What is God’s will?

 
Question: What is God’s will?

Response: You ask a huge and fascinating question that I’m trying to answer with every sermon. So I’ll just give you a few thoughts and invite you to ask more, OK? I think the “will of God” is simply what God decides to do, his “judgment.” Jesus is the perfect manifestation of his will. God is Love. He wills love. And Jesus is the manifestation of love. His will is also manifest as his creation, which is Good.

So the question then becomes: What is NOT his will? I think the answer is evil. Evil is not a thing, so much as the absence of the Good. A lie is the absence of truth. Dark is the absence of Light. Death is the absence of Life and life is a communion of love. To choose evil is to sin. Which means sin is choosing to desecrate or uncreate yourself.

To surrender to God’s will is to allow Jesus to live his Life in communion with yours, and even this is a gift. It’s not our will that makes God’s will happen. It’s God’s will to make our good will happen. This is why pride is a trap of the evil one. He uses the law (knowledge of good and evil, knowledge of God’s will) to trap us. It’s the idea that WE could will GOD’s will into existence. And God demonstrates his grace to free us from that trap. It’s the revelation that GOD wills OUR will into existence.

At the cross (the tree in the garden), we all try to seize control of God’s will (remember God’s will is Jesus). In doing this we violate his will. We sin. But at the cross, God also reveals his will by forgiving us our sin. “Where sin increased, grace abounded all the more.” In the very place we violate his will by taking his will as our own, he gives us his will in Jesus. I’m saying that it’s at the cross that we fall in love with God, that we learn to love Love, that we see that God’s will is Good, and so therefore, want to do his will, which is his will rising from the dead in the temple of our own souls. You see: His will is not simply that we’d ACT good, but that we’d naturally BE good because we love the Good. His will is to make us like himself.

There are great mysteries here, but ultimately God’s will is called reality, and sin is being trapped in an illusion. Salvation is waking up to the reality that God is Love and Love conquers all. I believe that God is waking us all up, that we might enjoy his will, that we might love him as he loves us. That we might surrender to God and enjoy God in freedom.