If anyone’s will is to do God’s will, he will know whether the teaching is from God or whether I am speaking on my own authority. (John 7:17)
Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. (Matthew 6:10)
Not everyone who says to me, “Lord, Lord,” will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my father who is in heaven. (Matthew 7:21)
The essence of salvation is that man’s will be conformed to God’s will. It is only when a man wills, by the exercise of his own free will, to walk in God’s will that he conforms to God’s image. Thus we see that salvation and creation mean one and the same thing. I am no more fully saved than I am fully created. Adam was made in the image of God, but his initial creation did not complete him. He must fall, he must sin, so that the process of creation can continue. He must learn to discern good and evil and choose the good or else never become complete.
In man God re-creates himself. He could not program man to be inherently perfect, having no ability to sin, because then the man would not be “like God” and “made in His image.” No, to be like God, man had to be able to sin if he wanted to, but ultimately choose not to. When man learns to will the will of God perfectly then, and only then, he becomes one with God, just as Jesus and the Father are one.
Jesus is the personification of the Father as a man. Jesus is God become flesh. Jesus is the perfect image of God. Jesus is the goal and summation of creation. Jesus is the pattern of perfection who teaches us to lay aside our own will for God’s will. He teaches us to say no to the things of the world and yes to the things of God.
This is what the reconciliation of man with God is all about. The path of man is one of being born in darkness, that is, of first being a son of Satan. Then the man in darkness begins to perceive light and that he is darkness and not light. Later he learns that light is better than darkness and begins to repent of his darkness, his sins. He learns that Jesus prepared a way to come into that light, and that that way is through Jesus Himself. He learns that the light is really the Kingdom of God. Thus he hears the prophet say, “Repent for the kingdom of God is at hand.” Repentance is the first step one takes when he begins to follow God. But one can repent only when he begins to believe that truth exists and there really is a right way and a wrong way.
Elohim are light bearers who reveal the light to God’s creation by speaking the truth in love.
“The Kingdom of Heaven is not come, even when God’s will is our law. It is come when God’s will is our will. While God’s will is our law, we are but a kind of noble slaves. When his will is our will, we are free children.”
“Is it not rather hard of you then to say that they cannot understand, cannot perceive truth in the high tableland?”
“Is it hard of me? Why? They will get to heaven, which is all they want. And they will understand one day, which is more than they pray for. Till they have done being anxious about their own salvation, we must forgive them that they can contemplate with calmness the damnation of a universe, all the while believing that God is yet more indifferent than they.”
“But who is to say that you are right and they are the unenlightened ones? They could bring the same charge against you, of being unable to understand them.”
“Yes. And so it must remain until the Spirit of God decides the matter…. For this decision can only consist in the enlightenment of souls to see the truth. Till then, the Right must be content to be called the Wrong and – which is far harder – to seem the Wrong. There is no spiritual victory gained by a verbal conquest, or by any kind of torture.”
quotes from David Elginbrod by George MacDonald
