THE WILL OF GOD

Dr Frank H Bodman

It is most important we should understand what the will of God is, that we may understand His operation at the present time.

The will of God is the cause of all that is good, and of all that will abide when everything that is not according to His will shall have passed away. His work is to give effect to His will, to bring about that universe in which everything will be according to God, for His satisfaction, and in which everything will declare His glory. It will be a universe of bliss, in which every intelligent creature will be responsive to God as revealed and known, from which every trace of sin and Satan’s power will be banished for ever. Nothing short of this would satisfy the heart of God. When this universe is brought to pass He will have perfect complacency in it, hence it will abide eternally. The apostle in Ephesians 1: 8, 9 speaks of God having caused His grace to abound toward us in all wisdom and intelligence, having made known to us the mystery of His will; and in Ephesians 3: 18 he prays that we may be fully able to apprehend ... what is the breadth and length and depth and height. It is a wonderful thing that God should take us into His confidence, and make known to us the whole plan of what He has before Him. This enlarges our horizon, and carries us beyond all that we see going on around us in man’s world, and entirely eclipses all the works of men in which they glory, and so delivers us from all the glamour of the glory of this world. We know that this world of man’s will and glory passes away; it is among the things that will be shaken and removed. None can hinder what is of the will of God, and His work cannot be shaken or destroyed; this alone will stand when everything is shaken. It is important for us to see to it that our interest and service is connected with that which will abide, and not with that world which is about to pass away; that we should be in communion with the revealed will of God.

Then it is a great thing to know that God has found in Christ a perfect servant, a man after His own heart who is well able to do all His will. In Ephesians 1, we get instruction as to what is God’s will for the coming day, for the administration of the fulness of the times, that is, to bring the whole created system under the headship of Christ—things in heaven and things on earth. In this way all things will be reconciled to God by Christ, He having made peace by the blood of His cross. As Head He will give character to all that is put under Him; He will control and maintain all according to the will of God. Then also the church as the true Eve will be associated with Him in this position, as the fulness or complement of Him who fills all things. He is made Head over all things to the church which is His body. In His body He will display Himself, and fill the universe with the light and life of God, and so make the whole universe respond to what God is, in ceaseless praise. All will be maintained in unity and divine order. No evil will be allowed to disturb; all lawlessness will be removed, and God’s will done on earth even as it is done in heaven. At the present time the church is being formed and fitted to fulfil its function in the coming day. Those who form it are being brought into the truth and enjoyment of sonship in Christ, according as God the Father chose us in Him before the world’s foundation, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love, having marked us out beforehand for sonship through Jesus Christ to Himself according to the good pleasure of His will. This involves reconciliation. You has He “reconciled in the body of his flesh through death”, Col 1: 22. We are reconciled to God in Christ. Then we are brought into light of the sonship by the Spirit, so that we cry, Abba, Father. If the church is to be the vessel for the display of the light and life of God in the day of glory, it is necessary that those who compose it should be brought individually to the true knowledge of God revealed in the fullest way as the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, and made to live in His life that they may become capable of responding to the love of God.

What a great work this is to be carried on in creatures such as we are! How it displays the grace, wisdom and power of God! It is by divine teaching and discipline that this work is carried on in us, to bring into effect all that He has purposed, in Himself for His eternal satisfaction and glory. This One who in the past ages made Himself the servant of the will of God, saying, “Lo, I come … to do thy will, O God”, Heb 10: 7. He has undertaken to bring to pass all the will of God. The Father has committed all things into His hands, well knowing that nothing will fail. God has not entrusted anything of His will to any of the race of the first man, for everything which he committed to that man has always broken down from the beginning. The first man has proved to be an utter failure everywhere, and this has only made room for God to bring in the second Man - His resource from eternity. He is the true servant who could say, “I delight to do thy will, O my God”, Ps 40: 8. He came into the world as man, not to do His own will but the will of Him that sent Him. In the gospel of John, which specially sets forth the glory of His Person, His Godhead glory, He constantly speaks of Himself as the “sent one”, and of the Father having committed all things into His hands.

His meat was to do His Father’s will. He was ever working in communion with the Father, as He said: “My Father worketh hitherto, and I work”. At the time when everything outwardly was disorganised, when the cities in which He had done most of His mighty works had rejected His testimony, when as to the gathering of Israel He had to say, “I have laboured in vain, I have spent my strength for nought, and in vain” (Isa 49), He could nevertheless rejoice in spirit and give thanks as He looked up to heaven and saw that the Father was pursuing uninterruptedly His way, doing just what He willed to do, hiding His things from the wise and prudent and revealing them to babes, and the Son could say, “Even so, Father, for so it seemed good in thy sight”. Nothing disturbed His rest and joy. And so it would be with us: we should always have peace and joy if we took His yoke upon us and sought nothing but the will of God, and had faith to look up to see God ever going on His way without any halting, and in spite of all evil in Satan and man, just doing His own will.

