Ephesians 2:10 “For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.”
There is one more aspect regarding the will of God that I must mention, which is God’s will regarding His saints. We have already seen that God has His perfect will and that He has His permissible will. We have also already established that based on God’s foreknowledge of His saints that He predestines them for salvation. But it does not end there, for based on God’s foreknowledge of His saints He also knows which will serve Him wholeheartedly and which will not. In other words God knows our potential. And so based on that knowledge God then predestines the lives of each one of His saints accordingly. He does that by preparing specific good works for each of His saints to complete while they are on the earth. These good works form part of God’s perfect will for each one of our lives. The Holy Spirit through the apostle Paul teaches us this truth in the passage of scripture quoted above. But we have also seen that God does not create robots. And so even though God has already prepared good works for each of us to complete while on the earth, this does not mean that we will automatically walk in those good works. Notice that the scripture says that we “should” walk in those good works, not that we “would” walk in them. In other words in this life our free will still reigns supreme, and so God will not override the free will of His saints. Nevertheless to those who seek His will for their lives, God reveals His will to them. Sadly many of the Lord’s saints never take the step to find out His will for their lives. Those who do seek His will however, and then are obedient to do His will are the ones who walk in the perfect will of God. All saints who choose not to walk in God’s perfect will however, automatically then walk in His permissible will. For the saint who completes God’s perfect will for their lives, they can expect God’s perfect rewards, whereas for the saint who chooses to walk in God’s permissible will, it is obvious that they cannot expect to receive God’s perfect rewards. And so we see that even among His saints, that in this life the will of man reigns supreme in the makeup of man. For it is as an act of our free will that we choose to walk in God’s perfect will or to walk in His permissible will.
Michael E.B. Maher
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