“Filled with the Knowledge of His Will”
What is the difference between a good student and a not so good student? A good student is not necessarily someone who spends a lot of time studying. Simply spending a lot of time doesn’t get translated into good grades or learning the material well. As one gets higher and higher in education, it becomes increasingly more difficult to master everything--there is just too much material. A good student, therefore, must be efficient in his studies. One cannot be efficient in his studies unless he has a good sense of what is important and what is not so important. In other words, a good student understands the objectives of the teacher and studies accordingly. Yes, in this imperfect world there may be discrepancies between what is really important and what the teacher thanks is important. Since, in this imperfect world, it is the teacher who prepares the exam questions, the student must know what the teacher wants him to learn.
If understanding the teacher’s course objectives is so
important to the success of one’s academic career, how much more crucial is our
understanding of God’s will for our lives! Grades are given by mere mortals.
Considering the subjectivity and the limitations of these mortals, the grades
they give out can hardly be an accurate assessment of the student’s true
knowledge and competence. Yet we put so much value on these grades determined
by these mere mortals because we think our job and our future depend on them!
But what are they compared to the divine, sovereign will of God? He “works all
things according to the counsel of his will” (Eph.
Some economists and investors would pay anything to know the “will” of the stock market if there were one. Some politicians in the world might even kill to know the “will” of national / international affairs if such a thing existed. But there are no such things. No. There is only the sovereign rule of God. So then, is the will of God to be sought only for the maximum return on one’s investments or the furtherance of one’s political ambitions? Is there no greater benefit of religion than fortunetelling? Is God no more than a secret code that we must decipher to make our life as comfortable and easy as possible? Of course not!
“What does it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his soul?” What is at stake here--what God’s will for us is ultimately concerned with--is our eternal destiny--not just some grades that mere mortals give out, not just which investment to make or who will win the next election or which house to buy and when, etc. The ultimate issue of our life is that we are all accountable to God, our Creator. The Final Exam date is appointed for all of us and we must give an account of our life to the Judge of the living and the dead. And those who fail this exam are condemned to eternal damnation.
You realize, then, that the success of our life does not depend on how hard we work and how diligently we live our lives in some abstract sense. The only thing that will matter on that day is the objectives that the divine Professor has set for us in this course called “One Life to Live”. It will not matter how much time we have spent in preparation for our exam; how much material wealth we have amassed and how many decrees we have obtained. It will not matter whether we have done our best to live an upright and moral life. It will ultimately depend on whether we got the answer right to the ultimate question that God has for us; whether we have lived according to the divine objectives God has set for us, not according to our own ideas. Oh, how tragic it will be to have given our best and to realize at the end that all was in vain! Can you imagine having studied hard for days and nights only to discover that nothing you studied appears on the exam? But such will be our lot if we do not understand the will of God for our lives, if we live according to what is right in our own eyes!
So then, what is more important, what can be more urgent for us, than to know the will of God? Is it any wonder that Paul’s prayer for the Colossians, and for all Christians for that matter, was that they “be filled with the knowledge of [God’s] will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding” (v. 9)?
But let us not forget how daring Paul’s prayer is. How could
he pray that mere mortals be filled with the knowledge of God’s will?
There lies an infinite chasm between God and man. What can man do to reach God
and probe into His will? Will another
“In all the other sciences man is the one who of himself takes the first step
in approaching the objective world, in subjecting it to his scrutiny, in
compelling it to submit to his experiments--in a word, man is the one who
proceeds actively to make nature reveal her facts and her laws. In Theology
this relation between the subject and object is reversed. Here it is God who
takes the first step to approach man for the purpose of disclosing His nature,
nay, who creates man in order that He may have a finite mind able to receive
the knowledge of His infinite perfections” (Redemptive History and Biblical
Interpretation, p. 5).
The eternal, infinite God of heaven is far beyond the grasp of the finite man. Unless He discloses Himself to man, man cannot truly know his God. And this chasm between the infinite God and the finite man has been expanded even more, so to speak, by the fall of man in sin. Now the infinite gap between God and man has a dual dimension: not only is the gap between the Creator and creature but it is also between the holy God and the sinful man. So then, how could Paul pray this kind of prayer--that we should be filled with the knowledge of God’s will?
