“For God is the One working in you, both to wish and to work, on behalf of His good pleasure” (Philippians 2:13).
The translation of this verse generally results in the Greek word thelo being translated as “to will” rather than “to wish”, but the correct interpretation is “wish” or “desire”; the Greek boule denotes “will” as a result of intention and deliberation, whereas thelo denotes the act of wishing. Almost everywhere in the New Testament that the word “will” is used, it should be “wish”; as for example “Thy will be done” is really “Thy wish be done”; and in Ephesians 1:11 “God works all things after the counsel of His own wish” – not will. After all, if God wills something then nothing can stand in the way of His will.
Christians these days talk of “God’s permissive will”, a terrible expression, as though God’s will, and not man’s, is involved in man’s decisions. That expression could be applied to Adam’s rebellion because God allowed Adam to make up his own mind; to do otherwise would be to rob him of his free will and mean that man was not made in God’s image after all.
What God desires, and His purpose in creating man in His own image, is for man to exercise his will in favour of God’s desires, not his own; to choose of his own free will to follow God’s clearly stated wishes contained in the Holy Scriptures.
The supreme purpose in God’s gift of faith to those who are called and chosen is to make men like God so that they will act like God. Faith in Christ was never intended to be an end in itself; it is meant to be an incarnation of Christ in man, in the same way that Christ was an incarnation of God; perhaps not to the same degree of perfection and holiness, given the sin that infects the human race, but to the extent that the disposition to sin will be overcome by the nature of Christ within.
Life in this world is a preparation for death and the only way to prepare for death is to give up your life in this world to the Lordship of Christ.
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