OUR
WILL AND GODS
By D. M. PANTON
Our Lord uncovers a fact of enormous importance to us
all. If any man willeth to do his
[Gods] will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether
it be of God (John
7: 17, R.V.): that
is, our will to do Gods will uncovers for us all revelation. Many years ago the writer was deeply
impressed by a young mans remark:- The real question is not, Is the Bible true? but, Do we wish the Bible to be true?
Long decades of experience deeply confirm the fact that, in all
controversy, in all the world-wide differences on doctrine and belief, the
battle - to be paradoxical - is lost or won before it is fought. Is the Scripture final to us - final in the sense that the
moment we know it, we will do it?
Three-fourths of our controversies and divisions would be annihilated if
we could all answer that question with truthfulness and with perfect
sincerity. The soil on which the Word
falls alone determines the harvest. Some
seed fell on the rock; and it withered away (Luke 8: 6).
Our attitude to the Word of God, before we understand it, makes us know it is Divine when we see it.
Willing
to Do
Now see the momentous principle our Lord has laid down once
for all. The statement He makes is
this:- If any man - for it is a universal law, and it
covers the whole human race - WILLETH - it is not the future tense of to
do, but a separate verb and the word on which the stress is laid: if
any man resolves, makes up his mind, is set on it - to do
His will - to
Christs hearers, that would mean the Old Testament, together with all that
they knew to be right by conscience and experience - he shall - it is a rule which never fails - know - knowledge, not opinion; certitude,
not conjecture; fact, not fancy - whether it be of God - whether the whole Christian Faith
is an embodied revelation let down out of Heaven - or whether I
speak from myself - that Christianity, therefore, is the invention of a peasant Jew, of
genius, but unauthorized by God. Jesus
says that there is one infallible rule, of universal application, by which a
man himself, through the action of his own will, decides whether he will know
saving truth, when he sees it, or not - that is, whether he will be saved. And so of all truth. Observe carefully, it is not that he wills to
admire the will of God,
but wills to do it. Renan, one of the greatest
infidels of all time, said:- The
hero of Nazareth is without an equal; his glory remains perfect and will be
renewed for ever: yet he wrote a Life of Jesus of which Philip Schaff says,- We can hardly
trust our eyes when we see Renan digging from the
grave of disgrace and contempt the exploded hypothesis of vulgar imposture. Alive and alert, our ideal is to be that we
are eager to do Gods will the moment we know it.
Commentators
Commentators have clearly seen the truth. As it now stands in
the English Version, says Bishop
Alford, and he stresses it by placing his whole sentence in italics, a wrong idea is conveyed: that the bare performance of Gods
outward commands will give a man sufficient guidance in Christian doctrine;
whereas what our Lord asserts is that if a man be really anxious to do the will
of God, the singleness of purpose and subjection to the will of God will lead
him to a just discrimination of the divine teaching. The text explains,
says Bishop
Wilberforce, why so many miss God, not from lack
of any mere powers of intellect, nor from mental perplexities, not from
obscurity of texts or Bible difficulties, but from alienation of the soul. These words promise the great benediction to
him who wills to do the Fathers will; to him who, in the midst of failures and
discouragements, still holds on because his will is set. Christ,
says Dr. E. Mellor, contemplates the man to whom all light is welcome from any
quarter. It may disturb old convictions,
alter the proportions and relations of truths, but to know the will of God is
worth it all. It is the heart, as Robert Govett says, that has most to do with a mans religious views. Or in the words of John Wesley:- I
am sick of opinions. Give me a humble,
gentle, lover of God and man, a man full of mercy and good fruits; without
partiality or hypocrisy. Let my soul be
with such Christians, wheresoever they are and whatsoever opinion they are of.
Whosoever doeth the will of my Father, the same is my brother.
Scientists
But it is exceedingly remarkable that both ancient thinkers and
modern men of science have had more than a glimmering of this truth. Aristotle
said:- Things we learn to
know, we learn by the doing of them. Sophocles, the Greek poet, says:-
A heart of mildness, full
of good intent,
Far sooner than acuteness
will the truth behold.
