I Delight to Do Your Will

"I delight to do Your will, O my God; Your Law is within my heart." (Psalm 40:8)

Henry Scougal wrote a book in the 1600's titled The Life of God in the Soul of Man. In the beginning of the book he beautifully expresses the divine nature that is in the Lord Jesus which is the nature we partake of in our union with Him. "By this, love is perfected with us, so that we may have confidence in the day of judgment; because as He is, so also are we in this world" (1 John 4:17, emphasis added).

Here is what Scougal wrote:

"When we have said all that we can, the secret mysteries of a new nature and divine life can never be sufficiently expressed; language and words cannot reach them; nor can they be truly understood but by those souls that are enkindled within, and awakened unto the sense and relish of spiritual things: 'There is a spirit in man; and the inspiration of the Almighty giveth this understanding.'

"The power and life of religion may be better expressed in actions than in words; because actions are more lively things, and do better represent the inward principle whence they proceed; and, therefore, we may take the best measure of those gracious endowments from the deportment of those in whom they reside; especially as they are perfectly exemplified in the holy life of our blessed Saviour, a main part of whose business in this world was to teach, by his practice, what he did require of others, and to make his own conversation an exact resemblance of those unparalleled rules which he prescribed; so that if ever true goodness was visible to mortal eyes, it was then, when his presence did beautify and illustrate this lower world.

"That sincere and devout affection wherewith his blessed soul did constantly burn towards his heavenly Father, did express itself in an entire resignation to his will; it was his very meat to do the will, and finish the work of him that sent him.

"This was the exercise of his childhood, and the constant employment of his riper age. He spared no travel or pains while he was about his Father’s business, but took such infinite content and satisfaction in the performance of it, that when, being faint and weary with his journey, he rested himself on Jacob’s well, and entreated water of the Samaritan woman. The success of his conference with her, and the accession that was made to the kingdom of God, filled his mind with such delight, as seemed to have redounded to his very body, refreshing his spirits, and making him forget the thirst whereof he complained before, and refuse the meat which he had sent his disciples to buy. Nor was he less patient and submissive in suffering the will of God, than diligent in the doing of it.

"He endured the sharpest afflictions and extremist miseries that ever were inflicted on any mortal, without repining thought, or discontented word; for though he was far from a stupid insensibility, or a fantastic or stoical obstinacy, and had as quick a sense of pain as other men, and the deepest apprehension of what he was to suffer in his soul, as his bloody sweat, and the sore amazement and sorrow which he professed, do abundantly declare, yet did he entirely submit to that severe disposition of providence, and willingly acquiesced in it.

"And he prayed to God, that 'if it were possible,' or, as one of the Evangelists hath it, 'if he were willing, that cup might be removed'; yet he gently added, 'nevertheless, not my will, but thine be done.' Of what strange importance are the expressions (John 12:27) where he first acknowledgeth the anguish of his spirit, 'Now is my soul troubled,' which would seem to produce a kind of demur, 'and what shall I say'; and then he goes on to deprecate his sufferings, 'Father, save me from this hour'; which he had no sooner uttered, but he doth, as it were, on second thoughts, recall it in these words, 'but for this cause came I into the world'; and concludes, 'Father, glorify thy name.'

"Now, we must not look on this as any levity, or blameable weakness in the blessed Jesus: he knew all along what he was to suffer, and did most resolutely undergo it; but it shows us the inconceivable weight and pressure that he was to bear, which, being so afflicting, and contrary to nature, he could not think of without terror; yet considering the will of God, and the glory which was to redound from him thence, he was not only content, but desirous to suffer it.

"Another instance of his love to God was his delight in conversing with him by prayer, which made him frequently retire himself from the world, and, with the greatest devotion and pleasure, spend whole nights in that heavenly exercise, though he had not sins to confess, and but few secular interests to pray for; which, alas! are almost the only things that are wont to drive us to our devotions. Nay, we may say his whole life was a kind of prayer; a constant course of communion with God: if the sacrifice was not always offering, yet was the fire still kept alive; nor was ever the blessed Jesus surprised with that dullness, or tepidity of spirit, which we must many times wrestle with before we can be fit for the exercise of devotion.

"In the second place, I should speak of his love and charity toward all men; but he who would express it, must transcribe the history of the gospel, and comment upon it; for scarce any thing is recorded to have been done or spoken by him, which was not designed for the good and advantage of some one or other. All his miraculous works were instances of his goodness as well as his power; and they benefited those on whom they were wrought, as well as they amazed the beholders. His charity was not confined to his kindred or relations; nor was all his kindness swallowed up in the endearment of that peculiar friendship which he carried toward his beloved disciple; but every one was his friend who obeyed his holy commands (John 15:14). And whosoever did the will of his Father, the same was to him as his brother, sister, and mother.

