last hour of the powers of darkness they make one great assault on the very citadel of His being, and seek to tempt Him with the sorest of all temptations — following His own will as His nature shrank back from the awful curse-bearing that was set before Him. The scene reveals to us what is the deepest root of all sin — the assertion of our self-will. It was this that was the sin and the fall of Adam. It is this that is the source of all evil on earth. It is this that is, in the believer, the hidden cause of all failure and disappointment. God’s will is the living power through which His love communicates itself and its blessings to the creature. Man’s will was meant to be the power by which he was intelligently to yield himself and cooperate with God in receiving and appropriating all the Divine nature had to impart. Self-will, a will not yielded to God, is, in the whole universe of things, the only thing that hinders God in revealing and communicating His blessedness to the creature. The cross is the proof of man’s self-will in the refusal to bow to God’s Son. Christ’s agony in Gethsemane is the proof that it is this same sin that He came to conquer and cast out.

The victory Christ won. — We often look upon the suffering of Christ, with the endurance of the curse and death of the Cross, as the cause of our salvation. Scripture teaches us to look to what gave that suffering and death its inner value — Christ’s obedience. It was not merely in what He did or suffered, but in the spirit in which He acted, that its infinite worth, its atoning merit, is to be found. During His whole life He had spoken of not doing His own will. Here He proves that He will do the will of the Father, even though it cost Him His life. Even unto death He says, ‘Not My will!’ And so through death, in dying to His own will, He teaches us what God claims as His right, and what alone can bring us to our true place of blessing — the entire losing and giving up of our will and life to God’s will as the way into the life and glory of God.

The atonement Christ accomplished. — And, now the victory of Christ over man’s self-will, how does it profit and save us? In two ways, as we regard Him in His substitution or His fellowship, as the Christ for us, as the Christ in us. In the former of these aspects, His victory over sin as self-will, His obedience unto death and His infinite acceptableness in the Father’s sight, become ours the moment we believe in Him. As those who are united to Him by faith, His righteousness and merit, with all the Father’s delight in Him on account of them, are made our very own: “We are made the righteousness of God in Him.” The sin of our self-will is blotted out. We are dealt with by God as if we never had sinned, counted righteous, and allowed to look up to God in His Beloved Son as altogether well-pleasing to Him. Were there but any due sense of the awfulness of the sin of self-will, especially in God’s redeemed children, with what joy would the assurance of its being blotted out be welcomed. And how fervent would be the longing to know to the full the fruit of the victory Christ has achieved for us in freeing us from its power as well as its guilt.

The salvation Christ bestows. — This is the second aspect of Christ’s victory — He has freed us from the dominion of self-will. The very nature and essence of the salvation He imparts is, what was the very nature and essence of His own life, a delight and power to do God’s will alone. Gethsemane teaches us the way to receive the full experience of the deliverance. Just as there was in Christ, in His holy sinless nature, a learning of obedience through what He suffered, until it culminated in the surrender of His will unto the death, so there may be in the believer, who seeks to follow his Lord in full conformity, such a growth, both in insight into the absolute necessity of a giving up of all self-will, even in the least things, and also in the Divine certainty of God’s working in us, what Christ has won for us, that he is led to know experimentally what it is that he is crucified with Christ, and dead to self and its will. But there can be no thought of our understanding or attaining this, until the desire has come to give up all, even unto death to live in the will of God alone.

Believer! is this the very Christ you delight in and seek to be conformed to, and long to know more fully in His indwelling power? In Gethsemane He entered into the very deepest and nearest fellowship with you in surrendering His will to the death: enter you there into the deepest and nearest fellowship with Him in surrendering your will as He did. Pray for the Holy Spirit to show you how self-will is the root of all sin and temptation and darkness; how the will of God can come in and cast it out and live in you; how faith in Christ who died to conquer our self-will, and now waits to dwell in us, can make you partaker of His death and victory. Learn the lesson that death to self-will just means a quiet bowing before God in utter poverty and helplessness, and a simple trusting in the Blessed Lamb of God, who passed through death as the only way to the perfect surrender of His will to God’s will, to breathe His own Spirit, and with it the very will of God, into us.

To a soul longing to live only and wholly in the will of God, death to all self-will is the one inevitable demand, but also, in the faith of Christ Jesus, the one sure and most blessed deliverance.

Chapter 9 — LORD! WHAT WILT THOU?

“And Saul, trembling and astonished, said, Lord! what wilt Thou have me to do?” Acts 9: 6.

On the prayer, ‘Your will be done in heaven, so on earth,’ there needs to follow the more special one, ‘Lord! what will You have me do?’ Men have often asked what was the secret of the wonderful consecration and power which we see in the life of Paul. At his conversion, his first act, after he knew the Lord who had met him, was the surrender of his will. Lord! what will You have me do? [Note: The R. V. omits these words. We have their substance in Paul’s account of his conversion (Acts 22: 10), “And I said, What shall I do, Lord!”] That word was the beginning, the root, the strength, the mark of his whole wonderful life. His work was so blessed and fruitful, because he remained faithful to the one thing: he only lived for the will of his Lord.

There are many lessons which these words suggest. . . . The Lord has a will, a life-plan for each of us, according to which He wishes us to live. . . . To each of us the Lord will unfold this will or life-plan. . . . He expects us to wait on Him for the discovery of His will both in that which is universal, for all His people, as in that which He wills for each one individually. . . . When this prayer is honest and true, it implies the whole-hearted willingness to yield ourselves and our life to the doing of that will. . . . We may count upon an answer to such prayer, because God does not ask of His child more than He makes known as His will.

These and other similar lessons give abundant occasion for meditation and prayer. In this chapter I desire to ask your attention to another lesson, apparently very simple, and yet of deep significance, including all the others. It is what was suggested in the opening paragraph: True conversion is nothing but a surrender to live only to do the will of God.

Do not say: But is not this a matter of course, that everyone admits? Far from it. Most Christians never have understood it. It may be that you have never yet fully grasped it. True conversion is the turning from my own will, so as never to seek or do it; the surrender of my will, with all its strength and at all times only to seek and do what God wills.

But am I then to have no will of my own? You are indeed to have a will, the stronger the better, and to use it with all your strength for the one great work for which God created and fitted it. That one thing was: to accept and to will what God wills. This is the image and likeness of God for which man was created, the glory and the blessedness of the life of a child of God, that He can say: the holy, heavenly, perfect will of God is my will. I have seen it and accepted it and made it my own. To will and to do with all my strength what God wills and does, this is the noblest work the will of a creature can be engaged in. In this is the very image and likeness of God: to will ever as He wills. We then learn to say: How wonderful, what an honor; I will always just what God wills. Or as an old saint expressed it: I am always happy, because I always have my own way; God’s will and mine are always one.