Coming to the middle ages, Pascal says:- The
perception of truth is a moral act; and Fichte,- If the will be steadfastly and sincerely fixed on what is
good, the understanding will of itself discover what is true. But the most remarkable corroborations come
from Nineteenth Century men of science. Prof. Tyndall says of all inductive
inquiry:- The first
condition of success is an honest receptivity, and a willingness to abandon all
preconceived notions, however cherished, if they be found to contradict the
truth. Believe me, a self-renunciation
which has something noble in it, and of which the world never hears, is often
enacted in the private experience of the true votary of science. Still more remarkable is Professor Thomas Huxleys statement of the principle:- The great deeds of the
philosophers have been less the fruit of their intellect than of the direction
of that intellect by an eminently religious tone of mind. Truth has yielded itself rather to their
patience, and their self-denial, than to, their logical acumen.
Experience
Now we further find, as a curiously convincing fact, that all
experience reinforces our Lords statement.
There are different kinds of truth, and we reach these different truths
differently. Some truths are purely
intellectual, like mathematics, and we reach them through intellectual
reasoning; some are aesthetic, like music or painting, and we reach these
through cultivated senses - all that is needed is a naturally gifted ear or
eye, sufficiently trained; but other truths - and these include Gods will named by our Lord - are moral, and we
reach them only through a moral wish to understand them. Science can never disprove the Decalogue:
they move in different spheres. If a man
pronounces the Decalogue evil, or the Sermon on the Mount immoral, it is proof
positive that he is immoral himself.
Thus, experience reinforces our Lords statement. Good people uniformly believe the truth:
wicked people uniformly disbelieve or neglect or hate it. It is a knowledge which is certainty. When Sir
Michael Faraday was dying, he was asked by a visiting journalist to voice
his speculation as death approached. Speculations! said Faraday in astonishment; I know nothing of speculations. I am resting in certainties. He then quoted:- I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded
that He is able to keep that which I have committed unto Him against that day
(2 Tim. 1: 12).
The
Jews
Now we apply this truth to our Lords hearers. Why did they not believe Him?
They believed Moses miracles, though they had never seen one of them;
they believed very doubtful things, such as things not even probable - such as
wild Rabbinical fables: yet Christ they
believed not. Why? It was no lack of evidence - our Lords
miracles, wrought before their eyes, have had no parallel in the history of the
world; it was no obscurity of Scriptures that spoke of Him - the Old Testament
prophecies and the facts fitted exactly; it was no lack of intellectual ability
- the Jew has, and had, one of the keenest intellects in the world. It was what He taught. Men question the truth because they hate its
practise. Their attitude is expressed by
Giovanni Papini,
who said:- He who has read the Sermon on the Mount
without once experiencing a throb of grateful tenderness, a tightening in his
throat, an impulse of love and remorse, a vague but pressing need to do his
part that these words may not remain mere words, but become an immediate hope,
a source of vitality to all the living, is more deserving of our loving pity
than anyone else, for not all the love of mankind can suffice to compensate him
for what he has lost.
Salvation
Now we see the extraordinary simplicity with which our Lord
thus invests salvation. It is not, If any will do Gods will - a vast obedience before saving knowledge can
ever come; but, If any man wills to do - simply longs to know the truth in
order to live it - he shall know - in a flash, as he sits - whether it be of God: he will see God, instantly, in the
Gospel. The simplest, the youngest, the
most ignorant, the most wicked, willing, will know. Just WILL; and saving truth floods the soul. It is true of all truths, and of all stages of truth - therefore it is for us Christians too. The cured blind man exactly expresses
it. Jesus said to him, Dost thou
believe on the Son of God? He answered
and said, Who is he, Lord, that I may believe on him?
Jesus said unto him, He it is that
speaketh with thee. And he said, Lord, I
believe (John 9: 35).
He had but to know Gods incarnate will to accept it instantly.
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