Doing God's Will, the Way to Heaven

“Not every one that saith unto Me, Lord, Lord, shall enter unto the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of My Father which is in heaven.” — Matt. vii. 21.

WE have seen that the will of God constitutes the glory of heaven. Heaven is nothing but the unhindered manifestation of the working of God’s will, the outshining of His hidden glory in what He does. The inhabitants of heaven owe all their glory to God’s working His will of love in them, and all their happiness to their working it out in His service. The petition in the Lord’s Prayer teaches us to long and ask that earth may becom.e like heaven, and that His will may be done here even as there. From this truth that of our text follows naturally. The only way to be fit to enter heaven must be, to do the will of God here on earth. Every thought of heaven that does not lead US to do the will of God is a vain imagination.

There are multitudes of Christians who have never seen this. They think that the way to heaven is found in pious desires and religious duties, in trusting Christ for mercy, and seeking to be kept from gross sin. But the thought that Christ puts here, that only those who love to do the will of God can enter heaven — has never taken possession of their mind or heart. And yet our Lord makes the: difference between the reUgion of prayer and profession, and the religion of obedience and performance, as plain as words can make it. Not every one that saith tmto ile, Lord, Lord — that prays to Ie and professes to acknowledge and honour ‘Me as Saviour; but he that doeth the Vv’ill of 2Iy Father in heaven — he alone shall enter the kingdom of heaven. It is the Father’s presence and the Father’s will in heaven that makes heaven what it is: doing the Father’s will on earth is the onh’ conceivable way of entering heaven; nothing else can give the capacity for enjoying it. There must always be harmony between a life and its environment. To enter the heaven of God’s will, without a nature that loves and does God’s will, is an impossibility.

But whence then comes the terrible mistake that so many make, who think that they are honestly longing and striving to get to heaven? Let us try and answer this question. In everything that exists there is an outVv’ard form or shape in which it m.anifests itself and an inward power or life which constitutes its true nature or being. It is thus with heaven and our thought of it. Men regard it as a place full of brightness and glory and happiness — free from all sorrow or pain, full of all that can give rest and joy. And who would not wish to enter there? The most worldly hope to find a place in it when compelled to leave the present life. But they never think that what attracts them is only an external image they form of heaven. And they know not that what constitutes the actual, essential glory of heaven, what really gives heaven and its inhabitants their rest and joy and everlasting song, is — the Presence of the Father who is in heaven, and the undisturbed supremacy of His Holy Will. Because in heaven God’s will does everything, and is done by everyone, God’s own blessedness fills all. Oh! the folly of thinking of entering heaven while they are utterly incapable of enjoying heaven. The Father in heaven, and His will on earth as in heaven, are not the desire or joy of their heart.

The same error, in mistaking the outward for the inward, is made in regard to religion. God’s words calls us to seek and to strive, to listen to God’s truth, to pray and believe, to forsake sin and follow after that which is good. And so men seek to put their trust in Christ, to confess Him, and do many things in His name, and think that this is religion. And all the while they forget that the inner spiritual reality of true religion is this — the knowing, and loving, and doing of the Father’s will as their one desire and delight. They know not that it is to work this that Jesus is a Saviour from sin; that this is the only proof that our faith is true; that by this path alone can the entrance to heaven be found.

When this is preached many a one comforts himself with the thought of God’s mercy. Did not Christ just come for those who had sinned, and had not done God’s Will? He did indeed, blessed be God! But not for those who continue in sin, and do not make the will of God the object of their life. Our sin and misery was that we had fallen out of the will of God into our own will and the will of Satan. Christ came with the one object of redeeming lis from the power of our own will, and giving us a new nature and His Holy Spirit, to enable us here on earth to love and do God’s will. Without this, our Lord assures us, there can be no thought of our entering heaven. The same righteous grace that in Justification receives the ungodly into favour without works, through faith alone, for the sake of Christ and His work, will in the great day take the works and the life into account as the proof of the reality of faith and r.n^on to Christ, and of the fitness for entering heaven. As we are saved zvithout works, we are created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God afore prepared that we should walk in them. Without these there can be no entrance into heaven; they are indispensable. The Master’s words are plain and decisive: He that doeth the will of My Father in heaven, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven. (Study carefully Matt. xvi. 2y, XXV. 31-46; Rom. ii. 6-7; 2 Cor. v. 10.)