This surrender to the will of God, the key of Paul’s conversion and of his life, is the secret of all true conversion and true Christian living. And it is because so many have entered the Christian course without any apprehension of God’s demand that they should now cease from all self-will, and only do His will, that they make so little progress, that it is with them as it is written: “They went backwards and not forwards.” They have never understood what Scripture says of God’s children: they are “born not of the will of man, but of God”; “it is not of him that willeth, but of God which showeth mercy “; “of His own will begat He us, by the word of truth.” The whole will of man, as his own power, however good and religious it may be, is shut out of the kingdom of heaven; it has to be denied and crucified; how much more the sinful self-will. As God’s will alone brought forth the Divine life in us, its whole growth and strength are to be found in this alone. “My meat is to do the will of Him that sent Me.” The great hindrance in the life of God in the soul is this one thing: we have not given up our will. When once a child of God begins to see that here lies the defect of his Christian life, there is no deliverance until he go back upon his conversion and admit and confess the one cause of failure. He did not know how utterly evil his will was, and how entire the renunciation of it to which he was called. When the Lord Jesus said: “If any man will be My disciple let him deny himself, and take up his cross,” it meant first of all, let him deny his own will, and crucify it.

The will of God is our salvation, not only as it is willed by Him, but as it is received into our inmost being, submitted to and wrought out in our life, truly willed by us. Because our salvation rests each moment in the saving will of God, we can have only as much of the salvation as we accept the will. Until this is grasped, the true reason of our failure is not understood. As the error and the sin are heartily acknowledged, the soul is prepared to make a new beginning, and in the redeeming power of the Glorified Lord Jesus to say to God, Lo, I come, as it is written in the volume of the book, not only for Christ, but for each of His disciples: ‘I delight to do Your will, O my God.’

If I am to turn to God in a new and full surrender to His will, it must be in a new and full trust in what Christ can do for me. Saul’s question, Lord, what wilt Thou have me to do? was preceded by another, out of which it was born: Who art Thou, Lord? It was the vision of the Son of God in His glory, it was the personal revelation “I am Jesus, whom thou persecutest,” that wrought the mighty change, and made him yield himself so readily and so entirely to the will of his new-found Lord. We need something of the same kind. Nothing less than a new revelation of the Divine authority, and the tender love of Him whom we have grieved so long, but who now comes to claim and to make us the faithful servants of His will, can really enable us to say in confidence: Lord! what will You have me do? Speak Lord, Your servant will do it.

Who is ready to enter upon this path of entire devotion to the will of God, the only true Christ-life? The steps are simple.

Remember, the will of God is the revelation of His hidden Divine love and blessedness, and that the only way to know and enjoy God and His love is to do His will. Say therefore boldly: I may, I will do nothing but God’s will.

Believe that in answer to the prayer, Lord! what is Your will? Jesus Christ will make known God’s will day by day; and that where He teaches me to know it by His spirit, He gives me strength to do it.

And when I have said, Lord! here am I, ready to do all Your will, let me wait upon Him to reveal Himself as my Redeeming Lord, who with the command gives the power: His voice, His presence, His love compel a willing obedience. It is the answer to the first prayer, Who are You, Lord? that prepares for the answer to the second, Lord! what will You have me do? Paul had heard Stephen speak of “the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God.” It was when, in “a light from heaven above the brightness of the sun,” he had for himself this vision of the Glorified One, that his eyes and heart were for ever darkened to earth, and his life was given up to do the will of his Lord alone. It is so even still. The faith of Christ Triumphant looking upon us and conquering us for Himself, compels and empowers us to do His will alone.

Lord! show Yourself to me; then I can do whatever You bid me. In living communion with You, I can do all things.

“I have found David, the son of Jesse, a man after Mine own heart, who shall do all My will.” Acts 13: 22; 1 Sam. 13: 14.

OF the two expressions God uses here of David, we often hear the former: “a man after Mine own heart.” The use of the latter: “who shall do all My will,” is much less frequent. And yet it is no less important than the other. A man after Mine own heart: that speaks of the deep unseen mystery of the pleasure a man can give to God in heaven. Who shall do all My will: that deals with the life down here on earth which can be seen and judged by men. Let us seek and get full hold of the truth that it is the man who does all God’s will who is the man after His own heart. Such men God seeks: when He finds them He rejoices over them with great joy: they are the very men He needs, men He can trust and use. His heart, with its hidden Divine perfections, reveals itself in His will; he that seeks and loves and does all His will is a man altogether after His own heart: the man of absolute surrender to God’s will.

Such was David in striking contrast with Saul, the type of the half-hearted and self-pleasing Christian. We know what remarkable experiences Saul had at the outset of his life. The Spirit of God came upon him, and another heart was given him, and he prophesied. There was not lacking in him a sense of humility; when he was to be presented to the people, he hid himself. And speedily God began to work through him salvation in Israel. But it was not long before self-will began to show itself. When God sent him with the command to destroy Amalek utterly, he did God’s work deceitfully, and under pretense of bringing sacrifices to offer to God, did his own will in the matter of Agag and the best of the spoil. His terrible failure was used of God, by the contrast, to bring out more strikingly the great truth, that the man whom God can use to rule His people and establish His kingdom, that the man after His own heart, who pleases Him, is he of whom He can say: he shall do all My will.

After what we have already learned of God’s will, with the place it has in the Christian life, and in preparation for a spiritual apprehension of the further teaching of God’s Word, it may be well to use these words for the simplest possible instruction to all who are asking the question: How can I become such a one? What must I do that God can say of me: a man after My own heart, who shall do all My will?

First of all, remember, you cannot attain to this by anything you can do. No resolution, no effort, no help you seek in prayer to strengthen your weakness, will effect what you desire. And why not? Because you have in you a nature wholly ruled by self-will, and wholly opposed to God’s will. Nothing can delight in God’s will and actually do it, but a new and Divine nature, born and daily renewed in you by a Divine power from above. “The carnal mind is enmity against God,” and averse from His will. As entire as has been the perversion of the old nature from God and His will, must be the deliverance of the new nature from self and its will. Here is our first lesson. No desire, however honest, no purpose, however fixed, no surrender, however absolute, can make a man after God’s own heart, who shall do all His will. Such a man must be born from above, and must do all he does in the power of that new Divine life. A regenerate man may indeed in some things do God’s will, as the fruit of the first half-unconscious workings of the Holy Spirit within him. But this is only preparatory to what God really aims at — that His child of his own free will, shall intelligently and heartily choose to do all His will. That little word ‘all’ is the secret of true consecration, of a life “worthy of the Lord unto all well-pleasing,”of being a man after God’s own heart.

