Holiness and the Will of God.
'This is _the will of God_, even your _sanctification_.'--1 Thess.
iv. 3.
'Lo, I am come to do _Thy will_. By _which will_ we have been
_sanctified_, through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ
once for all.'--Heb. x. 9, 10.
In the will of God we have the union of His Wisdom and Power. The Wisdom
decides and declares what is to be: the Power secures the performance.
The declarative will is only one side; its complement, the executive
will, is the living energy in which everything good has its origin and
existence. So long as we only look at the will of God in the former
light, as law, we feel it a burden, because we have not the power to
perform--it is too high for us. When faith looks to the Power that works
in God's will, and carries it out, it has the courage to accept it and
fulfil it, because it knows God Himself is working it out. The surrender
in faith to the Divine will as Wisdom thus becomes the pathway to the
experience of it as a Power. 'He doeth according to His will,' is then
the language not only of forced submission, but of joyful expectation.
'This is the will of God, your sanctification.' In the ordinary
acceptation of these words, they simply mean that among many other
things that God has willed, sanctification is one; it is something in
accordance with His will. This thought contains teaching of great value.
God very distinctly and definitely has willed your sanctification: your
sanctification has its source and certainty in its being God's will. We
are 'elect in sanctification of the Spirit,' 'chosen to be holy;' the
purpose of God's will from eternity, and His will now, is our
sanctification. We have only to think of what we said of God's will
being a Divine power that works out what His wisdom has chosen, to see
what strength this truth will give to our faith that we shall be holy:
God wills it, and will work it out for all and in all who do not resist
it, but yield themselves to its power. Seek your sanctification, not
only in the will of God, as a declaration of what He wants you to be,
but as a revelation of what He Himself will work out in you.
There is, however, another most precious thought suggested. If our
sanctification be God's will, its central thought and its contents,
_every part of that will_ must bear upon it, and the sure entrance to
sanctification will be the hearty acceptance of the will of God in all
things. To be one with God's will is to be holy. Let him who would be
holy take his place here and 'stand in all the will of God.' He will
there meet God Himself, and be made partaker of His Holiness, because
His will works out its purpose in power to each one who yields himself
to it. Everything in a life of holiness depends upon our being in the
right relation to the will of God.
There are many Christians to whom it appears impossible to think of
their accepting all the will of God, or of their being one with it. They
look upon the will of God in its thousand commands, and its numberless
providential orderings. They have sometimes found it so hard to obey one
single command, or to give up willingly to some light disappointment.
They imagine that they would need to be a thousandfold holier and
stronger in grace, before venturing to say that they do accept all God's
will, whether to do or to bear. They cannot understand that all the
difficulty comes from their not occupying the right standpoint. They are
looking at God's will as at variance with their natural will, and they
feel that that natural will will never delight in all God's will. They
forget that the new man has a renewed will. This new will delights in
the will of God, because it is born of it. This new will sees the beauty
and the glory of God's will, and is in harmony with it. If they are
indeed God's children, the very first impulse of the spirit of a child
is surely to do the will of the Father in heaven. And they have but to
yield themselves heartily and wholly to this spirit of sonship, and they
need not fear to accept God's will as theirs.
The mistake they make is a very serious one. Instead of living by faith
they judge by feeling, in which the old nature speaks and rules. It
tells them that God's will is often a burden too hard to be borne, and
that they never can have the strength to do it. Faith speaks
differently. It reminds us that God is Love, and that His will is
nothing but Love revealed. It asks if we do not know that there is
nothing more perfect or beautiful in heaven or earth than the will of
God. It shows us how in our conversion we have already professed to
accept God as Father and Lord. It assures us, above all, that if we will
but definitely and trustingly give ourselves to that will which is Love,
it will as Love fill our hearts and make us delight in it, and so become
the power that enables us joyfully to do and to bear. Faith reveals to
us that the will of God is the power of His love, working out its plan
in Divine beauty in each one who wholly yields to it.
And which shall we now choose? And where shall we take our place? Shall
we attempt to accept Christ as a Saviour without accepting His will?
Shall we profess to be the Father's children, and yet spend our life in
debating how much of His will we shall perform? Shall we be content to
go on from day to day with the painful consciousness that our will is
not in harmony with God's will? Or shall we not at once and for ever
give up our will as sinful to His,--to that Will which He has already
written on our heart? This is a thing that is possible. It can be done.
In a simple, definite transaction with God, we can say that we do accept
His holy will to be ours. Faith knows that God will not pass such a
surrender unnoticed, but accept it. In the trust that He now takes us up
into His will, and undertakes to breathe it into us, with the love and
the power to perform it--in this faith let us enter into God's will, and
begin a new life; standing in, abiding in the very centre of this most
holy will.
Such an acceptance of God's will prepares the believer, through the Holy
Spirit, to recognise and know that will in whatever form it comes. The
great difference between the carnal and the spiritual Christian is that
the latter acknowledges God, under whatever low and poor and human
appearances He manifests Himself. When God comes in trials which can be
traced to no hand but His, he says, 'Thy will be done.' When trials come
through the weakness of men or his own folly, when circumstances appear
unfavourable to his religious progress, and temptations threaten to be
too much for him and to overcome him, he learns first of all to see God
in everything, and still to say, 'Thy will be done.' He knows that a
child of God cannot possibly be in any situation without the will of His
Heavenly Father, even when that will has been to leave him to his own
wilfulness for a time, or to suffer the consequences of his own or
others' sin. He sees this, and in accepting his circumstances as the
will of God to try and prove him, he is in the right position for now
knowing and doing what is right. Seeing and honouring God's will thus in
everything, he learns always to abide in that will.
He does so also by doing that will. As his spiritual discernment grows
to say of whatever happens, 'All things are of God,' so he grows too in
wisdom and spiritual understanding to know the will of God as it is to
be done. In the indications of conscience and of Providence, in the
teaching of the word and the Spirit, he learns to see how God's will has
reference to every part and duty of life, and it becomes his joy, in all
things, to live, 'doing the will of God from the heart, as unto the Lord
and not unto men.' 'Labouring fervently in prayer to stand complete and
fully assured in all the will of God,' he finds how blessedly the Father
has accepted his surrender, and supplies all the light and strength that
is needed that His will may be done by him on earth as it is in heaven.
Let me ask every reader to say to a Holy God, whether he has indeed
given himself to Him to be made holy? Whether he has accepted, and
entered into, and is living in, the good and perfect will of God? The
question is not, whether, when affliction comes, he accepts the
inevitable and submits to a will he cannot resist. But whether he has
chosen the will of God as his chief good, and has taken the
life-principle of Christ to be his: 'I delight to do Thy will, O God.'
This was the holiness of Christ, in which He sanctified Himself and us,
the doing God's will. 'In which will we have been sanctified.' It is
this will of God which is our sanctification.
Brother! are you in earnest to be holy? wholly possessed of God? Here is
the path. I plead with you not to be afraid or to hold back. You have
taken God to be your God; have you really taken His will to be your
will? Oh, think of the privilege, the blessedness, of having one will
with God! and fear not to surrender yourself to it most unreservedly.
The will of God is, in every part of it, and in all its Divine power,
your sanctification.