God’s Will: The Starting Point and Guarantee of All.

By A.W. Pink

From His book, The Satisfaction of Christ.

“What follows may be deemed to savor of metaphysics, yet do we feel it to

be called for in view of modem slanderers of God. Even some who are

regarded as quite orthodox have drawn a broad distinction, almost a gulf,

between the nature of God and the will of God, failing to perceive that

God’s will is an essential part of His nature. Some have descended so low

as to affirm there is in the very nature of things a standard of right which

exists independently and apart from God, according to which He Himself

acts, must act. Such a conception is not only degrading, but blasphemous.

Others who have not adopted this insulting figment, have, nevertheless,

been injuriously infected by it, and suppose that God’s nature, as quite

distinct from His will, is what determines His actions.

There is nothing determined by the nature of God which is not determined

by the will of God. “When we affirm that God is holy, we do not mean that

He makes right right, by simply willing it, but that He wills it because it is

right. There must be, therefore, some absolute standard of righteousness”

— is how a so-called Bible teacher has recently expressed himself. Even if

it be said that the “absolute standard of righteousness” is the Divine nature,

if by this be meant God’s nature as separate from His determining will, the

expression is, to say the least, faulty and misleading. The will of God is an

essential part of His nature, and therefore His will is “the absolute standard

of right.” The will of God is not something related, dependent and

determined; but is sovereign, imperial, regnant.

God Himself is the ultimate and absolute standard of righteousness. Man is

commanded to recognize a standard of righteousness outside of and above

himself, and his will and conduct must conform thereto. That standard of

righteousness is the revealed will of God. But shall we reason from this

that God also recognizes a standard of righteousness to which His will

must be conformed, a standard which makes right right, and right being

made right, He wills it because it is right? No, indeed. The truth is, that we

best discover what the nature of God requires Him to do, by noting what

He, by His will, actually does. When God says, “I will have mercy on

whom I will have mercy” (<450915>Romans 9:15), He assuredly sets before us

His will, in its utmost freedom and sovereignty. But this supreme act of

sovereign grace is the act of God Himself, an act into which the whole

nature of God (His will being included in that nature) moved Him.”

Don’t look for Pink’s Piece with the Title above, as that is something I gave to it. The Orginal is found in his book, The Satisfaction of Christ: Studies in the Atonement. Here are some very deep thoughts that are set forth quite plainly. If one masters what Pink here makes evident, that God’s Will is supreme, and that God is subject to none, there is hope for grasping the core and periphery of Holy Scripture. The Sovereignty of God is the most important teaching in the Bible.