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Philippians 2:12-13:
12Wherefore, my beloved, as ye have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.
13For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure.
By being willing yourself to do what God wills you to do, you increase in the knowledge of God; not in barren book-knowledge, but in that living soul-knowledge of your God, which itself is eternal life.
This springs from all sorts of causes, but not least from the fact that your willingness is not born from yourself, but is wrought in you by God. He it is, writes the Apostle (Philippians 2:13), "who worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure." First therefore the willing, and only afterward the carrying out; and although you yourself work this whole will-motion and will-action in your soul, yet it is God Who works them in you.
This distinction, as is self-evident must be made, otherwise your own willingness would be mere semblance, and in good works God's child would be merely a puppet mechanically moved into action. This distinction therefore must be sharply defined and clearly grasped. Your own self wills, not because it wills of itself, but because God so works within, that, truly and actually it is you yourself who wills thus and not otherwise.
It takes some exertion on your part to see this clearly, and you may readily be inclined to accept the advice that someone may give you, not to weary yourself with all these distinctions; but if you heed this advice of spiritual sloth, you are not fair to yourself.
Ask your physician how many distinctions he has to make in a single group of nerves; or how many varieties of disease-germs he observes in the blood.
And is it fitting, that man should exert himself so greatly in behalf of the body that perishes, and not in behalf of the soul which is so much more precious? And yet, such is the prevailing tendency. Almost every one has some sort of manual, illustrated if possible, from which to learn how the body is constructed; but no one reads about the soul. With the great mass of people all investigation and study of the soul is wanting.
And then a man speaks at random about his soul, his will, his understanding, himself—it is all chaotic; and in this way he remains till death a stranger to his own inner self. He can talk about everything else. He knows his house, his village, his town, and frequently even foreign lands, but the key to the chambers and vaulted corridors of his own soul, he never so much as handles. And since the penalty for the lack of self-knowledge is a very meagre knowledge of God, one lessens thereby his own part in that eternal life which far excels all else.
We therefore urgently exhort, that the above distinction be carefully considered.
When a martyr says: "I will die for the Name of the Lord Jesus," he must truly will to do this himself; and then this willingness to die for Jesus must be, and must continue to be, an act of his very own. But that his ego thus wills it, does not come from himself by nature, but is wrought in his own self by God.
An illustration here may not be out of place, and you can represent this to yourself most vividly when you think of a ship.
At the stern of that ship is a rudder, and attached to this rudder is the tiller, and this is held by the hand of the helmsman.
Should there be no steering when at sea, this boat moves under the action of the wind and waves, then when the ship turns the rudder turns, and when the rudder turns the tiller turns, and with it the hand and the arm of the man at the helm moves involuntarily back and forth.
Behold the image of a will-less man.
He is adrift upon the sea of life. As wind and waves drive, so he is driven along, under influences from without and from within—of circumstances, of his passion. And as life makes him go, now in this direction, now in that, so he goes; and so turns the rudder in his inward purpose, and so turns the tiller and the hand at the helm; i.e., his will.
The will-less one!
But it is altogether different when there is steerage in the ship. Then the man at the helm keeps the course. He knows where he wants to go. And when wind and wave would drive him out of his course, he works against them. Then his hand grasps the tiller firmly, he turns it, and therewith the rudder itself, against wind and wave. And the ship that responds to the helm, cuts through the waves, not as tide and wind would direct it, but as the helmsman wills.
Such is the man of character, the man with will-perception and will-power, who does not drift, but steers.
But there is still a third point.
On the bridge of the ship, far away from the helm, stands the captain, and he has placed a helmsman at the tiller. Now the captain on the bridge must know what course the ship must take. On the bridge he stands much higher, and therefore knows far better how the ship must point to the right or to the left. And so the helmsman has but this single duty, namely, that he listen to what the captain on the bridge commands, and that he carries out those orders.
Applied to the soul, God is this Captain on the bridge, and we are the man at the helm. And if, with the tiller of the small boat of our soul in hand, we but will what God wills, and so turn the helm to right or left as God commands, then no danger need be feared, and presently through wind and wave the little boat enters safely the desired haven.
If this goes on through the whole of life, we grow accustomed to it; we know at length by anticipation, whether the Captain on the bridge will command left or right. Thus, of ourselves we come to know God's will more and more. And this knowledge of God brings us nearer to the haven of salvation,—to eternal life.
Now to the matter in hand.
When God so works in upon our self that at length we will what God wills, the process is not external but internal.