We all know what a great difference there is between a feeble child, or a sickly man, and one in full health. And so it is not enough that you just have a beginning or small measure of spiritual life; that will not enable you to do all God’s will. The question is whether you are living only, and doing all, under the power of the Holy Spirit, as the strength of the new life. It is only the Spirit of God Himself that can do the will of God. And the great reason why God’s children do not claim, do not yield themselves by the Spirit of God to work all His will in them, is that they do not know how foolish, how helpless it is, to expect even the regenerate man to do God’s will, without the direct and unceasing operation of God’s Spirit. And then again, because they do not know the subtle and altogether unconquerable power of our corrupt nature, except as God Himself through His Son and Spirit lives and works in the inmost recesses of our being, and inspires all its powers. If you learn the first lesson well — the secret aversion of your nature to God’s will, and your complete inability to overcome or to change it, you are prepared to go on to the second.

It is this. Believe that you have a new and Divine nature, expressly fitted and prepared to do all God’s will, on the one condition, that you hold it in close and continual dependence upon the Holy Spirit, through whom God in Christ works in you. Jesus Christ could do nothing of Himself, though He was the Son, without the Father working in Him. Does it displease you to be as absolutely dependent upon God as He was? As part of your faith in Jesus Christ, believe that God works in you as in Him. Believe this, however dark and feeble you feel, just as you believe, in the darkness of midnight, that the sun is shining on the other half of the world, and will in the morning rise upon you. It is this faith, with the humble, patient, dependent surrender to God which it works, that will bring you to an entirely new position and power in the doing God’s will.

In this faith, here is our third lesson, humbly but confidently give yourself up to God to do all His will. Give yourself to Him, as a loving Father, so that you do not take His commands as a mere law, but as a loving will — the will of the Father, made known in the loving fellowship by Himself to yourself. Look at God’s will as one great whole — the revelation of His loving purpose with man and with you. Set yourself resolutely, now, in the faith of the Holy Spirit’s working in you, to count it your one business every day to do all God’s will. Then again, bow yourself in the deepest humility and impotence to wait on God to work in you. The humility that bows in deep grief at the enmity of the evil nature against God’s will, in confession of the impotence of the regenerate nature of itself to do that will, in the dependence of a childlike waiting on God for Him to work His will in you, will be a new entrance into the kingdom of heaven. The Christian life will become something quite new to you under the power of these great truths: your utter and ever-abiding impotence to do God’s will, even as a regenerate man, without the unceasing work of the Holy Spirit: your Divine and complete sufficiency in Christ for all that the Father asks of you when He calls you to be a man after His own heart, who shall do all His will.

“And when Paul would not be persuaded, we ceased, saying: The will of the Lord be done.” Acts 21: 14.

Paul was at Caesarea, on his way to Jerusalem. Agabus, a prophet, had said by the Holy Spirit that Paul would there be bound, and delivered into the hands of the Gentiles. Paul’s friends besought him not to go. In his answer he spoke the noble words: I am ready not to be bound only, but also to die at Jerusalem for the name of the Lord Jesus. When they heard this, they said: The will of the Lord be done. It was no longer a question of Jews or Gentiles, not even of the life or death of Paul; if it was to be, they would accept it as the will of God. The story teaches us the wisdom, the duty, the blessing of accepting disappointment or trial that cannot be averted, as God’s will, and so turning what naturally would cause sorrow or anger, into an occasion of holy resignation and humble worship of God in His sovereign wisdom and power.

There is a twofold will of God: the will of approval and the will of permission. In the former we see what He desires or ordains as right and good. The latter includes all that happens in the world either as the result of natural law and second causes, or as the work of ungodly men and evil spirits. To admit that what God’s will directly appoints is good is comparatively easy. But to recognize His will in all the evil that comes to us or around us from evil men, is a truth many a believer never accepts. It is one of the most blessed lessons anyone can learn to see that no possible trouble can ever come to us, that is not for us in very deed the will of our Father. Though Judas, and Caiaphas, and Pilate sinned against God’s holy and righteous will in the death of Jesus, the suffering and death they caused Him He accepted as the will of God, the cup the Father gave Him. The sin of those who persecute or hurt a child of God, is not His will, and yet the suffering caused, with all its consequences, is to him God’s will. As this is seen the believer turns his eyes from the human cause to the heavenly Father’s will, and finds that suffering becomes a blessing, and that no power on earth or in hell can rob the soul of the perfect rest there is in that blessed will. The place of trial becomes the place of blessing. Let us see what is needed to secure this.

1. In time of trial let me say at once: Here I am by the will of God, in the very place God has chosen for me. Whether the trial comes from the hatred of an enemy, or the wrong of a friend, through my own fault or in the course of God’s more direct Providence, I may be sure, and ought therefore heartily to consent to it, that the difficulty or distress in which I am is the will of God concerning me. Whether it be some great trial or some petty annoyance, whether a temporary grief or some long-continued cause of weariness or irritation, be sure that the secret of peace and rest is to say: This trouble is what God wills for me. It is this that lifts me from man to God and His will. To that will I have yielded myself. In that will I rest. The will of the Lord be done.

2. This prepares the soul to say with confidence: God, who has brought me into this trouble, will assuredly give me the grace to bear it aright. The grace that is needed to bear suffering as God would have His child do it, so as to glorify Him in it, must come from Him. The quiet submission, the child-like trust, the living entrance into and union with His will, He will work in the soul that adoringly says: The will of the Lord be done. All the promises of the Holy Scripture, with all the comfort they afford in the assurance of God’s presence and aid in trouble, depend for their fulfilment on this one condition, that the soul gives itself up to the will of God. Then can we prove that God’s will is Love and Blessing. The more willingly I say, God brought me here, the more confidently I can say, He has charge and cares for me.

3. We shall then be led farther on to the assurance: God Himself will teach me the lessons for which He sent the trial. This is something more than the trust, and peace, and surrender we have just been speaking of. They keep us from grieving God or vexing ourselves in the school of affliction. But beyond these graces God has special lessons for every child whom He leads aside in His loving chastisement. He wants to cure us permanently of our self-will and of our worldliness, to awaken us into the true imitation of the humility and the self-sacrifice of His Son, to draw us into full fellowship with Him who made us for His Divine indwelling and operation within us, to fit us to live lives of blessing to others. These lessons are often sadly missed by those who suffer much; and those who try to learn them often feel how greatly they have failed. It is because we do not believe: the Father, who brought me into this place of trial, will Himself teach the lessons He would have me learn and work all the grace He desires to see in me. The will of the Lord be done, includes not only the trial itself, but all that God meant by it, and has undertaken Himself to work out in the willing, waiting soul.

