To Encourage You

1 Peter 5:2 “Shepherd the flock of God that is among you, exercising oversight, not under compulsion, but willingly, as God would have you . . .”

In the verse above there is a word that appears only two times in the entire Bible. It’s the word “willingly.” The word means “voluntarily; of one’s own accord.”  It’s the opposite of “under compulsion” which also appears in this verse, and which means “to be forced.”  So, what Peter is telling his hearers is that a pastor is to conduct his responsibilities because he wants to, not because he has to or is being forced. Interestingly, the other place this word “willingly” is used is in a very different context. In Hebrews 10:26-27 it says, “For if we go on sinning deliberately (it’s this same word in the Hebrew translated willingly in 1 Peter 5) after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a fearful expectation of judgment, and a fury of fire that will consume the adversaries.” And so we see that just as God desires his servants to serve Him voluntarily with a desire that springs from within them, so He hates desires to do evil that spring from within a person.  It is in this context that the very best and the very worst of a person, from God’s perspective, is found.

You see, throughout the Scriptures we see that motives mean everything.  It is the will, the reason we do what we do, that finds favor with God, not just that we do what He says. For example, Jesus said that the greatest commandment was to love God and our neighbor.  That is to be demonstrated by sacrificial acts of service.  Yet, sacrificial acts of service can be done for lots of reasons that are other than the willingness that God desires.  This is shown in stark terms in the introductory verses of 1 Corinthians 13, which has come to be known as “the love chapter.” Listen to what it says: “If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.”  You see, all these things can be done under some sense of compulsion, such as a sense of obligation to do such things to earn favor with God. But such motives, because they are done under compulsion, are other than what God seeks.

Then we have the matter of giving. Giving is an attribute of God. He is the universe’s greatest giver.  The Bible’s best-known verse, John 3:16, points to this: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” And this gift was completely voluntarily. We are told that “he saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy” (Titus 3:5).  It’s this same message in Romans 5:8, where we are told, “God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” Note the voluntary act, the wonderful grace, the awesome mercy of God’s great gift.  And so, if we in any way wish to emulate God’s giving heart, we must realize that “Each one must give as he has decided in his heart, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver” (2 Corinthians 9:7).

It’s the same idea everywhere we look.  God is looking for willing hearts. He never forces us to love Him. Although He’s given us every reason to do so, although He’s provided every meal for us that we’ve ever eaten, every drop of water we’ve ever drank, and the roof over our heads, although He’s given us our spouse, our children, and our friends, although “every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights” (James 1:17), He will never force us to thank and obey Him in turn.  No, if we are to ever be called a Christian, if we are ever to become a true follower of God, it will be because we’ve done so willingly. There’s just no other way.

And so God blesses us. He woos us. He waits patiently for us to turn to Him. But if we won’t have Him, if we want to go some other way, we have been given the privilege to do so.  But does it make any sense to willingly reject Him?  For you see, we will all receive what we wanted in our heart of hearts in the end.