Friday, March 18, 2022

John 5:30 (Jesus Sought the Will of God)

John 5:30
By Myself I can do nothing; I judge only as I hear, and My judgment is just, for I seek not to please Myself but Him who sent Me.

We, as believers, are called to imitate Christ. Paul writes this command to God's children, "Follow God’s example, therefore, as dearly loved children and walk in the way of love, just as Christ loved us and gave Himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God," (Ephesians 5:1-2). If we are to be good followers of God and Christ, able to offer ourselves as living sacrifices (Romans 12:1), then we should know what it is Christ did on earth. When we know what Christ did on earth and what it would mean for us to imitate that, then we can best follow God's example and walk in His way.

An interesting thing Jesus did that is perhaps not well known (even by some believers) is that Jesus acted according to the will of God and never (yes NEVER) according to His own will. I know that is a bold claim (and a confusing one as Jesus on earth was God in the flesh). As is the case with making any claim from Scripture, the best way to illustrate this claim is to point to the Word of God (the Bible). Take a look at what Jesus says to some unbelievers in the gospel of John in chapter 6 from verses 35 to 39:

Then Jesus declared, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to Me will never go hungry, and whoever believes in Me will never be thirsty. But as I told you, you have seen Me and still you do not believe. All those the Father gives Me will come to Me, and whoever comes to Me I will never drive away. For I have come down from heaven not to do My will but to do the will of Him who sent Me. And this is the will of Him who sent Me, that I shall lose none of all those He has given Me, but raise them up at the last day.

In Jesus' own words He says He did not come to do His own will but the will of His Father (John 6:38). Remember that Jesus lived a perfect life and that He never lied about anything (1 Peter 2:22). Since this is true, this means Jesus always acted based on His Father's desires and not His own. We see an example of this, when Jesus went off into the desert, fasted for forty days and was hungry (Matthew 4:1-2). As a man, who being in flesh would also have the desires of the flesh (Romans 13:14), Jesus' hunger led Him to naturally desire to eat food. The devil then came to Him and tempted Him to command His creation to make itself into bread so that it could satisfy His hunger, but Jesus replied "It is written: ‘Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God," (Matthew 4:4). Jesus was hungry and could have satisfied his own will, but God's will was for Him to fast (Matthew 4:1). In Jesus quoting Deuteronomy chapter 8 verse 3 as His response to the devil's temptation, Jesus rejected His own desire to eat food and instead sought God's will. 
"We do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our
weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way,
just as we are—yet He did not sin," (Hebrews 4:15).
In plenty of other moments in the gospels we see Jesus saying that He did not do His own will but sought the will of God. Jesus described His food (His daily sustenance) as doing the will of God and finishing God's work, (John 4:34). Another time, while Jesus was rebuking the Pharisees in the Temple, He said to them "By Myself I can do nothing; I judge only as I hear, and My judgment is just, for I seek not to please Myself but Him who sent Me," (John 5:30). Later on in Jesus' life, while He was preaching to a large crowd days before His crucifixion, He became troubled and did not know what He should say next. He said, "Now My soul is troubled, and what shall I say? ‘Father, save Me from this hour’? No, it was for this very reason I came to this hour. Father, glorify Your name!” (John 12:27-28). He desired to be kept safe from His enemies that would kill Him, but He knew that the will of God was for Him to die and for God's name to be glorified through His death. It is written, "It was the LORD’s will to crush Him and cause Him to suffer, and though the LORD makes His life an offering for sin, He will see His offspring and prolong His days, and the will of the LORD will prosper in His hand," (Isaiah 53:10). This is why Jesus' prayer before His arrest is so astonishing and well known, because He prayed "Abba, Father! Everything is possible for You. Take this cup from Me. Yet not what I will, but what You will," (Mark 14:36).

Jesus submitted to the will of His Father in heaven, and we, if we are to be good imitators of Christ, must do the same. How do we know what the will of our Father is? We will know God's will through the renewing of our minds. Paul writes, "Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—His good, pleasing and perfect will," (Romans 12:2). Paul says our minds are "being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator," who is God (Colossians 3:10). We gain knowledge of God by studying His words. This is why Paul writes, "Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who does not need to be ashamed and who correctly handles the Word of Truth," (2 Timothy 2:15).

It may seem too clear cut to say that all we need to understand God's will for our lives is to study our Bibles. Sometimes we may think that there might be something else we require to truly understand God's will; something God could tell us that He hasn't already, or something secret we might hear from God outside of the Bible. In contrast to this, Scripture says, "The secret things belong to the LORD our God, but the things revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may follow all the words of this law," (Deuteronomy 29:29), that law being what Jesus Himself fulfilled in order to do God's will (Matthew 5:17). 
Jesus read and knew the Scriptures well (Matthew 22:31), and He knew
what they meant concerning the fulfillment of God's will (Luke 4:17-21).
Now, we might really want extra secret revelation from God to help us understand what God's will is for us, but we must remember that even Jesus on earth had many things from God kept secret from Him. On speaking about the day when Jesus Himself would return to earth, He said He did not know when that day would be (Mark 13:32). We would think that certainly Jesus on earth would have knowledge concerning the specifics of when He would fulfill end-times prophecies, and yet that knowledge was kept secret from Him. All Jesus had on earth to know how He could accomplish the will of God was all that was revealed to Him. Since Jesus on earth did not need any secret things from the Lord in order to understand how to do the will of His Father, then certainly we do not need anything outside of what God has revealed to us to test, approve and know what God's will is.

If we want to be good followers of God walking in the ways of love as Christ did, then we must seek not our own will but the will of God.

Sources
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