Following Jesus & Knowing God’s Will
Easy Yoke, Light Burden
Matthew 11:28–30 “Come to Me, all who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and YOU WILL FIND REST FOR YOUR SOULS. For My yoke is comfortable, and My burden is light.” (NASB 2020)
What does this mean, really? Isn’t following Jesus and knowing God’s will difficult?
Many Christians struggle with this. We want to make sure that we are living in the will of God. We want to be certain that He is pleased with us and pleased with our behavior. We want to “be a good witness of Christ to others.”
Many of us who grew up in the Church were taught from an early age to be on our best behavior, seek the will of God, and practice “the spiritual disciplines” so that we would become better Christians, and a good witness for Jesus.
If we examine that line of thinking however, we see that it has a flaw. If our morally exemplary life and our commitment to a disciplined lifestyle show others anything, they show that we are no different from those who practice other religions. Every religion on earth teaches people to behave well, and thereby achieve godliness.
Knowing and following God’s will, knowing and following Jesus do not require this sort of effort at all. Hebrews 4:11 presents us with a different approach. It urges us to strive, or work, to enter the Sabbath rest Jesus has provided for us. In our recent study on the Sabbath, we noticed that God made it very clear that no one was to do any work on the Sabbath, and if anyone did, they were put to death.
We are already equipped with everything we need. In 2 Peter 1:3 we are told that, “His divine power has granted to us everything pertaining to life and godliness, through the true knowledge of Him who called us by His own glory and excellence.” (NASB 2020)
Notice that none of this comes through our dedication to reading or to practicing disciplines, or to living a morally exemplary life. All those things are commendable, and they are things that flow from the life of Christ within us, but none are things we must chase after so that we can attain acceptance or better standing with God. We have everything we need already.
Scripture helps us see the truth of what God has given to us and what He does within us. As we grow in grace and the knowledge of Him, we can discover whether new insights and revelations about God and the effects of His grace toward us are correct or not by comparing them to scripture. 2 Timothy 3:16–17 says, “All Scripture is inspired by God and beneficial for teaching, for rebuke, for correction, for training in righteousness;
so that the man or woman of God may be fully capable, equipped for every good work. (NASB 2020)
When we know Father more intimately, we come to trust Him more. We come to a fuller realization of the incredible effects of His grace in our lives. This causes us to be more capable and better equipped to behave in godly ways and that is certainly the will of God.
Looking at Hebrews 13:20–21 we find, “Now may the God of peace, who brought up from the dead the great Shepherd of the sheep through the blood of the eternal covenant, that is, Jesus our Lord, equip you in every good thing to do His will, working in us that which is pleasing in His sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be the glory forever and ever. Amen.” (NASB 2020)
The same God that raised Christ from the dead lives in you and He is at work in you equipping you in every good thing, to do His will. He works in us what is pleasing to Him. Philippians 2:13 echoes this in saying, “for it is God who is at work in you, both to desire and to work for His good pleasure.” (NASB 2020)
This includes all those good works that we often feel like we have to produce ourselves. Ephesians 2:10 makes the point this way, “For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them.” (NASB 2020) Father prepared good works for us beforehand. We are freed from worry that we might be missing His will or failing to do enough. He knows what is coming in our lives and He has good planned in and through it all.
When we were pressed into moving out of our house in three-and-a-half days, I was pretty freaked out. It was completely impossible for me to do this. I contacted many from our little church and as Father would have it, everyone was available on the days we needed them. Still, I could not get past my great fear and worry that we would not succeed. Two of our good friends had come to help, and when we were finally past the bulk of the hard labor, they came to help us clean the house. They brought sweet treats and they sat with us and spoke love, peace, and faith to us. Their presence and their loving support got me out of my emotional turmoil and brought me needed peace.
This was just one of the good works that Father had prepared for them. I’m sure they didn’t plan it the way it worked out. They may not even have known how much they helped me. Nevertheless, they had done something that glorified God, edified a Christian Brother, and had eternal value and I bet it felt like no effort at all to speak truth to me in my distress. That’s how we follow Jesus and God’s will for our lives.
