THE WILL OF GOD AND THE ONE WHO IS ABLE TO GIVE EFFECT TO IT

John 4: 82-34; 7: 37-40; Hebrews 10: 5-10; Psalm 40: 6-10

There are two great thoughts in these passages: the will of God, and the One who is able to give effect to His will, and then we see too how He does it. It is a great thing to know what the will of God is, and to be able to connect all our blessing with it. If we know that certain things are God’s will for us, it encourages us to seek those things, 1 John 5: 14, 15. It is our title to claim them. Then it gives certainty and permanency and confidence, because we know that God will never change His mind and He will never give up anything He has made known of His will. He can never be thwarted; in the end His will must prevail. It is His glory to carry out His will, in spite of all opposition, ultimately it will become universal, it will be done on earth as it is in heaven. That we should approach Him as Father in the liberty of sonship, as sons in company with His beloved Son, did not originate with us, it was not of our will, and never would have been. It is by the will of God that we have been set apart to enjoy this holy privilege. We can therefore go in the full assurance of faith. The blood of Christ has removed every barrier and the knowledge of God’s revealed will gives full assurance. We can not only trace every blessing up to God’s will, we can go one step further, we can trace it to His love, God is love, and therefore what He wills must be in love. How this carries us completely outside ourselves and everything that is of man! Then we get another great thought, and that is, that God has found One to whom He could entrust all His will, One who is competent to give full effect to it, the Man of His right hand whom He has made strong for Himself, so that nothing shall fail or break down. If it depended upon us in any way it would break down. It is well for us, as well as for His own glory, that God never connected anything of His will with the first man. In the history of man, we find all along that whatever God in any way entrusted to man failed, because man is a failure. And we are not better than those who have gone before us. Christ has come into the world saying, “Lo, I come: in the volume of the book it is written of me” (Ps 40: 7), “I delight to do thy will, O my God”, v 8. The book is the book of God’s eternal counsels. When God counselled everything, He had the Son of man before Him. Nothing will ever fail in His hands. He will reconcile all things to God, and He will present us faultless before the presence of His glory. He will fill heaven and earth with the glory of God. Therefore nothing which God has revealed of His will can ever fail. He can never be baffled, and Christ is able to sustain all that God has entrusted to Him, and to give effect to all the will of God. We have proof of this in that He has already overcome everything that could oppose or stand in the way of God’s will, He has in death annulled the power of the enemy and put away sin.

Now I think we see also in these passages the way in which He will effectuate the will of God. It involves three things: His death and resurrection, the revelation of God, and the baptism of the Holy Spirit. The starting-point is His death; He could not have revealed God except in view of His death, otherwise the revelation would have been destructive instead of life-giving. All that He has revealed of God is made available for man by His death. Not only has God been pleased to come out in light, but everything which could hinder man coming into the light has been met and removed by the blood of Christ. Then rising from the dead He has led captivity captive, and ascended up on high, far above all heavens, that He may fill all things, and from thence He gives the Spirit. Every soul coming to Christ receives the Holy Spirit as living water. The Spirit becomes living water to the believer by making good to him the testimony of God. “The love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit which has been given to us”, Rom 5: 5. What is presented to us in testimony becomes life in our souls. We live by the word of God, that is, by the revelation of God. That is how Christ has affected us, and recovered us for God, delivered us from lawlessness, and brought us to righteousness, delivered us from the power of Satan, and brought us to God, and formed us anew according to God. This was what the Lord had been effecting in regard to the woman of Samaria as far as it was possible at that moment. She was a specimen of the harvest he was gathering for God. It was in reference to this He could say, “I have meat to eat that ye know not of ... My meat is to do the will of him that sent me, and to finish his work”, John 4: 32, 34. In recovering and quickening a soul, He was doing the Father’s work. “My Father worketh hitherto, and I work”, John 5: 17. Again, chapter 6, in receiving those whom the Father drew to Him, giving them eternal life now, and raising them up in the last day, He was doing the will of Him that sent Him. Another day He will arise as the Sun of righteousness for Israel, and He will pour out the Spirit upon them and upon all flesh. Israel, being brought into the light of the knowledge of God, will be recovered for God and made to live. And the nations likewise will be enlightened and enter into life; the reception of Israel will be life from the dead for the Gentiles, Christ will make the knowledge of God to cover the earth, as the waters cover the sea and fill all the earth with God’s glory. Then God’s will will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Finally, a whole universe will be established in life and blessing according to God’s will, so that He will have complacency in it and rest.

If we were abiding in Him and more subject to the Spirit of God, we should enjoy much more of the blessing of God, enter more largely into what is really life, and be more according to God’s will and pleasure now.

From Food for the Faithful vol 6 (1903)