4. When thus we have entered into living union with the Father through His will, we shall not fear to say: God’s will, which brought me here, can, in His way and time, bring me out again. With many children of God the desire for deliverance from trouble is the first, if not even the only, thought. This should not be so. Suffering is not natural to us; we are at liberty to call upon God for deliverance in the day of trouble. But it is not for this alone the heart must turn to God. The first desire must be that God may be glorified in loving submission, and childlike teachableness; that His will in all it means and aims at with the trial may be done. It is when, in this its true and full meaning, the prayer: The will of the Lord be done, rises from the heart, that the burden may be taken away without our being the losers, and that the deliverance may bring as much glory to God in our holy devotion as the suffering could have done. The union with God’s will then will teach us how to look to it in the right spirit for help.

What a privilege that the darkest trials, the bitterest sorrows, as well as the smaller disappointments or the passing fears of life, can all help to unite me more perfectly with the will of my God. By His grace I will seek to live every day, amid tears of sorrow and songs of joy, in quiet submission or in triumphant faith, as they do in heaven, with the one word in the heart: The will of the Lord be done. It is this that gives heaven on earth.

I worship Thee, sweet Will of God, And all Thy ways adore, And every day I live I seem To love Thee more and more.

I have no cares, O blessed Will! For all my cares are Thine; I live in triumph, Lord, for Thou Hast made Thy triumphs mine.

Man’s weakness waiting upon God, Its ends can never miss; For man on earth no work can do, More angel like than this.

He always wins who sides with God, To him no chance is lost; God’s will is sweetest to him when It triumphs at his cost.

Ill that He blesses is our good, And unblest good is ill, And all is right that seems most wrong If it be His sweet will.

Chapter 12 — OF KNOWING GOD’S WILL

“And Ananias said, The God of our fathers hath appointed thee to know His will, and to see the Righteous One, for thou shalt be His witness to all men, of what thou hast seen and heard, and to hear a voice from His mouth.” Acts 22: 14, 15.

When Saul said, Lord! what wilt Thou have me to do? the reference was to personal immediate duty. When Ananias, after three days, spoke of his call from God “to know His will,” the thought was a much larger one. Saul had been prepared by God as His chosen vessel, to whom he could intrust “the mystery of His will,” “the mystery of Christ,” “which from the beginning of the world had been hid in God,” “that the Gentiles are fellow-heirs and fellow-members of the body and fellow-partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus, through the Gospel” (Eph. 1: 9, 10, 3: 3-9).

I have previously spoken of the need of not confining our knowledge of God’s will to the commands and promises which have special reference to ourselves. All God’s children are called to enlarge their hearts, to take a personal interest in the great work God is seeking to carry out in the world, and so to be ready to take their part in the fulfilment of His purpose — the winning back of the world to Him, to be the kingdom of His Son.

In studying Paul’s surrender to Christ’s will in conversion, we saw how closely that was linked to his vision of the Lord in heaven. Here we find the same connection: “Appointed to know His will, and to see the Righteous One.” The mystery of God’s will is the mystery of Christ: to know the will is inseparable from knowing the Righteous One, who put away sin, and is to rule in righteousness on the earth. In the life and writings of Paul we see how firmly he holds the two truths together. It is ever “Jesus Christ our Lord, through whom we received grace and apostleship, unto obedience of the faith among all nations, for His name’s sake.” As one who had seen and heard him, Paul’s Gospel was ever a personal witness. He never preached the will of God as a doctrine, or a decree, or even as a revelation, apart from the living person of that Lord Jesus in whom that will had revealed all its riches and blessings, and in personal contact with whom alone its salvation could be realised. To know the will, and to see the Righteous One, let these ever be inseparable. The living Christ Himself can alone fit us to know and do the will of God. To know the will and not see the Righteous One would make it a new law of Moses, a burden heavy to be borne. To see Him is to know the will in the light of God’s love, to know it in its Divine beauty and perfection, and to receive the power to do it.

All that God did in Paul was “for an example unto them which should hereafter believe.” Like him, and through him, each of us is called, in our measure to know this larger will of God, His purpose for all men, that the Gospel should be preached to every creature. There is no sadder proof of how little it is understood or preached that, just as Christ, so His Church, is only in the world to carry out this Divine will, than the lack, in the great majority of Christians, of anything like enthusiastic devotion to the cause of Missions. Even among those who do give them a measure of support, there is so little sense of the overwhelming prominence which ought to be given to this will of God. It is not one command among others. It is the one thing in which the will of the Father includes everything: that all men should know and honor Christ. It is the one thing for which Christ died and lives. It is the one thing for which the Church exists, to be a light to them that are in darkness. It is the one thing by which a child of God can prove that he lives not unto himself but unto Him that died for him and rose again. It is the one truth that above all else needs to be restored to its place and which assuredly will bring the revival of every other truth of the spiritual life as its necessary condition. This is in very deed the very will of God, that the Church as the body of Christ, and every believer as its member, is to seek first, absolutely first, the kingdom of God, and to labor that His will be done throughout the earth, as in heaven.

And what can be the reason, if this be the will of God, that the Church has so little apprehended or fulfilled it? If Paul was divinely illuminated to know that will, and to make it known to the Church, how comes it that it has so little possessed the Church of Christ? The answer is not far to seek. Just as in Paul this will of God needed a very special spiritual revelation, so still. It is easy, when once a truth has been seen and pointed out by spiritual men, for other Christians to see and accept it too. And yet it may be an article of mental belief, that does not really, through living faith, master and possess the heart. The will of God is a living spiritual energy; we do not know that will truly until it has entered and filled our will. As love alone can meet love, and heart alone touch heart, so will alone can apprehend will. Anything less is but a mental image, a conception of the truth, not the thing itself in its reality and power. And so a great deal of the missionary interest of our day proves, by the feeble hold it has, and the little sacrifice there is made for it, and the need of continual appeal to minor motives, that the knowledge of this mystery of God’s will is not held in the power of the Spirit.

Paul speaks of “the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.” It is only as the mystery of Christ in us, the experience of an indwelling Christ is truly known, that the glory of the mystery will be seen to be this, that it is the will of God for all the Gentiles. The more truly I know by the Spirit what it is to have Christ in me, the more I shall long and labor that it may be Christ in all.