We are released and freed from any performance metrics, any sense of paying God back, and any idea we may have that our attitudes and actions contribute in any way to our righteousness. God has made us righteous. (2 Corinthians 5:21, Romans 5:17) Jesus has finished the work required to make that available to mankind. Our job is to rest in that, to live dependent on Him, and to yield our bodies to Him as instruments of righteousness. (Romans 6:13)
Romans 8:1–4 Is very clear about this. There we read, “Therefore there is now no condemnation at all for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death. For what the Law could not do, weak as it was through the flesh, God did: sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and as an offering for sin, He condemned sin in the flesh, so that the requirement of the Law might be fulfilled in us who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. (NASB 2020)
Rules, rites, and rituals can never make anyone righteous because we are not perfect like God when we are born of the flesh (in Adam). But Father knew our situation. We were enslaved to sin, so He took the initiative and sent Jesus to be our propitiation, a sin offering for us that fully satisfies the righteous requirements of the law. In doing this, He made an end to sin, condemning it and giving His righteousness to all who will believe Him. The instant we agree with Him that our efforts are worthless and place out trust in Jesus as our only hope of righteousness. All the righteous requirements of the law are fully met in us.
The law of the Spirit, of life in Christ Jesus, has set us free from the law of sin and death—the compensation of sin is death. Now we live under the law of the Spirit, the law of Life in Christ Jesus. The law that says we are not now and never can be condemned.
Since we cannot be condemned and have been freed from bondage to sin, Paul tells us in Galatians 5:1 “It was for freedom that Christ set us free; therefore keep standing firm and do not be subject again to a yoke of slavery.” (NASB 2020)
He goes on in Galatians 5:13 “For you were called to freedom, brothers and sisters; only do not turn your freedom into an opportunity for the flesh, but serve one another through love.” (NASB 2020) What I am saying here is that you are free to live as you like, but don’t waste your freedom on things that are never going to satisfy you or things that cause pain for you and those around you. Fleshly behavior is destructive and it stifles your ability to participate in what Father is doing.
The Spirit of God who lives in us is producing fruit. Galatians 5:22–24 details it this way, “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. Now those who belong to Christ Jesus crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. (NASB 2020)
It is Holy Spirit who produces this fruit. That’s why it is called the fruit of the Spirit and not the fruit of our best efforts. Notice here also however, this very important point. Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.
This is too important to miss. You do not want to think and act in ungodly ways. Your true heart’s desire is godliness. How can you know that? You belong to Jesus and scripture says that you have crucified fleshly passions and desires. Whatever is crucified is well and truly dead, and we are told this happened in the past—you have crucified—past tense those passions and desires.
Still, we all find ourselves behaving badly from time to time. From this, it appears that something is amiss. We have been made righteous. That’s who we are, but we still have a soul, our mind, will, and emotions. The change that’s needed is in our minds. In Romans 12:2 Paul wrote, “do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect.” (NASB 2020)
Mind renewal results in transformation, the increasing conformation of our attitudes and actions to Christ.
Here is the way Paul told it to the saints in Ephesus.
Ephesians 4:17–24 (Italics in parentheses mine)
17 So I say this, and affirm in the Lord, that you are to no longer walk just as the Gentiles (here meaning unbelievers) also walk, in the futility of their minds,
18 being darkened in their understanding, excluded from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the hardness of their heart; (they have not received the new soft loving heart you have)
19 and they, having become callous, have given themselves up to indecent behavior for the practice of every kind of impurity with greediness. (greediness for more)
Now let’s pay close attention. This is not how we learned Christ.
20 But you did not learn Christ in this way,
21 if indeed you have heard Him and have been taught in Him, just as truth is in Jesus,
22 that, in reference to your former way of life, you are to rid yourselves of the old self, which is being corrupted in accordance with the lusts of deceit,
23 and that you are to be renewed in the spirit of your minds,
24 and to put on the new self, which in the likeness of God has been created in righteousness and holiness of the truth. (NASB 2020)
Many read this passage and think there is something we need to do on an ongoing basis to keep ourselves pure, but that isn’t what the Spirit is saying through Paul here at all. He is saying that these are the things we were taught and that resulted in our salvation. These are things that became true of us when we placed our faith in Jesus. Since these things are true, how can we go on living a lifestyle characterized by sin? The answer is that we can’t. We can’t because such behavior no longer fits who we are in Christ.
Jesus said Matthew 11:28–30 “Come to Me, all who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and YOU WILL FIND REST FOR YOUR SOULS. For My yoke is comfortable, and My burden is light.” (NASB 2020) Then He did everything necessary for you to become righteous, holy, blameless, and accepted by God. No further performance by you is necessary. Instead, we are called to rest in Him, to yield to Him, to live by faith in Him depending on Him as our source.
Don’t worry that you aren’t doing enough. Do what comes along for you to do and know that it is the Spirit within you who is leading you. He will never leave you nor forsake you. You live in Him and He lives in you all the time. That’s an easy yoke. That’s a light burden.
