Whose Will?

A man named Dennis F. Kinlaw wrote this years ago, “Satan disguises submission to himself under the guise of personal autonomy. He never asks us to become his servants. Never once did the serpent say to Eve, ‘I want to be your master.’ The shift in commitment is never from Christ to evil; it is always from Christ to self. And instead of His will, self-interest rules and what I want reigns. THAT is the essence of sin.”

The chaos that is recorded human history is the fruit of us simply wanting to do what we want. Truth is, we think we know what to do and thus we do what we want. We show what we believe by doing what we do. It is seminal to understand that the life God has given us to live on this planet is not something we really know how to live. The questions of, “Why am I here?” and “What is the purpose and meaning of life?” have fueled the machinations of philosophers for centuries. Most religious systems try to make sense out of the human condition, but they all fall short in attempting to answer the questions because they lack any real connection with the Creator.

There is only One Source of true wisdom about how to live and what will make for human flourishing, and it comes from The Creator. The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God and Eternal Father of the Eternal Son, Jesus Christ Who is God incarnate, did not leave humanity’s nagging questions unanswered. God has spoken and His Word has been recorded and preserved so we might understand the what and why of life. The beginning of wisdom is reverence for God, yielding to Him, believing Him, surrendering all of life to Him so that He rules in us for our good and not “self-destructive-self-interest”.

God in His love for the “crown of His creation” did not leave us to flounder and perish in our self-interested death-throws. He has come to us and revealed Himself so that we might know what He is like, what His ways look like, and what will make for meaning and purpose as we live here in time. Jesus said, “If you have seen Me, you have seen the Father.” We don’t have to live in confusion. We can be united to the full Life of God by believing and receiving from Him what He has done to deal with the sin of the world. With utter finality, He has dealt with your sin and mine; sin that has always been grounded in the satanic deception of finite, lame, blind, deaf, and dead-ended self-interest.

Jesus Christ made it so clear when He stated, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father but by me.” If we want to know the what and why of our existence, it can be known in following Jesus Christ, surrendered to His will, living by the indwelling power of the Holy Spirit, and being changed more and more into what God intended all along. Whose “will” will it be for you? Or phrased another way, what do you want, to become alive or remain spiritually, essentially, dead?