We can be sure that the Christian prayer is not about letting lose one’s unbridled religious imagination. Nor is it an exercise in pushing the limits of one’s positive thinking. The Christian prayer does not seek to impose our will upon the world and God. The ultimate expression of the Christian prayer is, “Not my will but Thy will be done.” In other words, the key to the effectiveness of the Christian prayer lies in its conformity to the will of God, which creates the ultimate reality.
Paul’s prayer is not the wishful thinking of a religious fanatic, stubbornly persisting in the pursuit of his religious ideals, though they are impossible. His prayer, as it is inspired by the Holy Spirit, is a reflection of God’s own will. For God did not leave man in the dark. He revealed Himself to man not only through Nature, which He created, but also, and more directly, through His special revelation in word and deed in history. Over the years God had inspired His servants to speak forth His word and reveal His will to His people. And in this prayer of the inspired Apostle, we have the very will of God revealed to us. It is God’s will that we be filled with the knowledge of His will. And if Paul could be so daring in his prayer, it is only because the grace of God is so vast and so generous to grant it!
So then, all that Paul is praying for in his prayer here are
not some ingenious inventions of a creative religious mind. He is not drumming
up some fancy religious ideals that he thinks will make the world a better
place. His prayer is offered up in the spirit of “Not my will but Thy will be
done!” Seen in this vein, we understand the significance of what Paul says at
the end of our passage: “He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and
transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son…” (v. 13).
Here we find the context, the foundation, of Paul’s petitions. Paul was able to
pray what he prayed because God has delivered us from the domain of darkness
and brought us into the kingdom of His beloved Son. This means that his
petitions reflect the nature, the life, the power, the dynamic, of the
What kind of kingdom is the
It is a
That is what it is like to be under Satan’s cruel tyranny. Satan knows nothing of love. His all-consuming purpose in life, his only will, is to destroy as many people as possible, to bring them down with him to hell to share in his inescapable and miserable fate. If he keeps the people content and even happy with the treasures of the world, it is not because he loves them and cares for them; it is only to keep them away from the true happiness that is found only in God, to keep them oblivious to the coming judgment for those who reject the gospel of the kingdom of God.
The kingdom of darkness is a kingdom of slavery and
condemnation. There is no inheritance in that kingdom except God’s wrath; no
reward except the bitter gall of eternal pain in hell. Yet we could not save
ourselves; indeed, we did not want to save ourselves. For we
were children of darkness. And as such, we loved the darkness rather
than the light because our deeds were evil (John
But God in His amazing grace delivered us from the domain of
darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of His beloved Son. We could not do
it ourselves. God had to do it and God did it through His Son. The
What is more, this
that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will;
in all spiritual wisdom and understanding;
to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him;
bearing fruit in every good work;
increasing in the knowledge of God;
to be strengthened with all power;
according to his glorious might--God’s glorious might;
for all endurance and
patience with joy….
Do you see? In this
What is more, it is God’s will that you be strengthened with
all power--not just some power but all power; not according to any
measure of human strength but according to God’s glorious power! This
doesn’t mean that we will have the Superman-like brute force to lift up trucks
and stop trains! Paul goes on to say that all the power that God supplies is
unto all patience and longsuffering with joyfulness, giving thanks to the
Father (vv. 11, 12). This, because we live in the
How is the power of God in us demonstrated in this life? By
removing the troubles of the world from our lives? They will be, someday,
forever. But not now. For now, in this kingdom of
grace, our victory is demonstrated through our patient enduring of our troubles
with joy and thanksgiving (v. 12). Removing the troubles--simply keeping them at
bay, since they will never go away in this life--is not overcoming them. How
can we paralyze and immobilize and incapacitate and disable them when they
constantly try to make us deny our faith and become ashamed of the gospel for
the fear of men? We do that through all patience and longsuffering with joy,
giving thanks to the Father, in the midst of our trials and persecution when
they are applying the pressure on us with all their might. In so doing, we
render them ineffective and powerless over us. As we read in Josh.
