Not My Will

by Doy Moyer

Jesus prayed in the garden, “Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me. Nevertheless, not my will, but yours, be done” (Luke 22:42). Jesus had no desire to suffer. He desired to save humanity from sin, and this was the necessary path to do so, but He was not enjoying the agony that attended the crucifixion. The Hebrews writer said that Jesus endured the cross for the joy set before Him, but He despised the shame of it (Hebrews 12:3). To do so, He selflessly humbled Himself, emptied Himself, and bore the reproach to defeat death and offer atonement for sin (Philippians 2:5-8; I Peter 2:24; Hebrews 13:12-13).

Jesus did not come in the flesh to do His own thing. “I can do nothing on my own. As I hear, I judge, and my judgment is just, because I seek not my own will but the will of him who sent me” (John 5:30). Jesus was not here to seek His own will, but the will of the Father. This expresses one of the most important aspects of what His followers are about. “Not my will, but Yours, be done.”

I hear and read the stories of those who have left the faith. I read “deconstruction” accounts and hear the arguments made. After several decades of doing this, there's probably not much I haven’t heard. Yet in all of this, the one thing that I see these stories driving to is the clash of wills. Turning from God is far more a statement about the orientation of one’s heart than it is intellectual. When our hearts tilt in one direction, we often seek justification for our behaviors. In my experience, I’ve known several who left the faith under the pretense of reason, yet they were first involved in selfish behaviors that they were not willing to give up. It’s almost predictable. Yet I say this not as one who hasn’t struggled, but as one who has deeply struggled with a self-will that keeps trying to raise its ugly head. Does it sound familiar to you, too? Perhaps, and this may well be why Jesus expressed discipleship in these terms:

“If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it. For what does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses or forfeits himself?” (Luke 9:23-25).

This, at least for me, is the most difficult command in all of Scripture. “Deny self daily” is at the heart of discipleship. If we cannot say, “Not my will, but yours, be done,” then we cannot follow Jesus. There is no use pretending at that point at which we decide we are going to do whatever we want. Once we do that, we are not disciples of Jesus. We might be pretenders and hypocrites, but we can’t be disciples and demand our own will be done over God’s. This is a daily battle.

This, too, is at the heart of all sin. When the serpent made his offer, he hit this squarely: “God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil” (Genesis 3:5). To paraphrase, “You don’t need God telling you what to do. You can decide for yourself what is good or evil. You can be your own god.” It’s all about me, my will, my desires, my pleasure, my self. That’s sin. That’s self-will, and we cannot serve self and God simultaneously (cf. Matthew 6:24).

In our culture, this problem often shows up under the umbrella of living your “authentic self.” I believe in being authentic, but authenticity must begin with recognizing the reality that we are made in God’s image. If we deny that, we deny reality and will never have the authenticity we think we want. People “identify” in all sorts of ways, but true identity is not about living selfishly. The Christian’s identity is Christ Himself. “For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory” (Colossians 3:3-4). Paul’s attitude was expressed this way: “For me, to live is Christ…” (Philippians 1:21). The heart of serving God is not going to be about what I want; it will be what God wants. If I identify myself in ways that betray this, then I have missed what discipleship is all about because I have decided that God’s authority should be subservient to mine.

The gist of all of our service boils down to this one attitude: “Not my will, but your, be done.” To follow Jesus in this requires that we “go to him outside the camp and bear the reproach he endured” (Hebrews 13:13). This is the crossroad at which we decide to serve God or walk away to do what we want. Just keep in mind that “here we have no lasting city, but we seek the city that is to come” (Hebrews 13:14).