The will of God

 

(Mark 3:35) “For whoever does the will of God, he is my brother and sister and mother.”

 

Here we see the Lord Jesus making a statement, which fulfils the requirement for us all, if we want to be included in the family of God, it’s all about finding the “will of God” for our lives. Its can never be about our will but HIS!

 

God created mankind with an objective, for them to align their wills with His. There is obviously many angles to this, but in order for Him to be pleased with what He had created, mankind would need to align their will with His under a banner of choice. An ability for specific individuals to make independent choices, often refer to as “free will”. So how would God achieve His objective? We were not moulded as robots, we have the ability to choose right from wrong. But to understand this, we need to go back to the beginning, the first three chapters of Genesis is crucial to lay the correct foundation. Let me use Malcolm Harris’ example, when they ate from the tree of the “Knowledge of Good and Evil”, man’s conscience was activated. Prior to this awareness we would be guiltless, does a pack of wild dogs feel remorse when feeding on a live animal? No! They do not have a conscience, but we do, all because of our knowledge of Good and Evil. This is where the Law of God comes into play, it gave the Israelites a yardstick to hone in on God’s requirements. Fine tweaking right from wrong. However, we also know that prior to the Law of God, mankind was not guiltless, hence the flood, where God destroyed every living creature, save those in the Ark. Here we see confirmation of God’s judgment and why he destroyed the living; “The LORD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.”  (Genesis 6:5) – No application to that which was good, “only evil continually”.

 

Now back to the implementation of the Law; because of their sinful natures, all the law ultimately proved was that it was an impossible task. Sure provision was made for failure, hence the shedding of blood through sacrifice, grain offerings and washings. This is a mammoth study in itself, but best summed up like this; “So then, the law was our guardian until Christ came, in order that we might be justified by faith.” (Galatians 3:24) – Other interpretations use the word “schoolmaster” by implication the law was a tool to teach us that we could never live up to God’s requirements because of our sinful tendencies and in order to achieve God objective in our lives we needed a Saviour. Hence the introduction of the man Jesus Christ, the one and only to never breach the law of God and therefore he became a once for all time sacrifice never to be repeated. Salvation starts and end with HIM! “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” (2Corinthians 5:21) – The love of God personified!

 

What we now need to tackled, is how can we find the will of God for our lives? Obviously we need to be born again to have any chance in making the right choices. We need the Spirit of God's help. Can a dead individual make a choice? Did Lazarus choose to be brought back to life? As a dead individual did he shout "pick me pick me"? NO! Jesus said “Lazarus come forth" and he came forth. This is exactly the same way we are born again, God breathes life into an individual and only then are they armed to find the will of God for their lives. Prior to this they are dead, here is a crucial portion of scripture that we need to understand; “And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience— among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved—“ (Ephesians 2:1-5) - We have been saved by grace (especially the divine influence upon the heart), its God who gives us life, to ever conceive that we who were dead, out of our free will, chose God, does not align with scripture. Only once we have the Spirit of God residing in us are we equipped to find the will of God for our lives. Think of two men sitting in the same room under exactly the same conditions listening to a gospel message, why does one respond favourably whilst the other rejects the offer of salvation? Is the one better than the other? Are they both not under the same condemnation, dead in their trespasses and their sins? God has to intervene, without His influence nothing can or will ever change. Romans chapter 9 affirms this very clearly.

 

Now that we have been saved, do we become robots? Absolutely not! Life is a journey and we will make mistakes, some more than others, guilty as charged. Nevertheless, life is now all about choices and we must learn to find the will of God for our lives and only then like the Lord Jesus affirms will we be part of the household of God; “For whoever does the will of God, he is my brother and sister and mother.” – This in itself is a process and this is how our beloved brother Paul puts it’s; “I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.”  (Romans 12:1-2) – By application this can never be a robot mentality, but “free will” comes into play, we make independent decisions and must bear the brunt of the wrong choices. We now learn through the struggle of life, to live by faith and align our wills with the will of God. For the straggles, once again guilty as charged, those of us who are dull of hearing, the love of God disciplines us. See Hebrews chapter 12…

 

“To the only wise God be glory forevermore through Jesus Christ! Amen.” 

 

Signing out

 

Tyrone