Christ came from heaven to show us that doing the will of the Father is the one mark of a son of God, and to save us into doing that will. True conversion is turning away from our self-will and giving ourselves to the will of God as our duty and our only blessedness. I ask every believer who reads this to inquire, and say whether he thinks that the doing of the Father’s will, as the one object of Christ’s salvation, and the one preparation for entering heaven, has taken the place in his life and faith and conduct, that it had in the life and conduct and teaching of Jesus Christ. Read the question over again, and pause; it is worth while giving a careful answer.

All salvation on earth or in heaven is — doing the will of God. If we find that this blessed truth has never shone with its full heavenly light into our souls, let us at once turn to our Lord Jesus and ask Him to teach us. Let us give ourselves up to it, to study, to believe, to practice, to rejoice in it. Let us each day choose the will of God, His whole will, and nothing but His will, to have rule over us and dwell within us. The living Father whose love can make it our blessedness, through the living Christ, who loves to teach it us and work it in us, will enable us to do His will.

DOING GOD’S WILL, OUR UNION WITH JESUS.

‘’ Whosoever shall do the will of My Father which is in heaven, the same is My brother, and sister, and mother.” — Matt. xii. 50.

HOW many Christians there are who long greatly for a more intimate fellowship with the Lord Jesus. The thought of a fuller experience of His love, of His abiding presence, of His mighty power to save from sin and self, greatly attracts them. They often wonder that the longings and the prayers of years appear to avail so little. They are ready to turn to anyone who they think can help them to discover the secret of what they have sought in vain, the full manifestation in their heart of the love and the power of Christ. Come, my reader, turn to-day to our Blessed Lord Himself, and let Him tell you His open secret. The way into the most intimate union with Christ is very simple: doing the will of His Father. Of one who does this He says: the same is My brother, and sister, and

mother.

What does this mean? A brother or a sister is one who is born of the same father, shares the same love, and home, and care; bears in some measure the same likeness in disposition and character; is bound to his other brothers and sisters by these ties in a common love and intercourse. When Christ calls one of us a brother or sister, it mieans nothing less. Like Him we are born of God; the Father’s life, and love, and likeness are in us, as in Him. As the Elder Brother, He gives to us and shares with us all He has; He pours out on us all the love with which the Father loves Him. He is not ashamed to call us brethren. He delights in our relationship to Him, in our welfare, in our society. He only lives to find His happiness in us, and in what He can do for us. The one thing He longs for is that we should know, and claim our relationship, should come to Him and be free with Him as no brother or sister ever was.

Let us pray for the quickening of the Holy Spirit to make all this a reality. Just think of what a joy would come into the believer’s life if he truly realised this: Jesus loves me as a brother, yes me, just as I am, all unworthy and sinful. He loves me as a brother. No elder brother ever watched over a weak younger brother so tenderly as my Elder Brother watches over me. He wants me to know it. He gives the command: ‘’ Say to My brethren, I ascend to My Father and your Father,” He wants me to know it; He longs that I should live with Him as a brother in the Father’s presence; He is able and willing to make the possibihty a reality. He invites us to come and say in tender reverence, O my Holy Elder Brother — I dare scarce say, and yet I miay and I will — I am Thy brother; Thou art my Brother. He can enable us to realise it, and abide in His presence all the day and every day.

And what is the disposition of heart that can claim the blessing and abide in it. Read again: ‘’ Whosoever shall do the will of My Father which is in heaven, the same is My brother, and sister, and mother,” The Lord opens here to us the deepest secret of His own life as Son of God on earth. He came as man to prove the blessedness and the glory of doing the will of the Father, In His human life this was the one disposition that lay at the root of His power to conquer sin, to satisfy God, and to save us. Doing the will of God is the only possible way, on earth or in heaven, of pleasing Him.

Thinking as God thinks, loving what God loves, willing as God wills, doing what God says — how could we think that there is any way but this to the fellowship or the favour of God. Of Himself Jesus said: “I have kept the commandments of My Father and abide in His love.” The law for the Elder Brother is the unchangeable law for all the children: doing the Father’s will is the only true mark of being a child. And so it is the one condition of being admitted to the full experience of a walk in all the joy that the Brotherhood of Jesus can bring. Doing the will of the Father is the bond of union with Jesus.