“God hath appointed thee to know His will, and to see the Righteous One, and to hear a voice from His mouth, and to be His witness of what thou hast seen and heard.” God gave Paul as an example; in your measure this word is for you also, my reader. Do believe that in this mystery of God’s will for the Gentiles the glory of God, of Christ, of the Church, of every believer is centered. All God’s wisdom and power, His holiness and love and faithfulness meet in it. And you are appointed — what a privilege — to know His will, and have it possess you, and use you as its instrument and messenger and witness. Fear not to yield yourself utterly to it, a living sacrifice. “Appointed to know His will, and” (here is your strength) “to see the Righteous One,” who Himself wrought that will and now works mightily in all who see Him, and receive Him as their Lord who dwells in them. Oh! cast yourself into this mighty stream of Divine love — the will of God for the salvation of the ends of the earth. Look up and see and worship the Righteous One, the Lord our Righteousness, the King of Righteousness, whose rule is to bring peace and blessing to the world; to do all God’s will for the establishment of the kingdom, will become your one ambition.

“If thou bearest the name of a Jew, and gloriest in God, and knowest His will, and art confident that thou thyself art a guide of the blind: thou therefore that teachest another, teachest thou not thyself! thou that preachest a man should not steal, dost thou steal.” Rom. 2: 17-21.

In chapter 1 of this Epistle we have the terrible unrighteousness of the heathen, with its consequent darkness, portrayed. In chapter 2 the self-righteousness of the Jews, with the fatal delusion that rests in the knowing of God’s will without doing it. Men gloried in God and made their boast of Israel’s having had a Divine revelation, and being the depository of God’s will, and yet never thought of the folly of not doing that will. It is the same evil against which Christ warned, when He said: “Not every one that saith unto Me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven, but he that doeth the will of My Father which is in heaven.” Our subject today is the terrible possibility of glorying in God and delighting in the study and the knowledge of His will, and yet not doing it. Let us try and discover the cause of this sad phenomenon, as frequent in the Christian Church as in Israel. That will lead us to see what its cure must be. Let us bring our own life into the full light of Scripture teaching, and find out whether the doing of God’s will has really that supreme place in our thought and conduct which it has in the mind of God and the teaching of Christ.

One would say that from the very nature of the thing every Christian would know that doing God’s will is the very essence of true religion. Whether we regard Him as Creator or Lawgiver, as Father or Redeemer, we cannot but admit that we cannot honor or please, cannot fulfil our relationship to Him, without living to do His will. Whether we think of the escape from the power of sin, or the walk in His fellowship and love, or the participation in the happiness of His service, here or hereafter, everything points to the doing of God’s will as the only possible way of really living in the enjoyment of salvation. What can be the reason that so many Christians have never known that doing God’s will is the very first duty of the Christian’s life, indispensable to its health and safety?

With many the cause is an entire misapprehension of the nature of salvation. They have misunderstood God’s glorious Gospel. They heard that God justifies the ungodly by free grace without any works of righteousness he ever had done or needed to do to secure God’s favor. They heard right. But they understood wrong. They were content to believe in the pardon of sin, and deliverance from punishment, and never saw that salvation means restoration to the love and fellowship of God, to the honor and blessedness of a walk in obedience to His will. Content with being saved from guilt, they never thought that being saved from the doing of sin is the real proof of the power of salvation, and the real entrance upon a life in the likeness and holiness of God. The entire reasonableness, the unspeakable blessedness, the indispensable necessity, the supreme obligation of seeking and loving to do God’s will as it is done in heaven, has never dawned upon them. Entirely to give up their own will in order to follow and carry out God’s will has never become an article of their creed. They are content with the traditional, conventional view of Christian duty, but never thought that all that is known of God’s will, must at once be done.

With others the cause of failure in doing God’s will is a misapprehension as to the power of salvation. They believe that God’s law is unchangeable in its demands, and that it is their bounden duty to obey it perfectly. They have learned from Scripture and experience how utterly impotent they are to fulfil its claims. They have never understood how in the New Testament, the law of God with its inexorable demand and condemnation becomes transformed into the will of God, which does not mean mere demand but actual living power. They know not what it means: Ye are not under the law, with its impotence, but under grace, with its omnipotence, working in you all that it asks. They are held in bondage of the legal spirit, and do not believe that it is possible to live a life in the will of God. They admire and delight in a promise such as: My grace is sufficient for you, My strength is made perfect in weakness; or a testimony: I can do all things in Christ who strengthens Me, but dare not expect their fulfilment in their own experience. They do not think it possible always to be doing God’s will.

There are still others who believe both in the obligation and the possibility, and yet complain of continual failure. The reason is with them very much misapprehension as to the knowledge of God’s will. They study God’s Word very earnestly to find out God’s will, and yet fail of finding with that knowledge the strength to perform. They know not that it is only where the light of the Holy Spirit shows God’s will, that His strength will work it in us. The will of God, discovered and accepted by our human wisdom, must be obeyed by our human strength. The humble, childlike spirit that believes that the Father will by His Spirit show us what He wants us to do, will receive grace also to believe that for what the Father wants and shows, He will give the needed strength. As we see that it is not enough for us to have the Word and out of that take what we think we ought to do, but wait on God for guidance, to know what He would have us to do, we shall learn that to be taught God’s will by His Spirit, is half the secret of being strengthened by Him to do it.

Believer! Jesus Christ your Savior came to do the will of God, and to enable you to do it also. Do you know Him as your Owner who claims to have your whole being, with every power and every moment? Have you acknowledged His Ownership, and yielded yourself wholly to live only as He would have you? Have you, in the faith of His strength, made this surrender, and believed that by His Holy Spirit He seals and maintains it? Oh then, be not afraid to believe that He will show you all God’s will for you, and fit you for doing it! Believe that, morning by morning, He will open your ear to hear His voice, and that, to the meek and lowly of heart, He will give God’s light and God’s strength for all God’s will.

“Be not fashioned according to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is the good, and acceptable, and perfect will of God.” Rom. 12: 2.

With the first verse of Rom. 12 the practical part of the Epistle begins by Paul’s imploring believers to present their bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God. In verse 2 there follows the call to these God-devoted men, if their sacrifice is indeed to be acceptable to God, to prove, that is, to find out and show, what is the acceptable will of God. He who would live as an acceptable sacrifice must live in the acceptable will of God. The one acceptable sacrifice is the doing of the acceptable will. To live in the will of God is the one and only thing that can make us well-pleasing to Him. The one and only object and proof of true consecration is — doing the will of God.

The three adjectives Paul uses, the good, and acceptable, and perfect will of God, indicate three stages in our proving and knowing the will of God. The first refers to our discerning between good and evil, and our accepting what we know of God’s will as indeed good. The second points to our knowledge of God’s will in special relation to ourselves. The will of God is not the same for all His children; as we find out what is especially the will of God for ourselves, we know that what we do is actually acceptable, well-pleasing to Him. The third word, perfect, tells us that we may not rest content with what we already know and do of God’s will; this is only a beginning; we must press on to stand perfect in all the will of God. To know and accept the will of God as good, is the first step, is good. To know it in our personal relationship to Him as well-pleasing, is better. To know the perfect will of God is best of all, the true aim of the full Christian life. So we can prove and know for ourselves, so we can prove to men, what is the good, and acceptable, and perfect will of God. So we yield our bodies an acceptable sacrifice. On the first great call of the Epistle: Live wholly as sacrifices to God, follows at once the second as its complement: Live only to do the will of God.