It is not, that we are down here on earth, and that, far away from us, and high above us, God is enthroned in the heavens, and that from this infinite distance, God imparts a mechanical impulse to our soul. No, in order to do this, God enters into us.
To a certain extent this is even the case with the captain on the bridge, who calls out to the mate at the helm.
What is it to call?
He who calls makes air-waves vibrate. The vibrations extend themselves to the spot where the man at the helm stands. This vibrating air-wave enters into the ear of the mate and touches the nerve of his hearing. This auditory nerve carries the motions over into his brain. Thus there is direct, continuous motion, which from the captain penetrates to the brain of the mate.
And thus the figure illustrates the point.
But here it is yet stronger.
When God works upon our soul, and within it upon us, He is the omnipresent One, Who is high above in heaven, and yet close by us. And even "close by" is still too weak, because God is in every one of us. There is no part in our being where God is not present.
This is so with all men. But when God has dealings with one of His children this internal presence is still far closer and more intimate, for then He dwells in such a one by His Holy Spirit. If now you believe that this Holy Spirit is Himself God, then you understand how God Himself indwells in His child, has His Throne in the inmost hidden part of His child's being, and thus, not from afar, but within the sanctuary of His child's own person has fellowship with its self.
There God works upon this self. He labors on it day and night, even, when we know nothing of it. He is our Sculptor, who carves the Image of Himself in our soul, and causes us ever more and more to resemble His own Being.
Thus He transforms our self and our will.
And so it is God Who works in us, and on our will, by transforming the self that wills.
Taken in this way, it becomes a steady, a holy entering in of God's will into our will, thanks to the refining, purifying and transforming of this self.
It is a work which for the most part goes on unobserved within us, so tenderly and gently does God's hand conduct this inner work. Yet the process is not always so. Sometimes the sculptor is forced to strike off a piece of the marble, so that it crashes and splits and splinters. These are the periods of violent conflict within, when everything trembles and reverberates with moral shocks.
But whether gently, or violently, it is ever the process of sculpturing. And this Sculptor does not work after a model which He puts before Him, but is Himself the Model. He forms us after His own Image.
So this Divine labor in the realm of our will brings us into ever closer likeness to this Image of God. And this continuous process of being ever more nearly transformed after the Image of God, what else is this, than that God's will enters ever more deeply into us? And what is this ever more deeply entering in of God's will into our will, but an ever better understanding of God, a better knowledge of Him, an ever clearer insight into His will and purpose?
So you see that there is still an entirely different way of learning to know God from learning to know Him through books or sermons.
Later on, we will show why also this knowledge of God from books and sermons is absolutely indispensable. For the moment let it rest. The need is great and pressing that the eyes of many, that are now closed against seeing God's work in the inner life of the soul, be opened to see the beauty and the glory of it.
Without entering into the reality of the life of the soul and of God's work therein, there is no strength, no outshining of power, and no constructive results of this power in the life. It is then a dead Church which only sends out sounds when it deems that it sings psalms unto God. Then the world pushes us aside, and not we the world.
Attention must therefore be concentrated upon the will, upon willingness, upon the self that wills, and upon God Who in the self works the willing.
For feeling, imagination and heroic courage, the poets prayed in behalf of their songs.
For feeling, will-power and heroic courage, every child of God supplicates his Father.
* * * * * * *This devotional classic offers 110 meditations on a single thought from Psalm 73: "As for me, it is good to be near to God." The author states, "The fellowship of being near unto God must become reality ... it must permeate and give color to our feeling, our perceptions, our sensations, our thinking, our imagining, our willing, our acting, our speaking. It must not stand as a foreign factor in our life, but it must be the passion that breathes throughout our whole existence."
The meditations reflect the blending of spiritual vigor with doctrinal loyalty so consistently expressed in the life of Abraham Kuyper. These are devotions with true substance, avoiding the extremes about which Kuyper adds a word of caution: "Stress in creedal confession, without drinking from the Living Fountain, runs dry in barren orthodoxy, just as truly as spiritual emotion, without clearness in confessional standards, makes one sink in the bog of sickly mysticism."
Abraham Kuyper (1837-1920) was a Dutch political leader and Calvinist theologian. Elected to parliament in 1874, he became Prime Minister in 1901 and served in that capacity until 1905. As a theologian, he revived a systematic, orthodox Calvinism. He founded the Free Reformed Church and the Free University of Amsterdam. His other works include Principles of Sacred Theology, Lectures on Calvinism, and The Work of the Holy Spirit
Further information about Abraham Kuyper's life can be seen in the translator's "Biographical Note"; further information about To Be Near Unto God can be Abraham Kuyper's "Preface" to that book.
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