The converse is also true. Union with Jesus gives the power to do the will of the Father. We begin with ‘’ willing to do His will,” and do it as far as we know and can. When this is really done with the whole hearty we come and claim the promise of being admitted consciously into the love and society of the Elder Brother. In true intercourse with Him, studying His example, drinking in His Spirit, receiving His strength, we get larger insight and greater love of God’s will, and begin to long to live in it wholly even as Jesus did. And so we go from strength to strength, the doing the will fitting for the brother-life, and the brother-life fitting for the doing of the will. In ever closer union with Him, the Elder Brother imparts to us, in ever deeper measure, the secret of His own blessed life in the will of God.

And what is that secret? It is found in the words our Lord so frequently uses — ‘’ the will of My Father, which is in heaven.’’ Christ was only able to do and suffer as He did, because it was all to Him each moment the will of a loving Father. The will of the Father was nothing but the experience of the love of the Father: therefore He delighted, therefore He was able, to do it. Many Christians never learn to understand the difference between the Law of God and the Will of God. The law is given by a Ruler, and when embodied in a statute book may be kept or broken, with very little thought of personal relationship to the Law-giver. For this reason the Law has no power to secure obedience. Christ speaks of the Will as the Will of the Father — the expression of a personal living comm.unication, in which the Father’s voice and presence is ever known, and the Will never for a moment separated from Him whose it is. It was the ever-present Love of God showing His will, and the ever-blessed enjoyment of that Love, that enabled Christ to be obedient even unto death. It is this alone can enable us to do the Father’s will. The grace once for all. to yield ourselves to do only that will; the faith to believe that in the fellowship and by the power of Christ such a life is possible; the joyful devotion to Him to walk as led by His hand, and like Him to do the Father’s will; these all come as a believer seeks to know the life of a brother of the First Begotten Son.

It is indeed a change in the life of a believer, when he fully grasps and experiences the difference between the Law of God and the Will of the Father. He sees how the only pozuer to do the will is the unceasing experience of the Father’s presence, His loving voice, His guiding eye, His inspiring love. He sees how that was the life Jesus lived, how nothing less is the life Christ lives in us. He learns to understand how doing the Father’s will is the one blessing into which faith is to lead us, the one secret of abiding union with Christ Jesus. Go out, my soul, into thy work this day, and let thy life be transfigured by the one thought: Like Jesus, with Jesus, in Jesus I live to do the Father’s will. And as you fail, or fear to fail, just whisper: ‘^ O my Lord, my Elder Brother, Thou and I, Thou and I, are we not one in doing the Father’s will.”

IV

DOING GOD’S WILL, OUR FOOD

“I have meat to eat that ye know not of. My meat is to do the will of Him that sent Me, and to accomplish His work.” — John iv. 32, 34.

WHEN tempted in the wilderness by Satan to satisfy His hunger by a miracle Christ answered: Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God. The life is more than bread. God’s word, received and obeyed, is the true nourishment of our life. In the Beatitudes Christ spake: Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after righteousness, after the doing of what is right; they shall be satisfied. And so He says here of Himself that to do the will of Him that sent Him, and to accomplish His work, is the meat that He eats, the food by which He lives., The hidden manna is God’s will; to do it is to eat and ‘^ live. Let us think what this eating teaches us.

Eating means the maintenance of life. — All created life must be supported by nourishment from without, if it is not to die. And the food must ever

30 be in correspondence to the nature of the life it sustains, and the organs provided for receiving it. Our physical life is fed from the life of nature. Our spiritual life can only be maintained out of the eternal life that is in God. There is no zvay for our receiving that life day by day but by doing the zinll of God. The life of God reveals and communicates itself only in His will. In its first beginning life is always a gift. But its maintenance is always connected with action and growth. It is doing God’s Zinll, and accomplishing His work that will secure to the Christian the daily continuance in the Divine life.

