Is God’s Will Limited? 9/29/46
Scripture: Mark 3: 31-35
Text: Mark 3: 35; “Whosoever shall do the will of God, the same is my brother.”
In the first two sermons of the present series, we have pointed out how loosely and, I believe, often erroneously, we allow ourselves to use the phrase “the will of God;” and how this inaccuracy throws us into confusion of thought and torment of feeling.
When a dear one dies, we call it the “will of God” though we have taken every measure we could think of to defeat that “will” and prolong the life. And when disease, sorrow and calamity come, they are sometimes called in resignation the “will of God”, when the opposite of His will is really going on before our eyes. Jesus was doing the will of God when he gladdened peoples lives and healed their bodies in Palestine. His acts of mercy and hope were the accomplishment, not the defeat, of God’s will.
(1) Last Sunday we considered God’s intention, or the “intentional will” of God - the divine plan for men. And we asserted that God’s plan for people is not suffering, untimely death, catastrophe. These, of themselves, belong to the realm of evil. God’s plan is for health, life, harmony.
(2) Today, we turn our thought to the circumstances affecting the will of God, frankly asking the question, “Is God’s Will Limited?” And if so, how does God’s plan operate within limiting circumstances?
(3) Later, we shall consider the ultimate will of God - the final realization of His purposes.
Think again of the crucifixion of Jesus. It was surely the intention of God not that Jesus should be crucified, but rather that he should be followed. The history of man during the past 19 centuries would have been far different if the message of Jesus had been received, understood and realized during all of that time. But when Jesus was faced with such circumstances, brought about by evil, that he was thrust into a choice between running away or going to the cross, then in those circumstances, the cross was the Father’s will. It was in this sense that Jesus prayed, “not my will, but thine be done.”
The ultimate will of God means, in the case of the cross, that God’s original intention, even though frustrated by evil circumstances, will still be reached, through his circumstantial will. Ultimately, no evil is finally able to defeat God. No divinely good value is permanently lost.
Now let us consider what we have called the “circumstantial” will of God.
Remember an earlier illustration - that of the boy who, with his father, had planned a course of training to make him, let us say, an architect. Then comes war. It is not the intention of his father that the son should be a soldier. But under the circumstances of danger to their country, the father’s interim will, limited by the circumstance, is that the son enter the Army, Navy or Air Force. It would only be confusing to speak as if the father’s ideal intention were that the son should spend valuable years of his life in the armed forces.
In the same way, there is an intentional purpose of God for every person’s life. But because of the foolish and evil choices of men, using and misusing their own God-given freedom of will, God’s will is “held up” - frustrated. Because of our oneness with the great human family, evil amongst any members of that family limits God’s intention for good. In these “limiting,” frustrating circumstances, there is a will within the will of God (if we may put it that way) - a “circumstantial” will in the doing of which there is peace of spirit and poise of mind, harmonizing with both the original intention and the ultimate purpose of God. Notice how the circumstantial will of God is expressed both in earthy nature and in a spiritual nature.
Look once again at the cross of Christ. Given the circumstances of evil, it was God’s will that all the evil tragedy of betrayal, capture, insults, crown of thorns, crucifixion, and being left in the blazing sun to die, be endured.
Important, for the welfare of mankind, are the operation of natural laws, given by God as an expression of his will, and not to be set aside, even for his beloved Son. The laws by which nails hold timbers together in building a house are not set aside when nails pierce human flesh. The laws of gravity will carry a bomb load down on the roofs and heads of the godly and of the ungodly alike. If those laws were to be suspended, even for an instant, people would be in that instant utterly helpless. The forces of nature carry out their functions and are not deflected, whether used by the forces of good or of evil. Jesus suffered the same excruciating pain of flesh that tormented the thieves executed with him. He accepted it as a part of the ordering of the universe which was the will of a wise, holy, loving God. There was no charge from his lips, that God was unfair to him to let these laws operate in his case because of his character.
And there is another element within this circumstantial will of God - we may call it a spiritual element. Christ did not just submit to ordeal of crucifixion with passive resignation. He took hold of it and wrested good out of the evil circumstance. That is why the cross does not remain a symbol of capital punishment for criminals, like the hangman’s noose, but becomes rather a symbol of the triumph of the holy purposes of God. By hearing and doing the circumstantial will of God, we open the way as did Christ himself to God’s ultimate triumph.
When he knew that his earthly life was about to close, its ending hastened by a cancer in his body for which his physicians could offer no hope of cure, Dr. Ozora Davis made no complaint. Nor did he withdraw to seclusion to live out his remaining days. Bearing his pain and approaching weakness, Dr. Davis went to the General Council meeting of the Congregational Churches. There, as retiring moderator of our great council, he delivered an address of faith that inspired all who heard it, or heard of it. For the years of his mature life, it had been his mission to inspire and train Christian laymen and ministers, and especially those preparing for the ministry. Stricken by an evil disease, he continued his great mission only the more nobly.