Between these two commands there are inserted a warning and an exhortation. “Be not fashioned according to the world,” is the warning that reveals our first and greatest danger. “Be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind,” is the exhortation that reveals the path and the strength in which it becomes possible to overcome the danger and stand perfect in all the will of God.

Would you indeed know and do God’s will, listen to the warning: “Be not conformed to this world.” “The friendship of this world is enmity against God.” Its root principle, that by which it became a “world that lieth in the evil one,” was the rejection of the will of God. The world may acknowledge a God, but it cannot and will not do His will. It cannot by its very nature do anything but its own will. We are by nature of the world. We are still in it, and ever in danger of being under its influence. After our regeneration the secret, subtle atmosphere with which it surrounds us, and with which the flesh is in alliance, hinders thousands of Christians from seeking a life of true and full devotion to the will of God. Unless with our whole heart we reject its principles, its pleasures, its pursuits, we gradually lose the spiritual capacity of delighting in and performing God’s will. Unless we come out from the world, where self-will and self-pleasing rules, we never can live the life in which the believer only seeks to be a sacrifice well-pleasing to God, and to prove the well-pleasing will of God. Do let us believe it — the great cause of failure in doing the will of God is simply a worldly spirit. Therefore beware: “Be not fashioned according to this world.”

The negative, not being fashioned according to the world, must be accompanied by the positive: “But be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind.” The renewal in regeneration, once for all, must be followed up by the continual, the daily, renewing of the Holy Ghost. “That ye be renewed in the spirit of your minds.” “He saved us, through the washing of regeneration and the renewing of the Holy Ghost.” This is the only power that can enable us to live as living, holy, acceptable sacrifices, that can fit us truly to delight in doing the will of God. The attempt to do the will of God with a heart that does not daily seek and find the renewing of the Holy Spirit in the spirit of the mind, must end in failure. It is only a healthy man who can do a healthy man’s work. It is only a spiritual man who can walk in the spiritual path of obedience to all God’s will.

I ask you, beloved believer, to pause and take in the lessons we have been taught. To prove what is the good and acceptable will of God is the calling and the privilege of every believer. It is impossible to fulfil this calling, except as we know that we have definitely yielded ourselves to live as holy sacrifices, well-pleasing to God in everything. The one great hindrance to this is a worldly spirit in conformity to the dispositions and habits of the men of the world. The only power that can overcome this danger is that of the Holy Spirit: to be daily transformed in the renewing of our mind gives the spiritual capacity to know, to love, to do all God’s will.

If you find that you are not yet living this life, rest not till you know and possess it. If it is because you have never definitely and finally accepted God’s will as your life, oh, do so now! If it be that you have never presented yourself a living sacrifice — come at once, and yield to God’s claim! By the mercies of God I beseech you: Give up yourself to the God who redeemed you. If you have done so but failed, because you never knew how much there was of the world in you — begin at once to live the life of not being fashioned according to the world, but being transformed by the renewing of the Holy Ghost.

Take courage, my brother! The Eternal Spirit through whom Christ said, “I delight to do Thy will,” and offered Himself a sacrifice unto God, dwells in you. Yield yourself as a sacrifice for Him to consume. Believe and receive His daily renewing; He will fit you for proving all the perfect will of God.

“Our Lord Jesus Christ, who gave Himself for our sins, that He might deliver us out of this present evil world, according to the will of our God and Father.” Gal. 1: 4.

Paul ever carried with him a very deep sense of the will of God as the source and the rule of all things. In five of the Epistles he speaks of himself as an apostle, “through the will of God.” The thought of God’s will dominated his whole ministry, inspiring at once devotion and obedience, dependence and perfect confidence. He loved to think of God’s will working out its purpose through him. Of his intention to visit Rome he speaks more than once as coming to them “by the will of God.” Of the Macedonians giving themselves first to the Lord and then to him, he says too that it was “by the will of God.” And so here, in speaking of the work of God’s Son in our redemption, he shows how its chief characteristic is that it was “according to the will of God.” Whether in his own life, or in the grace manifested in his converts, or in the work of our Lord Jesus, salvation is to him the will of God manifesting itself and working out His purpose.

The expression he uses in regard to Christ’s work is a somewhat unusual and remarkable one. “He gave Himself for our sins, that He might deliver us out of this present evil world, according to the will of our God and Father.” It gives us a new aspect of the Father’s will as revealed in Christ’s death. In our last meditation (Rom. 12: 2) we saw how, in the spiritual life, being conformed to the world was the first great danger of the consecrated soul, and being transformed out of it into newness of life the only way to a life in the good and perfect will of God. Here we discover the deepest root of that teaching. The whole will of God in Christ’s death had this one object — to deliver us from this present evil world. The spirit of the world and the will of God are diametrically opposite; the will of God demands, and promises, and works entire deliverance from it. If we would know the will of God aright, and live in it and according to it, we must come out and be entirely separate from all that is of this present evil world. That alone is true and full salvation.

“This present evil world.” And was not this world created by God? And is it all so entirely evil as to deserve the name “this evil world,” and to need the Son of God to deliver us from it? Yes. Scripture teaches that with the entrance of sin into the world it came into the power of the prince of evil.

When, in Adam’s fall, Satan obtained power over him, the world, over which he was to have been king, fell with him, and Satan became the god of this world, and all men born into it. The world is now an organized kingdom of evil, ruled by the god, animated by the spirit, of the world. “The whole world lieth in the evil one.” The development of evil, now in its slow growth, then again in its sudden outbreaks, is no blind evolution, but the result of a deliberate systematic war of an intelligent power of evil against the rule of God. Whether in the grossest forms of heathenism, or amid the refinement of art and culture, or even under the guise of a nominal Christianity — everywhere the world lies in darkness, and is in its principles and aims the very opposite of the kingdom of God and of heaven. The pursuit of the visible, the assertion of man’s will against that of God, the pride of man’s wisdom, are its distinguishing characteristics, in contrast with the will, and the love, and the service of the invisible God.