Eating means appropriation. — Our body receives from the outer world, of which it is a part, that by which it lives, the constituent elements by which its life is sustained. These can nourish us in no other way but by being taken up into our system, assimilated and made a very part of our ovvm selves. Even so in the spiritual life. As we have said already, the life of God acts and m.anifests itself through the Vvill of God. And it is only by truly and fully appropriating that zvill, taking it into our system, wholly assimilating it, and m.aking it a part of our own being, by doing it, that the life can be m.aintained in us. The life is a hidden spiritual mystery; the will is its concrete expression, capable of being known, and accepted or rejected. And because the will is the Divine power in action, so there is no possible way of assimilating the Divine will but by action on our / part, that is, by our doing it. It is not the knowledge, or the admiration, or the approval of the will of God, but the doing of it that alone feeds the heavenly life. It is only by doing that I really make it my own. ‘’ My meat is to do His will.”

Eating means the renewal and increase of strength. — We do not eat just enough to maintain a bare existence; we desire to have food, both in quantity and quality, sufficient to give us strength and vigour for our work. Doing God’s will is the sure way to become strong. Many Christians seek their strength in prayer, in faith, in the promises, in fellowship. They complain of their feebleness. They have never learnt that Christ made doing the will of the Father His meat; it was this that was rewarded with the Divine strength for all He had to do. He felt that He had but one thing to do in the world — to accomplish the work for which God had sent Him; as He did it He received new strength for what He still had to do. It is this His disciples need. The whole power of God works in His will. As I appropriate that will, and know I am doing the very thing God is willing for me, its powers work in me. Doing the will of God brings heavenly strength.

Eating means satisfaction. — God has so created us that a sense of need of hunger, impels us to seek food, and makes our partaking of it an enjoyment and a source of satisfaction. ‘’ Bless the Lord, who satisfieth thy mouth with good things; so that thy youth is renewed like the eagle’s.” ‘’ He satisfieth the hungry soul.’’ It is feeding on the will of God that gives this Divine satisfaction. The will of God is His glory and perfection; doing that will leads up into a wonderful fellowship and partnership with Himself. But that means more than just doing what is right or keeping the law. No, the right things may be done under the constraint of conscience or duty without bringing real satisfaction. It is only when what we do is done as the will of the Father, in the sense of His presence, in fellowship with Himself, and the loving desire to please Him, that it will give nourishment and strength and satisfaction to the soul.

There are many Christians who mourn over their leanness and their feebleness. They study Christ’s image and example, they seek in some things to be conformed to Him, and yet find so little either of the power or the joy of living as He lived. The cause is simple. They do not feed on the food on which Christ fed. Two children, or two men, may be equally healthy, but the difference of food may make all the difference between their strength and success in the work of life. The believer has the same eternal life that was in Christ Jesus. But it needs the same daily food if there is to be any measure of that conformity which God expects and has provided for. Our Lord tells us: My meat is that I do the will of Him that sent Me, He that eats of this meat shall have the life more abundant, shall be satisfied as with marrow and fatness.

And what can be the reason of so much failure in feeding on this heavenly food? It m.ay be that the Church has not taught it as clearly as was needed. Or that we heard and heeded not. Or that when we did heed, we were deceived by the lie of Satan that this was too hard a path. And yet the Lord has said it so plainly: The will of God is the glory of heaven; the doing of God’s will ought to be our great prayer on earth. The doing of God’s will is the only pass to heaven, the only mark of the family likeness in the home of Jesus. The doing of God’s will the only food on which a child of God can thrive and be able to accomplish the work the Father has given us to do. The doing of God’s will our daily food; we must go back upon our past life and see if this has been what we have been feeding on. And if not, we must believe that a change of diet, a return to the simple, heavenly fare on which the Son of God lived His life and did His work, will restore us to health and make the work of God our joy and our life.

Soul! pray for a great hunger for the will of God, as natural and as continual as for your daily bread. Beg, even if it were at first but for a crumb of this heavenly bread from the Father’s table, God showing you His will for you, and enabling you to do it for Him. It may be the beginning of such a change in your life. The work you have done for God, at your choice and in your way, and the commandments you have tried to obey, may all become to you the loving will of the living Father, living fellowship with the living God. Instead of eating the bread you had to find yourself you will say: ‘’ I have meat to eat ye know not of” — the will of the Father made known and performed day by day.