"Never was any unwelcome to him who came with an honest intention, nor did he deny any request which tended to the good of those that asked it; so that what was spoken of that Roman emperor, who, for his goodness, was called the darling of mankind, was really performed by him, that never any departed from him with a heavy countenance, except that rich youth (Mark 10), who was sorry to hear that the kingdom of heaven stood at so high a rate, and that he could not save his soul and his money too. And certainly it troubled our Saviour, to see that when a price was in his hand to get wisdom, yet he had no heart to it. The ingenuity [ingenuousness] that appeared in his first address had already procured some kindness for him; for it is said, 'and Jesus, beholding him, loved him': but must he, for his sake, cut out a new way to heaven, and alter the nature of things, which make it impossible that a covetous man should be happy?

"And what shall I speak of his meekness, who could encounter the monstrous ingratitude and dissimulation of that miscreant who betrayed him, in no harsher terms than these, 'Judas, betrayest thou the Son of man with a kiss?' What farther evidence could we desire of his fervent and unbounded charity, than that he willingly laid down his life even for his most bitter enemies; and mingling his prayers with his blood, besought the Father that his death might not be laid to their charge, but might become the means of eternal life to those very persons who procured it?

"The third branch of the divine life is purity, which, as I said consists in a neglect of worldly enjoyment accommodations, in a resolute enduring of all such troubles as we meet with in doing of our duty.

"Now surely, if ever any person was wholly dead to all the pleasures of the natural life, it was the blessed Jesus, who seldom tasted them when they came in his way; but never stepped out of his road to seek them. Though he allowed others the comforts of wedlock, and honoured marriage with his presence, yet he chose the severity of a virgin life, and never knew the nuptial bed: and though at the same time he supplied the want of wine with a miracle, yet he would not work one for the relief of his own hunger in the wilderness; so gracious and divine was the temper of his soul, in allowing to others such lawful gratifications as himself thought good to abstain from, and supplying not only their more extreme and pressing necessities, but also their smaller and less considerable wants.

"We many times hear of our Saviour’s sighs, and groans, and tears; but never that he laughed, and but once that he rejoiced in spirit: so that through his whole life, he did exactly answer that character given of him by the prophet of old, that he was 'a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.'

"Nor were the troubles and disaccommodations of his life other than matters of choice; for never did there any appear on the stage of the world with greater advantages to have raised himself to the highest secular felicity. He who would bring together such a prodigious number of fishes into his disciples’ net, and, at another time, receive that tribute from a fish which he was to pay to the temple, might easily have made himself the richest person in the world; nay, without any money, he could have maintained an army powerful enough to have justled Caesar out of his throne, having oftener than once fed several thousands with a few loaves and small fishes; but, to shew how small esteem he had of all the enjoyments in the world, he chose to live in so poor and mean a condition, that 'though the foxes had holes, and the birds of the air had nests, yet he, who was Lord and heir of all things, had not whereon to lay his head.'

"He did not frequent the courts of princes, nor affect the acquaintance or converse of great ones; but, being reputed the son of a carpenter, he had fishermen, and such other poor people for his companions, and lived at such a rate as suited with the meanness of that condition.

"And thus I am brought unawares to speak of his humility, the last branch of the divine life; wherein he was a most eminent pattern to us, that we might 'learn of him to be meek and lowly in heart.' I shall not now speak of that infinite condescension of the eternal Son of God, in taking our nature upon him, but only reflect on our Saviour’s lowly and humble deportment while he was in the world.

"He had none of those sins and imperfections which may justly humble the best of men; but he was so entirely swallowed up with a deep sense of the infinite perfections of God, that he appeared as nothing in his own eyes; I mean so far as he was a creature. He considered those eminent perfections which shined in his blessed soul, not as his own, but the gifts of God; and therefore assumed nothing to himself for them, but, with the profoundest humility, renounced all pretenses to them.

"Hence did he refuse that ordinary compellation of good master, when addressed to his human nature, by one who, it seems, was ignorant of his divinity: 'Why callest thou me good? there is none good but God only'; as if he had said, the goodness of any creature, and such only thou takest me to be, is not worthy to be named or taken notice of; 'tis God alone who is originally and essentially good.

"He never made use of his miraculous power for vanity or ostentation. He would not gratify the curiosity of the Jews with a sign from heaven, some prodigious appearance in the air; nor would he follow the advice of his countrymen and kindred, who would have all his great works performed in the eyes of the world, for gaining him the greater fame. But when his charity had prompted him to the relief of the miserable, his humility made him many times enjoin the concealment of the miracle; and when the glory of God, and the design for which he came into the world, required the publication of them, he ascribeth the honour of all to his Father, telling them, 'that of himself he was able to do nothing.'

"I cannot insist on all the instances of humility in his deportment towards men; his withdrawing himself when they would have made him a king; his subjection, not only to his blessed mother, but to her husband, during his younger years; and his submission to all the indignities and affronts which his rude and malicious enemies did put upon him. The history of his holy life, recorded by those who convened with him, is full of such passages as these; and indeed the serious and attentive study of it is the best way to get right measures of humility, and all the other parts of religion which I have been endeavouring to describe."