God’s
will for you in the kingdom of God’s abundant grace is that you walk in a
manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him, bearing fruit in every
good work, increasing in the knowledge of God. Compare this to your
former life in the kingdom of darkness. No matter how hard you worked, the
verdict was always, “Vanity of vanities! All is vanity!” All your efforts were
wasted in the work of the flesh, earning nothing but God’s wrath and judgment.
But now, having been transferred to the
This is God’s will for you. His will for us is for good and not for evil. We must not forget this even when we go through the valley of the shadow of death. God wants us to be filled with the knowledge of His will. We have the blessing and privilege to be filled with the knowledge of God’s will.
What is the most common challenge that teachers face? Many students just want to know the answers; they are not interested in learning the process through which they arrive at those answers. They just want to finish their assignments as quickly as possible by filling in the blanks; tragically, in so doing, they end up not learning anything--all the intricate and beautiful innerworkings of Nature and mathematics, or whatever the subject happens to be, that cause us to wonder and marvel--the real joy of learning.
Many are like the uninterested students in their relationship with God. They just want to find out which school they should apply to, which job offer to take, which person to marry, which house to buy, which investment to make, etc. God is not much more than a divine Counselor to help them make the “right” decisions, by which they mean the path of least resistance and trouble. And they want the counseling sessions to be as short as possible and right to the point so they can make the decision with the help of God and quickly move on. But move on to what? From God? To what? In the classrooms of this world, teacher are but assistants and helps for the student to acquire knowledge. But in the classroom of life, where God is the Professor, we realize that God Himself is the ultimate subject of our study. All the glories and beauties of His infinite mind and majesty are open to us for us to behold, to admire, to enjoy and to possess.
Having prayed that we be filled with the knowledge of God’s will, Paul spells out why: “so as to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord” (v. 10). Do you see how personal this whole arrangement is between God and His people? God is not just a crystal ball that we look into for easy answers so we won’t have to make mistakes and suffer the consequences. To know the will of God is to know God’s heart, to know His character. The purpose of knowing God’s will, therefore, cannot be just to get easy answers about our future; it is to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord.
This thought is described in Jesus’ words to His disciples: “No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you” (John 15:15). What is the difference between servants and friends? Servants do not care about what their master is thinking: they just do whatever they are told, no more, no less. Masters, too, do not confer with their servants and confide in them. But what about friends? Friendship is characterized by mutual love, sharing and empathy. Friends confide in one another and confer with one another.
Jesus says that He will no longer call His people servants
but His friends. Here in Jesus’ words we sense a redemptive historical,
epochal, transition. The people of God up to this point, up to the coming of
Jesus Christ, have known God only as servants, not fully knowing the mind and
heart of their Master and Lord. A veil remained over their eyes, as it were. But
now, in Jesus Christ, the final and full revelation of God has been given. The
veil is taken away through the appearance of Christ. So completely and fully
has God disclosed His will through His Son that we can know God as our dear
Friend! And God Himself is not ashamed to call us His friends! How many people
in the Old Testament had the privilege to be called God’s friend? Abraham?
Moses? Maybe Enoch, too? But now, all of God’s
people are called His friends--each and everyone of
you who have placed your faith in Christ Jesus! Surely, this is not just so
that you will get some easy answers about your future! No! This is for you to
be filled with the knowledge of God’s will--to know the heart and mind of God;
to see things eye to eye with God! So then, how can we be content with the bare
minimum in our knowledge of God? How can our pursuit of the knowledge of God be
at the bottom of our priority list?
Oh, let us strive to know more deeply, more fully, the will of our God! Let us strive to be filled with the knowledge of God’s will that we may think, talk and act with the very nobility and dignity of God Himself--until that day when God’s will and our will will be so completely united that His will will be our will and our delight; that there won’t be any awkwardness in our relationship with God because of our wayward will and desires! Oh, Lord, come quickly! Amen.
© Copyright 2006 by Jeong Woo "James" Lee
All Rights Reserved.