Doing the Will of the Father

Jesus came into the world to do the will of his Father. (see Hebrews 10:7-9). His words, "Not my will, but Thine be done" were not just in the Garden before he gave himself over to death in obedience to his Father's will. He lived his entire existence seeking and doing the will of his Father who sent him. "I can of mine own self do nothing." John 5:30. "For I came down from heaven, not to do mine own will, but the will of him that sent me." John 6:38. "I do nothing of myself; but as my Father hath taught me, I speak these things. And he that sent me is with me." John 8:28-29.

Why is this a big deal? Because, as a man here on earth like the rest of us, though he was also fully God, Jesus did have a will of his own. He could have looked out over the heart-wrenching needs of the people around him and decided to take things into his own hands. He could have called thousands of angels to defeat the ungodly men who held whole nations in cruel bondage. He could have organized teams to go throughout the earth healing all the sick, broken people. He could have caused all the wealthy people on the earth to share everything they had with the poor people so everything would be fair and equal. You may remember that the Jews were very upset that he did not throw off the yoke of the Romans as they thought the Messiah would.

But he did not do any of those things. He only did what he saw his Father doing. He did everything he did do in obedience to and out of love for his Father. All in obedience to his Father's will, he healed some and raised some from the dead, he preached the Kingdom of God, he laid down his life, was resurrected, ascended and now sits at the right hand of his Father in Heaven making intercession for all those his Father has given him.

Why didn't he do more about all the needs he saw? Because he was here to do his Father's will, not his own. Doing more or less than his Father asked would have been sin. His Father's will was that he would live a sinless life of obedience here. In that way, when Jesus laid down his sinless life, his obedient death would pay in full for all of the sin that had caused all the wreckage in the world. His resurrected life would then empower all those the Father had given him to live the same lives of dependence on and obedience to his Father. In this way, his everlasting Kingdom over all the kingdoms of the world would be built and reigned over by all those he redeemed along with him.

God is the only one who has the power to build his Kingdom. He saves us and fills us with his Spirit not so that we can go around doing all the good we decide needs to be done. (It is true that if we follow him as his children we will do good and exhibit all the fruits of his Spirit, but not by following our own wills.) He makes us able to commune with him, as he made Adam and Eve before they chose to follow their own wills. He has chosen to build his Kingdom through those who will obey him and do his will.

After our new birth into his family, when we are given his Life abiding within us, we are no longer our own to follow our own ideas of what we think needs to be done. "You are not your own, you have been bought with a price." We have been given the power of his Spirit to bring every thought captive (our own ideas and imagination as well as the goadings of the devil) so that we may be given over, as Jesus was, to do the will of our Father.

We have missed our purpose in life if we think our job is only to do what we have learned is right and good and pleasing. Nothing short of his will done on earth as it is in heaven is our purpose. We have not been given his new life to be good people. Doing good deeds is not our purpose, any more than it was Jesus' purpose. There are scads of people doing good deeds all around us who do not know God through Jesus Christ and who are not building his kingdom. They look good and others think well of them. But on the last Day, Jesus will say to them, "Depart from me, I never knew you, workers of iniquity!" If we content ourselves with doing what we think is good, we will fall short of bringing God glory, which is sin. And we haven't been given new life to keep on sinning!

We have been made like Jesus, children of God, to do as he did, to do the will of our Father. And the truth of the matter is anyone who does the will of the Father on earth will be hated as Jesus was hated. The earth is full of people doing their own will who, by so doing, hate God and all his children. Now it is true there is no law against the fruit of the Spirit but that fact hasn't prevented Christians from being martyred by those who hated them throughout the ages.

Now this is a very difficult thing. Naturally, no one wants to incur the wrath of his fellow man. It is natural to think that if what you are doing is causing a bunch of people to despise, resent and mock you, you must be doing something wrong. (Unless you are Rush Limbaugh!) We naturally think that anything God requires of us will produce peace, prosperity and a good name respected by others. We also naturally tend to forget about the cruel deaths that Jesus and all the apostles all faced.

However, our new birth into the family of God and our new citizenship in the Kingdom of God has translated us from natural into supernatural. We will fall short of becoming like Jesus if we cling to the old natural ways of thinking after we have become supernatural. His Spirit is hard at work within us to transform us into the the image of Jesus. So let us let him have his way with us. Whether we are to die martyr's deaths or not is all in his hands. Our job is not to worry about that or anything else, but to follow where he leads in obedience, to walk in his Spirit, to do the will of our Father in heaven. May we no longer disobey our Father by doing our own will, however righteous it may seem. That which looks good, sounds right or is commonly accepted is no longer our guide. He is.