Jesus Christ came to deliver us out of this present evil world, by freeing us from its spirit, and making us partakers of the life and the powers of the heavenly world. In His relations with the rulers of this world, both among the Jews and before Pilate, He more than once gave expression to the truth: “Ye are of this world, I am from above; I am not of this world: My kingdom is not of this world.” This other-worldliness He claimed for his disciples too: “Ye are not of the world, even as I am not of the world. Because ye are not of the world, therefore the world hateth you.” He described His work as an overcoming of the world, and a casting out of the prince of the world. He encouraged His disciples to expect and, in the power of His victory, to endure the enmity of the world. The life He brought with Him from heaven, and came to impart to us, was one as different from that of the world, yes, more so, than heaven is higher than earth. The great object of His work was to deliver us from this present evil world, according to the will of God.

This is an aspect of truth that enters all too little into the preaching or the practice of our days. We sometimes hear of a worldly Christianity, and of a religious world, but there appears to be but little conception of the extent to which a worldly spirit pervades and enfeebles the Christian life. We are all of us so born and bred under the power of the spirit of the world, it is so difficult exactly to define or recognize its power and influence, we are so little warned of the need of our entire deliverance from that spirit by the Spirit of God dispelling it and taking its place, that one often sees an earnest and active religious life with but little of the truly unworldly and heavenly spirit. As a consequence of this, the power of Jesus Christ, and of faith in Him, overcoming the world, and proving that we are just as little of the world as He was, is little sought or known. Our Lord gave Himself that He might deliver us from this present evil world, according to the will of God: is it any wonder that His full revelation in the heart is so little enjoyed? Only He who seeks to have Jesus do His perfect work, and is ready for complete separation and emancipation from the spirit of the world, can expect it.

Let each one of us who would prove, who would know and do, the perfect will of God, study the lesson: God wills complete deliverance from this present evil world. To this end Jesus Christ gave Himself for us: as we receive Him to live in us, His will shall be done in us. We are surrounded on every side by the powers of which the spirit of this world has possession and are unable to resist, or even to recognize them, unless they are revealed to us by the Spirit of God. In the literature and the newspaper press of the day, in all the interest and attraction of politics and commerce, of culture and pleasure, we are carried along without knowing it. In our own hearts, the love of self with its honor and pleasure, the desire of and dependence on the visible, the lack of absolute surrender to God and His will, are all so many tokens of the worldly spirit. Not until we allow the Spirit of God to convict us of all this, and to possess us with all that is its opposite, can we fully know what the deliverance is that Christ gives according to the will of God.

May God help us to connect inseparably the three blessed truths set before us here: the will of God, as the source; Jesus giving Himself for us, as the means; deliverance from this present evil world, as the mark and fruit of the great salvation. May He teach us that we are just as little of this world as Jesus was, because we are one with Him. And may the presence and power of the Son of God from heaven in our hearts, with its complete deliverance from a worldly spirit, be known as in very deed the will of God for us.

“Having been foreordained according to the purpose of Him who worketh all things after the counsel of His will.” Eph. 1: 11.

In the Epistle to the Ephesians we have three passages concerning the will of God. The first, in chapter 1, points us back to the eternal mystery of that will in God, and tells us how, as God purposed it in Himself, so He Himself works it all out. The second, in chapter 5, calls us to seek to understand what the will of God is. The third, in chapter 6, brings us down into practical life, and teaches us how the most common drudgery of daily duty may all be done as the will of God. As in the heights of heaven and of eternity, so down into the conduct and the heart of the humblest Christian, the will of God claims supreme authority. Let us begin and study it in its origin and work before the foundation of the world.

Paul writes — Eph. 1: 5 — of God having “predestinated us unto adoption as sons through Jesus Christ unto Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will, according to the riches of His grace, which He made to abound toward us, having made known to us the mystery of His will, according to His good pleasure, which He purposed in Him, . . . in whom also we were made an heritage, having been foreordained according to the purpose of Him who worketh all things after the counsel of His will.” Each expression has its significance. The good pleasure of His will — that means the absolute liberty of God, the perfection of whose will knows no higher reason than that it so pleased Him. In Him the predestination, and election, and foreordaining of God’s children had its origin. The mystery of His will — that suggests that it was hidden in God, that we can only know as much of it as He reveals, and that even what He reveals still has its mystery beyond our comprehension. The purpose of His will — that refers to the great plan or scheme to be carried out which His holy will formed for itself. And the counsel of His will reminds us of the Divine “wisdom and prudence” (verse 8) holding counsel with itself, and ordering all so as to prove that His good pleasure is indeed all that is most right and good and perfect. In the secret depths of God’s will and its predestinating purpose lies hidden the salvation of His Church, and of every member of it.

“Having been foreordained according to the purpose of Him who worketh all things after the counsel of His will.” What God has willed, He also Himself works out. The counsel of His will is too high and holy; none but He can work it out. The will is a working power, a determination to act; even a man who really wills a thing seeks to overcome every obstacle to that will being realized. We need, as we study and worship the will of God, to give full scope to the conviction that God Himself works out all things after the counsel of His will. The eternal purpose is what guides all His work: all that the eternal purpose fixed must and will be wrought by Himself. This faith will teach us some most precious lessons.

It inspires the assurance that God’s purpose will be performed. We are so apt to look to ourselves and our feebleness, to men and to circumstances, and by these to measure what appears possible. We need to remember that God’s sovereign will is a Power that will, as much in the great whole as in the minutest detail, infallibly secure the fulfilment of His plans. Whether in our own heart and life, or in the service of His Kingdom in which we take part, we need definitely to know Him as the “God who worketh all in all.” We speak of man’s relationship to God as that of cooperation. But Divine operation ever precedes human cooperation — the former as unceasing and continuous as the latter, drawing it forth and inspiring it. All feebleness in the Divine life, all failure in spiritual work, is owing to this one thing: we do not make room for and wait on the Divine operation. We seek to do the Divine will without the living faith in Him who Himself worketh all things after the counsel of His will.

This faith will teach us to live and work in entire dependence on God’s working. It will awaken and strengthen us in that root of all true Christian virtue, Humility. It is through this that the angels kept their first estate — they live in entire dependence upon God’s willing and working in them. It was for this that the Son assumed the robe of creature-hood, to teach us that the life and glory of the creature consists in every moment receiving from God what we are to be, to will or to do. He did nothing of Himself but what the Father showed Him. He judged nothing of Himself, but as He heard so He spake. The connection between God and us is to be one of never-ceasing receptivity, God every moment imparting the life and strength we need. As we learn to know God thus, we shall fear nothing so much as taking His place, by our work hindering His, and so under the guise of doing His will making it impossible for Him to do it. Oh! let us in deep humility and reverence worship and wait on the God who works all things after the counsel of His will.

