Chapter IV
THE WILL OF GOD
Eph. vi. 6. – Doing the will of God from the heart.
This short sentence, eight words in the English, seven only in the Greek, is a wonderfully comprehensive account of the action of the Spiritual Life. Take it word by word, and every detail in it is a great principle, meant to underlie a most happy experience and practice. “Doing” is its first word; doing, as against dreaming; doing, in the sense of a genuine obedience, and not merely an approval, a recognition, of what claims to be obeyed. “Doing the will of God” is its next word; reminding the Christian that he is indeed not his own, that he exists for Another, for his Maker and Redeemer, and that his own being will never work aright, will never fulfil its true “law,” will never rest, out of the line of the will of Him who has made him, has re-made him, owns him altogether, and purposes to use him. “Doing the will of God from the heart,” or more precisely “from the soul,” is its last word; a word which conveys at once precept and promise; bids the man seek such a “doing” as shall be not friction and fatigue but a matter of strong, warm interest and willingness, “not a sigh, but a song”; and by thus bidding him seek, assures him that he shall find; tells him that such a doing is divinely possible in the life of grace, no day-dream but a living and practical reality for “the children of the day.”
Before I go further, here let me pause, as in the presence of the King, and recollect all this for myself, and reverently press it on my reader’s recollection. Not one word have I written in the previous lines that is not of the alphabet of the Gospel, or at least of its one-syllable lessons for the little children of God. But monosyllables, even in an infant’s lesson, can and often do convey unfathomable and pressingly important truths; and so it is with these.
The simple statements just presented, if they express to me and to my reader not only a holy theory but in some genuine measure a holy experience, are the description of a life most blessed, most peaceful, most successful and fruitful, in the Lord’s own sense of fruit and of success. Let that sentence of the Apostle, or any part of it, be to us merely theory, and we shall know little indeed of the peace and joy of God. So be it not with us, not for an hour more, if it is so now.
Before I go further, here let me pause, as in the presence of the King, and recollect all this for myself, and reverently press it on my reader’s recollection. Not one word have I written in the previous lines that is not of the alphabet of the Gospel, or at least of its one-syllable lessons for the little children of God. But monosyllables, even in an infant’s lesson, can and often do convey unfathomable and pressingly important truths; and so it is with these.
The simple statements just presented, if they express to me and to my reader not only a holy theory but in some genuine measure a holy experience, are the description of a life most blessed, most peaceful, most successful and fruitful, in the Lord’s own sense of fruit and of success. Let that sentence of the Apostle, or any part of it, be to us merely theory, and we shall know little indeed of the peace and joy of God. So be it not with us, not for an hour more, if it is so now.
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