Now, Back to Our List of Four Pertinent Things I listed above a number of things pertinent to the will of the Father. Let us recall them again. I said (1) that the will of God is absolute and has no particular relevance to any human condition or situation. This must follow from the fact that his will is exclusively concerned with receiving his children through the resurrection. His focus is on the resurrection and Jesus revealed that this only is his holy will for eternity. He wants this and nothing but this. (2) follows by pure reason. He is not concerned with human activity and with making changes in society, as the churchmen think. The Prodigal’s father concerned himself not a whit with the affairs of the far country where his straying son resided, nor with the circumstances of his son’s life. He considered him to be dead, lost and therefore beyond his concerns. (3) tells us that only individuals can do the will of God as they respond to the initiative of Jesus. That is because it is exclusively a matter of the individual’s decision to love God and go to him in the wake of Jesus. This is individualism to perfection, for there is absolutely no group that can make such a decision. Absolutely everything depends upon the individual will, for us as it did for Jesus. Finally, it is also absolute (4) in that it is invariant across the full span of time and space in the history of man. The Father wants nothing else, has never wanted anything else, and will never want anything else of human beings on earth or anywhere else than this: Come home! That’s his only will, first manifested on the earth by Jesus so that the rule of the Father became active on the earth. This is the Gospel of the Kingdom. Do you ask, If this is all the Father ever wanted, then why did he wait until the time of Jesus to make his will known to mankind when intelligence amongst man had endured for thousands of years before? This is a very good question at this point, and here is the answer: There is a point of view other than our temporal one. It is the view of the Eternal One, who from the beginning was planning for the rescue of his servants and children from the futility of creation so as to join them to his Eternal Glory. From His perspective -- that of the Father in heaven -- salvation history is as old as creation. It has always been in His purpose. He has altered nothing, from the beginning until now, so that it can truly be termed an eternal salvation -- from eternity to eternity! The critical juncture between the temporal and the eternal became a possibility only after long ages of the creators evolutionary work. Then the race of men reached an age of accountability before their creator. They had finally eaten from the tree of knowledge and were capable of making the critical decision that is fundamental to individual, eternal salvation. This experience in the race is prefigured by Adam when he ate the forbidden fruit. Our race had attained adolescence and was ready for the facts of life. So Jesus came and fully revealed the salvation of God.
Posted on: Mon, 21 Oct 2013 14:45:09 +0000
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