This faith will lead us to true diligence in God’s service in the blessed confidence of being indeed able to do all His will, because what He wills He works Himself. At first sight it appears as if this entire unceasing dependence upon God will hinder us in our work. That is only as long as we do not understand or believe it fully. But to the upright, who wait on God, light will arise. It will be with this even as with the truth of faith without works for justification. At first it appears as if this would discourage good works in the believer. But as we indeed give ourselves away to the blessed truth of faith without works for acceptance, we find that it is this very faith that is most abundant in producing good works as its fruit. Even so, as we accept fully the truth of which we were afraid at first sight, that we can do nothing of ourselves, and that God must do all, we shall experience that the most absolute and unceasing dependence is the secret of the most effective service. As works before faith only hinder, while faith without works is most fruitful of works, so the attempt to work without the fullest and most entire dependence upon God leads to continual failure, until ceasing from ourselves and our works has brought us to yield ourselves unreservedly to God’s working, there to learn what it means to say: “I labor, striving according to His working, which worketh in me mightily.” The faith in our entire impotence and dependence upon God becomes the power for our highest activity.

“Foreordained according to the purpose of Him who works all things after the counsel of His will.” Believer! the purpose according to and for which you have been foreordained, is that of a God who works all things after the counsel of His will. Let every thought of the will of God be accompanied by the faith that He is a God who Himself works all things that He wills. All goodness and power are His, to be received direct from Him alone through Christ Jesus. Worship Him with a holy fear, lest, like Martha you grieve your Lord by your much serving, instead of waiting, like Mary, for what He can work in you. What God has joined together let no man put asunder: God working His will in man by the Holy Spirit; man working out the will of God has wrought in him in secret, into daily life and duty.

“Be not foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is.” Eph. 5: 57.

In the preceding chapter I spoke of the three passages in this Epistle on the will of God. The first lifted us up into the eternal glory, to worship God, of whose glory that will is the revelation, and who Himself works it out in time. The last will lead down to the hut and the burden of the slave, and show us how even there in the most commonplace everyday life, the will of God may be done on earth as in heaven. Our present subject stands between the two as the indispensable link. It is only as I know the will of God, both in the place it has in His life, and is to have in mine, that I can appreciate the blessedness and fulfil the duty of ever only doing the will of the Father. It is the danger of neglecting the careful study to know all that God’s will implies, that makes Paul write, “Be not foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is.”

“Be not foolish.” In our conceit that, with our Christian education, our common sense, our daily Bible reading, we know well enough what God’s will must be, we prove that we are as fools, without the wisdom of God guiding us. “Let no man deceive himself. If any man thinketh that he is wise in this world, let him become a fool, that he may be wise. If any man thinketh he knoweth anything, he knoweth nothing yet as he ought to know.” Let us beware of the folly of thinking we know the will of God. Let us become fools indeed, in the sense of our great ignorance, and seek the Divine teaching which alone can rightly reveal the Divine will.

“Be not foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is.” To understand a thing means, not only to know its outward form, but something of its true nature, its inner meaning and working. It is only as the believer seeks a spiritual insight into God’s will, that the doing of it will become the heavenly joy it is meant to be. Let us consider what are some of the chief elements of the true understanding of God’s will.

Think of it, first of all, in connection with God Himself. His will is the power by which He determines what He is to do, and what is to be done by His creatures. In that will all His goodness and wisdom, love and power are revealed; the knowledge of that will opens to the creature the very heart of God. In the surrender to and worship of that will angels and men rise into living fellowship with God. Over the carrying out of that will God Himself watches. What the Divine Wisdom has planned, Divine Power will perform. Never for a moment can the will of God be separated from God Himself; if you would understand that will, never think of it but as the symbol of the presence of the Living God Himself. Always seek to see God in His will.

Think of it then as made known in His Word. The words of Holy Scripture for the most part are plain and simple, so as to be understood of all. And yet because they contain the mystery of Divine wisdom, the understanding of the meaning of the words does not at all ensure the real spiritual understanding or apprehension of God’s will. The words need to be taken into the heart, into the faith and love and obedience ,of man’s whole being, and God’s Divine working through them needs to be waited for, before we can fully understand God’s will. The very same Spirit which, having searched the deep things of God, inspired the Word, must give His light and life in the depths of our heart too, if the will of God is really to become our will. Without this all our knowledge is merely intellectual and superficial. It is only God working His will into our will, and our will accepting it heartily, that can fit us to understand what the will of the Lord is. The will, the intense desire and determination to do all God’s will, is the secret of knowing it.

Think of that will especially as embodied in Christ Jesus. He is the Word of God, the visible image of the hidden glory of God’s will. As man, He came to show us how it is the calling and the blessedness of the creature to give itself up wholly to the will of God, and do nothing of itself, and how it may count most confidently on God Himself working in it both to will and to do all His will. As our Redeemer, He died to deliver us from our own will, and now leads us in the path of dying to self, to live and do God’s will alone. Any attempt to understand the will of God, apart from its intimate union with the Son of God our Savior, ends in foolishness. It is in living union with Jesus alone, that either light or strength for knowing and doing the Father’s will can come.

Understand what the will of the Lord is. Think of its claim on your whole life. You cannot attempt fully to yield to or rejoice in that claim until you see that it rests in the New Testament upon the fact that the renewed will is a ray of the Divine will itself, taking possession of you, of your inner being, and from within enabling you to love God’s will as wholly and as naturally as you formerly loved your self-will. The Three-One God has begun His own life in you; His will and the power that works it out are in you; in the faith of that admit heartily the claim of God’s will to have complete dominion. See, and say, that there is to be nothing in your life that is not to be under the control, or rather, the inspiration of God’s will. In the faith of this living root of God’s will possessing you, your will and His inextricably intertwined, look upon the Word with its exceeding breadth covering every possible position, and upon your daily life with its innumerable needs and duties, and understand how the will of God can be carried out through all. “Created in Christ Jesus unto good works which God hath foreordained that you should walk in them,” you can count upon the Holy Spirit to lead you into all God’s perfect will.

Understand what the will of the Lord is. To sum up all, think of God’s will not only as having come forth from an Infinite Love, as revealed and embodied in the written and the Eternal Word, as claiming your whole life down to its minutest details, but, above all, as the promise of what God Himself will work in you. Understand! the will of God is so Divine, and holy, and perfect, only God Himself can work it. You can only work it as He works it in you by His Holy Spirit. The stronger and more unceasing and more joyfully confident your faith in God’s working all His will in you becomes, the more will you know that it is possible for you to do that will. “According to your faith be it unto you,” will in this also be made true in you. Standing in the full light of the eternal love as it shines on you from heaven, you will find that light is cast upon the whole of the Word and of life. And you will then begin to understand what the will of the Lord is — the most wonderful, beautiful, blessed thing in the universe. The one thing to be sought and loved, to be done or suffered. The one thing worth living and dying for.