The Outworking of God’s Will

One essential condition for a successful life is to have an objective – clearly defined and steadily pursued. Without such an objective a person is like a boat drifting on the open sea, carried hither and thither by the winds of habit and the waves of circumstance – without any control over their own destiny.

Herein lies one of the greatest benefits and blessings of the Christian life, as God planned it: it provides each one of us with an objective for living.

For us as Christians, Jesus – in this respect – is both our pattern and our inspiration. In Hebrews chapter 10, verses 5 and 6, and then verses 9 and 10, we have seen that the supreme purpose of Jesus all through His earthly life was to do the will of God:

“Therefore, when Christ came into the world, He said: 'Sacrifice and offering You did not desire, but a body You prepared for Me; with burnt offerings and sin offerings You were not pleased.' Then He said, 'Here I am, I have come to do Your will.' He sets aside the first to establish the second. And by that will, [that Jesus came to do] we have been made holy through the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.” (NIV)

I pointed out three important truths that came out of that passage. First, the supreme motivation of Jesus – the thing that brought Him down from heaven to earth – was to do God’s will. Second, He learned that there was a part for Him in the scroll of Scripture. It was not something that He had to write for Himself, it was not something that He had to improvise, it was already written for Him. Third, God’s will culminated for Him in the sacrifice of His own body.

Now each of these three points needs to have its counterpart in our lives. We need to have the same motivation to do God’s will. We need to understand that there’s a part written for each one of us in the scroll. Something that God has appointed from eternity for us to do. And third, we need to understand how the doing of God’s will for us, as for Jesus, finds expression in the sacrifice of our body.

This is what we will be studying in the next devotionals.