Finding the will of God

If there is one thing that a lot Christians seem to be confused about, it is the question “what is the will of God?”. As a reflection of the times in which we live, this has been further honed into the individualized form “what is the will of God for me”, leading to variations such as “God will fulfill his purpose for my life” and so on and so forth. All of these then presuppose that there is a will of God for each person, and that if one lives one’s life according to God’s plan, then they will somehow discover this “will”. In fact the word “destiny” has now taken on a life of its own in some circles of Christianity to denote this concept, and pastors spend enormous amounts of preaching time trying to distill how to achieve this in their sermons.

However, we may need to pause and reflect deeper on what the New Testament actually says about the will of God before we run ahead of ourselves. This must be done in keeping with the important rule that Jesus must be the key to understanding God’s revelation of himself in scripture, it is important to first look at what Jesus himself had to say on the subject of “the will of God”.

Jesus

When Jesus came to the world, there was one thing he kept announcing – the Kingdom of God. Within the Gospels alone, there are 50 occurrences of the kingdom of God/Heaven metaphor, with Jesus continuously stressing that this kingdom that the 1^st century Jews had been waiting for had somehow come through him. And so he set out what many scholars have called his “manifesto” in the Sermon on the Mount as recorded in Matt 5:1-8:1, and in Luke 6. It is important to note that Matthew’s record links everything that Jesus said from Matt 5:1 all the way to 8:1 as part of that one sermon, and any serious student of the Bible needs to pay attention to this particularity. Although our modern bibles have nice chapter and verse divisions and sometimes headings for different “sections” of this sermon, Matthew says all this was said by Jesus at one sitting.

That being the case, it is important to note the following points

1. Jesus seemed to be behaving like Moses, receiving a new Torah on the mountain and delivering it to his people.
2. Jesus actually changed some of the provisions in the Torah, laying out a new way for those who will follow him. Compare what Jesus said in Mt 5:38-42 with what Moses wrote in Deut 19:21.
3. Jesus was touching on 2 very important things in 1^st century Judaism – election (who are the people of God, or the “blessed”) and Torah (what should be the way of life of these people). You will find all over the psalms who the people of ancient Israel called “blessed”(e.g. Ps 1, 16,32,112,119,128). Essentially this was anyone who was a descendant of Abraham or non-descendant who worships Yahweh, and who in addition followed Yahweh’s Torah given to Moses. Jesus turned this election around and said the poor, the peacemakers, the humble, those persecuted for his sake etc. who actually follow him are the “blessed” people, and gave his own Torah as to how they must live if they want to be part of his elect people.

In concluding his speech, Jesus ends with warnings related to all the things he had said. He warned about false prophets turning them away from what he has laid out, then warned that those who “do the will of God”, which he has laid down in this discourse, are those fit for the kingdom. He finally ended by saying those who take his words seriously are those who build on the rock, while those who don’t are those who build on the sand. Not only did he undermine the sacred Torah, he elevated his own words above it by using the formula “you have heard/Moses said” and “I say”.

It is no wonder then that when he finished this sermon of his, “the crowds were amazed at his teaching (Mt 7:28)”. Unlike the Pharisees and Scribes of their time, or pastors and teachers of our time, Jesus didn’t expound the Torah. Jesus actually created new laws and invalidated old ones, behaving more like Moses or like Yahweh himself.

All of this put together should lead us to realize that those who were listening to Jesus at the time would have gotten the following picture, which many rejected because it was contrary to what they knew about Yahweh:

1. Jesus was not just behaving like a prophet, he was also behaving like God.
2. Jesus was changing the rules as to who was in and who was out. Being a Jew by birth (or proselyte) and following the Torah was no longer enough.
3. The will of God was to follow this messiah called Jesus, and not to just call him “Lord, Lord”.
4. Following this will of God was going to lead to even more suffering than they were already under, and yet that was the way that this messiah required.
5. This will of God required them to love their enemies even to the cost of our own lives, to care for the poor, sick and disadvantaged, to seek justice for the weak and be filled with mercy, to be faithful to their spouses till death or be celibate, to speak truth without abundance of swearing, to let their prayers be not long and flowery but to the point, to do their deeds of love without public display, to put away anger against their brethren and so on. To sum all this up, this will of God simply required them to follow this messiah’s words and ways, and to make him alone receive all the glory of everything they did in their lives.

The Epistles

This will is what Paul expounds in Col 1:15-23 in such terms of cosmic glory. God’s will was that “he [Jesus] is before all things, and in him all things hold together … so that in everything he will have the supremacy … For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him” (v 17-19 NIV). And so Paul says that Jesus will present his followers holy and blameless in his sight, if they “continue securely established and steadfast in the faith, without shifting from the hope promised by the gospel that you heard”(v 23 NRSV. The NIV says “continue in YOUR faith”, which falls too close to the trap of individualism for me. Conversely, as pointed out by Ben Witherington, the NRSV also gets Heb 12:2 wrong with “perfector of our faith”, whiles the 2011 NIV gets it right with “perfector of faith”. Sigh …). Here Paul sounds the same warning as Jesus – don’t call him “Lord, Lord” and yet not follow him, but continue to be faithful to him.

We see Paul again reminding the Ephesians that they were saved, so they can serve.

“For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—  not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.” (Eph 2:8-10)

Every other place where the Epistles refer to the will of God is to be understood and framed in what Jesus himself has laid down as “the will of God” – following Jesus, and serving others even at the peril of our own lives.

Conclusion

The will of God is that his followers reject the ways of this world and the world’s unwillingness to submit to Jesus in obedience. The will of God is that his kingdom of justice, peace, mercy and compassion, love and care for one another will be made known to the world through the church, Jesus’ community of followers (Eph 3:10-11). The will of God is that men may see that there is a different way that society can exist, and that to find that way is to find the Anointed One who showed that way by giving himself up for us, and to join the people who are living life that way.

There is no separate “will of God” specially created for you different from what God has already defined “before the foundation of the earth” (Eph 1:4;2 Tim 1:9;1 Pe 1:20). God has no special “purpose for your life” other than that you follow Jesus. There is no “divine destiny” for you other than following the messiah, and working for his kingdom and with his manifesto.

If Christians thought this way, they would not be so easily swayed by all the winds of deception and confusion blowing about. They would not need the multitude of conferences and “divine encounters” that are being sold to them everyday. They won’t be worried about consulting “prophets” about whether to marry Kofi or Kwame, or the other important decisions we make in life. We won’t be worried about whether a decision about our lives is “in the will of God”, simply because it will all be reduced to a simple matter of whether it will enable one to continue to be faithful in following Jesus with one’s brethren or not.

If Christians thought this way, they will be less worried about themselves, and more worried about their neighbour. Because the kingdom of God is about what you are doing for others as Jesus did, not how you are grabbing for yourself. And what was it that Jesus said about neighbours?