The Good Pleasure of Our God
1. What has God made known? “Having made known unto us the mystery of His will.” Verse 9. Note 1. 2. According to what is this made known? “According to His good pleasure.” Verse 9. Note 2. 3. In whom is the good pleasure purposed? “Which He hath purposed in Himself.” Verse 9. Note 3. 4. How much does this purpose include? “That in the dispensation of the fulness of times He might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven, and which are on earth; even in Him.” Verse 10. Note 4. 1. “Made known.”—Our God is not a being who withholds Himself from His children. He is the great Revealer. He so stands forth as against all the false gods. The gods of old time veiled their meaning in equivocal, hidden sayings or riddles. We read in the second chapter of Daniel that, unlike the gods of the Chaldeans, Jehovah revealed Himself to His children. He reveals Himself in His works,—“The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament showeth His handiwork.” Ps. 19:1. He reveals Himself in His Word,—“The secret things belong unto Jehovah our God; but the things that are revealed belong unto us and to our children forever.” Deut. 29:29. God’s Word is the disclosure in character and in words of the wonderful goodness of God. These things are always revealed for our good. He reveals the future in the same way,—“He revealeth the deep and secret things: He knoweth what is in the darkness, and the light dwelleth with Him.” Dan. 2:22. “There is a God in heaven that revealeth secrets, and He hath made known . . . what shall be in the latter days.” Verse 28. He presents before us as a characteristic of His Godhead His power to reveal the future: “I am God, and there is none like Me,9declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times the things that are not yet done.” Isa. 46:9, 10. “Surely the Lord God will do nothing, but He revealeth His secret unto His servants the prophets.” Amos 3:7. But our text implies more than this. He makes known unto us “the mystery of His will.” “Mystery” is one of the key-words of this remarkable epistle. The heathen gods and heathen religions had their mysteries performed in their temples, hidden from humanity, known only to the initiated few, really amounting to nothing after they were known. But they were the means of holding wonderful power over the superstitious, and those without, but never affecting for good the life of the one who knew the mystery. Not so the mystery of God. It is a mystery, but it is free to all. All may be initiated; all may know, if all will meet God’s simple conditions. “Mystery of His will.” For “mystery,” see Rom. 11:25; Col. 1:26. It is God’s grace as manifested in redemption. It is the power of that grace laying hold upon the human heart. It was manifest in our Lord Jesus Christ, who was born of woman, born under the law. See 1 Tim. 3:16. “The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us,” that Word revealing the very character of God; and God has left us that Word which, in response to faith, will transmute poor, mortal man into the divine image. And it is the will of God that this should be the mystery of God, which is “Christ in you, the hope of glory.” Col. 1:27. It is what the apostle means elsewhere by “sanctification;” and so we read, “For this is the will of God, even your sanctification.” 1 Thess. 4:3. God, then, has made known the mystery of His will in order that we may be re-created and changed after His own character, in harmony with His own will. 2. “According to His good pleasure.”—God is good, and His ways are always good. He who is love can do no otherwise than good. That is not saying that our condition might not be greatly bettered; but God is doing just as well for us as it is possible for Him to do. If we stood nearer to Him, our hearts more in harmony with His blessed will, He would be able to do larger things for us; but all that He does is to do us good, but not always in the very present time. The seed sowing means the breaking of the ground, means the rain, and means the harrow, means all the hard things that come upon the ground; but it also means fruitage as well. We therefore read of the Lord’s purpose concerning Israel of old: “Who led thee through that great and terrible wilderness, wherein were fiery serpents, and scorpions, and drought, where there was no water; who brought thee forth water out of the rock of flint; who fed thee in the wilderness with manna, which thy fathers knew not, that He might humble thee, and that He might prove thee, to do thee good at thy latter end.” Deut. 8:15, 16. The “terrible wilderness,” the “fiery serpents,” the “scorpions,” the “drought,” did not seem good; but God had in mind the greater good which would accrue from the enduring of all these. And therefore we read again His words to backsliding Israel: “For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith the Lord, thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you an expected end,” or, as the margin reads, “the future of hope.” Jer. 29:11. It is the good pleasure of our God to save men. It is not God’s pleasure to destroy men. It is sin that destroys, not God. He Himself emphasizes this as strongly as language can: “Say unto them, As I live, saith the Lord God, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked; but that the wicked turn from his way and live: turn ye, turn ye from your evil ways; for why will ye die?” Eze. 33:11. It was God’s pleasure, therefore, to have mercy. Pleasure is delight; and thus He declares to His children: “The Lord taketh pleasure in them that fear Him, in those that hope in His mercy.” Ps. 147:11. Well may we say, “Who is a God like unto Thee, that pardoneth iniquity, and passeth by the transgression of the remnant of His heritage? He retaineth not His anger forever, because He delighteth in mercy. He will turn again, He will have compassion upon us; He will subdue our iniquities; and Thou wilt cast all their sins into the depths of the sea.” Even God has made known the mystery of His will “according to His good pleasure.” 3. “Which He hath purposed in Himself.”—How good to know that the purpose is in One who is able to perform it. “For it pleased the Father that in Him should all fulness dwell.” Col. 1:19. “For in Him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily, and in Him ye are made full.” Col. 2:9, 10. He is the Alpha and the Omega; He is the Author and the Finisher; He is the Beginning and the End, the One who is able to save to the uttermost. In union with that purpose we are safe. In union with that purpose, it is God’s good pleasure to do for us all that the purpose embraces. 4. “Together in one.”—“In the dispensation of the fulness of times,” or unto the dispensation,—“the mystery which He purposed in Himself unto the dispensation.” The word “dispensation” comes from oikos, a house; and nemo, to dispense, or manage. A dispensation is the work of a house steward in the managing of his house,—a stewardship. God’s purpose was purposed in our Lord Jesus Christ, who is the great Householder, the One who is working out in the house of God all God’s plans. “But Christ as a Son over His own house [that is, God’s house]; whose house are we, if we hold fast the confidence and the rejoicing of the hope firm unto the end.” But this stewardship or dispensation of our Lord looks forward to the fulness of times, to the completion of all the travail of sin and woe and misery, past all this to the glorious ingathering of His kingdom, when God will gather together in one all things in Christ; when the great sacrifice which the universe has made of its Creator under God, shall be manifest in glorious fruits; when our Redeemer shall “see of the travail of His soul, and shall be satisfied;” and when the divisive power of sin shall be forever put away, because sin is forever banished. All that brings disunion in this world, into God’s kingdom anywhere, is sin. All the perversion of human reason, of faculties, of judgment, of moral conduct, of anything and everything evil, is because of sin. Sin will be put away; and the great gathering will take place, predicted in Rev. 5:13: “And every creature which is in heaven, and on the earth, and under the earth, and such as are in the sea, and all that are in them, heard I saying, Blessing, and honor, and glory, and power, be unto Him that sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb forever and ever.” All heaven and earth are then united. Earth is no more a lost island, separated from the continent of heaven; nay, it has not been separated even in its sin, for the love of Christ has bridged it. But the love of Christ and all His creatures will bridge it in that glorious new day when all God’s children shall be one, and all His universe one, and one life will throb through it all from the great heart of Heaven. And all this is found where we may all obtain it, “in Him.”