Who Completes God’s Will? Part 1

When I say “the will of God”… what comes to your mind? What do you think about?

How about how we talk about the will of God? We don’t typically make statements, like “God’s will is”, but rather questions: “what is the will of God?” Think about it with me: some will ask the question “what is God’s will” concerning the girl or guy they’re interested in. Some will ask what is God’s will concerning the job you’re struggling with. Some will ask it about a relationship.

When we ask what God’s will is, we tend to be talking about how it relates to things, circumstances, people. What is God’s will concerning (fill in the blank). It tends to be something very specific… like we’ve narrowed down the choices for God, and we need Him to show us which option to pick. It tends to be us looking several steps ahead and asking God to show us what choices we should make to get to that destination. That tends to be, honestly, how we think and interact when it comes to the will of God. We want to find the specifics to God’s will as it relates to people and things outside of us, and then we’ll act. God show me your will, so I can do it!

What if you can’t find the specifics? What if it doesn’t become clear… I mean, have you ever made a decision without complete peace about it? What if I don’t know the will of God? What if I don’t know how to pray for the will of God? Do I pray and ask Him for it to be this way? Do I pray and ask Him to be that way?

In order to understand the will of God as it is revealed in our Bibles, and as it applies to our daily lives, we have to understand that His will is wrapped up in our salvation… and that the Bible doesn’t refer to salvation usually in the same way we do. We see it as a one-time thing, where we received Christ and were saved. That’s our salvation… and that is certainly true. But the New Testament adds depth to that… namely, that our salvation has a history.

Or, to be more precise, we could say that salvation has a timeline. When we talk about salvation, we tend to think of it as a one-time thing. But the Bible reveals a different reality, where salvation is seen as an ongoing process that is sealed and promised at the beginning, but ongoing now and into the future. Nowhere is this timeline more evident than in the book of Romans. An old German commentator from the 16th century has said that if the Bible were to be likened to an engagement ring, then Romans would be the crown jewel on that engagement ring. Why? Why is Romans so important? Because in it, we find the most sustained, complete writing in the Bible concerning what the Cross of Christ means.

We understand what happened when Christ died on the cross. He came and died to save His people from their sins. Matthew even tells us that in Matthew 1:21, as he quotes the angel speaking to Mary. But what that means, all the implications of that for your Christian life, the fact that the cross of Christ is the basis for not just your initial salvation (justification), but your current salvation (sanctification), and it is the power behind your final salvation (glorification)… that’s not in the Gospels. That’s in the Epistles, the writings of the Apostles. And Romans is the most important summary of what the cross meant. That’s why you package John and Romans together into a John/Romans. John explains what happened, and Paul writing Romans explains what it means for us.

John is a pretty straightforward statement of facts. In this way, John is like an equation. Let’s say E=MC2. But Romans is the explanation of that equation, which is quite complex. It’s like a tapestry. All these threads crossing and weaved together. Well, it’s in one of those individual threads that we find a very profound answer to the question that I posed… if I don’t know the will of God, how do I act? How do I pray for the will of God to be completed in my life?

Over the next few days, we’re going to look at the big picture here in Romans, and then zooming in we’re going to look at some details of that tapestry in Romans 8 to answer our question.

Posted on 7/21/2008 under Daniel Viezbicke's Blog. Comments RSS feed.
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