Again, when He had to face all the unspeakable bitterness of death, when Satan pressed all this upon His spirit in order to turn Him aside from the path of obedience, He prayed: “My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me: nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt”, Matt 26: 39. He was obedient unto death—even the death of the cross. There He laid the righteous basis on which all the will of God will be accomplished. For the joy that was set before Him He endured the cross, despising the shame. The joy that was set before Him was that of giving effect to the will of God. And now that He has gone on high to the place of authority and power, He is still carrying on the work by which He is giving effect to the will of God. “Glorify thy Son, that thy Son also may glorify thee: as thou hast given him power over all flesh, that he should give eternal life to as many as thou hast given him”, John 17: 1, 2. We are committed into the hands of the Son that He may give effect to the Father’s will in each one, giving us eternal life now, and bringing us to the Father in glory as sons conformed to His own image.

God’s will for us is that we should be delivered from the present evil world, Gal 1: 4. It is not God’s will at the present time to improve or set in order this world, but to deliver His people from it. It is important to see this, because so many of God’s people are occupied in seeking to set in order and to improve the world. This is not according to the will of God. God is taking out a people for Himself. By the will of God we have been sanctified (set apart) through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once, Heb 10: 10. Set apart from our sinful condition as natural men, and from our former associations in this world by the death of Christ. It is not the will of God to improve man in the flesh, but to set us apart from it; yet how much of the religious activity of the present day has as its object the improvement of the natural man, to make him fit for God and capable of serving Him, and to make him a better citizen of this world. All this is not according to the will of God. As of old God called Abraham out from his country, kindred and father’s house, so for us the call is to come out from among them to be separate, 2 Cor 6: 17. Instead of improving the natural man God’s present work is to form a new generation after the pattern of the second Man, a sanctified company of the same order and character as the Sanctifier - that is, Christ, Heb 2: 11.

God has predestinated us to sonship according to the good pleasure of His will, Eph 1: 5. It is only in the enjoyment of eternal life, which for us is the life of sonship, that we can worship God acceptably. “The Father seeketh such to worship him”, John 4: 23. Angels worship Him as His servants. But the worship of servants does not satisfy the heart of God, it does not answer to what God is; only those who know His love can worship in spirit and in truth. Only sons can worship the Father according to what He seeks. Hence the will of God is that we should know sonship experimentally, Gal 4: 6. He has given us this privilege and sent forth the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, crying, Abba, Father, that is, that there should be response to Him revealed as Father. In the Lord’s dealings with the woman of Samaria (John 4), He was seeking to bring her into the light of God revealed as Father, and to make her capable of responding to that revelation, so that she might become a true worshipper of the Father, and in so doing He was giving effect to the will of Him who had sent Him.

This is His work in each one whom He receives as drawn to Him of the Father, John 6: 38, 39. This involves our being born again, our appreciation of His death as the uplifted Son of man, coming to Him, receiving the Spirit, and our being taught of Him. In coming to Him, He not only teaches us, but He makes the truth living and effectual in our souls, so that we have things not in doctrine only, but in life and power, we become responsive to the love of God, an answer is produced in us to what He has revealed of the Father. He finds His delight and satisfaction in thus giving effect to the Father’s will in those who come to Him. He carries on this work until we are raised up in the last day, raised up in glory, and presented before the Father conformed to His own image. It will be His joy to present us thus before the Father in glory. Thus the will of the Father will be accomplished in the myriads whom the Father is teaching and drawing to Him in this present day. It is His joy even now to bring us in spirit to the Father, so that we can worship Him in spirit and in truth, to have a company so one with Himself in life and relationship that He can in the midst sing praises to the Father, a company made partakers of His peace and His joy, so that we can sing His praises. What joy it is to the Son of God to sing praises to the Father in the midst of such a company on the platform of resurrection! Nor will His work and joy be complete until, as we have said at the beginning, He shall have banished sin from the creation of God, and filled heaven and earth with His praise.

Thou wilt arise and with Thy beams

Chase ev’ry grief away!

Then the wide earth, in glad response

To the bright world above,

Shall sing in rapturous strains of joy,

In memory of Thy love.

May God grant to us that we may be filled with the knowledge of His will, so that there may be real exercise to answer to it, so that we may walk worthily of the Lord (Col 1: 9), that we may know how to pray (1 John 5: 14), and that we may live the rest of our time to the will of God (1 Pet 4: 2), and prove how good and acceptable His will is, Rom 12: 2.

 

From Helps for the Poor of the Flock vol 16 (1911)

 

(This article will be included, with more than a hundred others, in a book of ministry by this author to be published shortly – ‘Fundamentals of Christianity and Other Articles.)