A bishop of the English reformation [Cranmer] had been understandably torn between right and wrong. He had openly declared his belief in the doctrines and policies which led to the Protestant break with the authority of the Pope of Rome. He had also declared that the head of the government was the rightful head of the churches. (I don’t believe it; but he had said he did, and it got him into trouble.) When his queen proved to be a catholic and forced one after another of the church leaders to recant or be burned, he at first stuck by his earlier acknowledgment of her sovereign authority in this sphere. But the merciless queen was bent on his death. She wanted him to recant for the political effect it would have. Recant or not, it was decreed that he be burned at the stake. His best self rose nobly the last day before his execution. He fully renounced his action in renouncing his Protestant viewpoints. When he entered the fire of his execution, he deliberately held the hand that had written that hateful signature in the fire so that it was the first of his body to be consumed. The spirit, not trapped in his body, rose to an inspired height.
In England’s recent history, the male population has been sufficiently decimated, partly by war’s casualties, so that there are fewer men than women. Simple statistics demonstrate that a good many women who would like the vocation of housewife, with a husband and children of their own, are denied this wish, because of circumstances, and their hopes become frustrated. It is evidently God’s intention or purpose that a woman who wishes such a home should have it. She was created with the capacity of body and spirit for the role of wife and mother. But evil circumstances have risen to rob her of God’s intent.
Sublimation of her desire for mating is always possible though it is easier to talk about than to accomplish. (And it is particularly easy for those who don’t have to practice it to talk about its value for others!) But many a British woman must have reasoned with herself in this wise: “I know that the will of God is that I should express my nature as other women do who are happily married. I should have my own home and family. But I do not intend to let the evils of the universe, which seem to stand between me and such a home, get me down. There are no circumstances that God allows that can finally defeat the ultimate purpose which He wills. I can take hold of these circumstances and win something from them which will bring harmony to my own nature, and will contribute to the happiness and service of the world, and will further the kingdom of God.”
And so she gives herself unstintingly to the creation of good music, or to the training and care of other people’s children, or to nursing the sick, or to a physician’s career of healing, or to social service in a needy neighborhood, or in any number of other ways - not temporarily, but as a life-time vocation. The brave women who tackle a disappointing life in that spirit offer a further proof by that attitude that no circumstance can arise that can deny the ultimate will of God for good.
Someone may object that, if it is not God’s intention that there be unforeseen disease, injured babies, frustrated souls, and stark tragedies, then it is a bit casual of God to allow these things to happen if they are not his intention. One can hardly be so bold as to attempt a pat answer to so profound a question. Yet it would seem that we are in the position of little children. Imagine an injured small child looking to his father who loves him and saying, “Daddy why do you let me get hurt?” Suppose little children should hold a mass meeting and pass a resolution against the carelessness of parents, demanding that all furniture have rounded and padded corners, all gravel paths be abolished or polished smooth, all bushes be pruned of thorns, and all claws be drawn from the feet of tame cats! Perhaps such a resolution would be passed unanimously.
Grown people do not look to God and say “Why did you let me scratch my knees.” But we say, “Look at my frustration, my disappointment, my suffering! How can you permit it? How do you expect me to believe you care?” Well, if the little child were able to reason it all out, he would (and probably subconsciously does) say to himself something like this: “There is much that I don’t understand. But I know that my father both loves and cares.”
So it is for me and, I hope, for you. There is much that I do not understand and for which, frankly, I do not have the answer unless or until I pass on to a more mature stage. But because I know God, particularly as he is seen in Jesus Christ, I am sure that he loves me and cares for me and for you.
Some of the answers Jesus gave to questions asked of him are impressive. John the Baptist was convinced that he needed cleansing at the hand of Jesus. Instead of that, Jesus was coming to him for baptism. In answer to his inquiry, Jesus simply said, “Suffer it to be so now.” [Matthew 3: 13-15].
When Peter asked him a question, he said, “What I do thou knowest not now; but thou shalt know hereafter.” [John 13: 7]. To his friends the night before his death, Jesus said, “I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot hear them now.” [John 16: 12]. Even Jesus Christ did not say, “I have explained the world.” What he did say was, “I have overcome the world.” [John 16: 33].
If we can only trust where we do not fully see, walking in the light we do have, we shall wrest from life something fine and splendid. We shall arrive at peace in spirit. We shall serve our fellows and our Lord with courage and joy.
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Delivered in Wisconsin Rapids, September 29, 1946