God's Will

Ever since the Garden of Eden, man has disobeyed God's will. God instructed Adam and Eve not to eat from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, but they chose to do so anyway. This action introduced sin into the world, a state of spiritual separation from God. Death became one of the chief physical consequences of sin as God says to Adam in Genesis Chapter 3:

¹⁹ By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return.

Those who claim "God is on their side" need only stop to consider for a moment that they are creations of the Heavenly Creator. Individuals and groups function either on His side or not on His side, though usually not so decisively. Fallen Man desperately wants to avoid making this decision, and to ease his conscience, tries to make God smaller (often by way of rather acrobatic intellectual contortions). But God, the Lord of Hosts (Yahweh Tsebaoth), is not like one of those Greek "gods" who comes down from Mt. Olympus and takes sides in the affairs of man. The Almighty God is above all, and He is merciful and loving and wants us to individually come to know him, through faith in His Son Jesus Christ. The Lord describes this relationship in Jeremiah Chapter 31, some 600 years before the birth of Christ:

³³ I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people.

God's laws are immutable, whether before or after Jesus' time on Earth. What changed at the Cross of Calvary is how the breaking of God's law (i.e. sin) is propitiated. Jesus' blood atonement became the ultimate and plenary sacrifice, thus doing away with the previous covenantal law (the Jewish rituals and ordinances relating to sacrifice and propitiation for sin). God's laws remain the same. These laws, as an extension of His will, take shape and are exercised in the form of three God-ordained institutions: marriage/family, the church, and government. At their root is God's relationship with each individual. The health of these institutions can serve as a spiritual barometer for nations as a whole -- and just how close to, or far from, God's will they really are at any given time.

On the macro level of nations, war is the perennial sign of man's willfully sinful nature. War is the consequence of man living outside God's will, which is not to say that he cannot and should not fight righteously. We say it was God's will that the Allies were the victors in World War II, not because God was on their side, but because the Allies fought for inalienable rights God grants all men. This is not moral reduction, i.e. "the good guys always win," because they clearly do not. The success or failure of righteousness should not be counted solely in worldly terms, for this is a fallen world. However, that which points to God's will can be recognized and fought for, even at the level of war with all its chaotic variables. As we say in the Lord's prayer: "Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as [it is] in heaven." (Matthew 6:10, KJV) The exercise of human will inevitably brings suffering and death, and the further a government functions outside God's will, the greater its inequities become.

Similarly, the recent scandals in the Catholic church startlingly reveal the degree to which that institution, as a whole, has strayed from God's will. Now we are seeing the rotten fruit, and it certainly hasn't happened overnight. Once outside of God's will, we are all the more vulnerable to the vicissitudes of the world. No amount of lawyers can protect the Catholic church until there is a total change starting from the top. Nothing remains hidden before God: "There is nothing concealed that will not be disclosed, or hidden that will not be made known." (Matthew 10:26) The Catholic church is not alone. The acquiescence of the mainstream Protestant churches to the so-called church growth movement demonstrates a laxity in obedience to God's will. When the church embraces the world, "the salt loses its saltiness" and is "no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled by men." (Matthew 5:13)

In the last fifty years, particularly in the developed Western countries, the institution of marriage has come under direct assault from steadily increasing and prevalent sexual licentiousness. The rotten fruits of society's drift from God is felt most acutely in the family: divorce rates are high, abortion is condoned, and sexuality has been completely unhinged from Godly love and responsibility. These are all the classic signposts of civilization in decline. All other societies that celebrated infanticide and aberrant sexuality have long since been relegated to the dustbin of history (e.g. Sodom and Gomorrah, ancient Greece and Rome).

Lastly, we arrive at an individual's relationship with God. Thought and action are the provinces where man chooses whether or not to operate in God's will, although the two may not necessarily occur together. For example, while an unbeliever may not follow God's will in thought, he may unwittingly do so in action -- such is the Almighty power of the Lord. Say a person lives their life without fear (as in fear of man); by doing so, they partially accomplish the will of God. This is why we can see unbelievers accomplish some great feat, produce some innovation, raise wonderful children -- at some level they operated within God's will, whether or not they were conscious of that. Conversely, believers sometimes have a tendency to second-think the will of God. In thought, they follow Him, but in action, they do not. They succumb to the fear of man rather than exalt in the fear of God.

The lesson we can take from this is that no man can effect that which is the province of God's will. God can and will work through all men, and His will is immutable. When the unsaved operate in God's will, it is Divine Providence, but when the saved follow the Lord's will, it is Divine Grace. The difference is quite astonishing, as if a light has been turned on. For when we receive Jesus Christ, we begin to understand the will of the Father. "I was blind but now I see!" (John 9:25)