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Japanese In the Bible, the will of God means two things: what he purposes and brings about, and what he asks people to do. Paul says God “worketh all things after the counsel of his own will” (Ephesians 1:11). Micah sums up the second: “to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God” (Micah 6:8).
Jesus holds both in one line of the prayer he taught us: “Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven” (Matthew 6:10). On the night before he died he prayed it again, with tears. Most of what God wants from us is written plainly in a handful of verses, and the churches agree on them. Where they differ is in how to speak of God’s will in the face of evil and grief.
What does “the will of God” mean in the Bible?
The first sense is God’s purpose for the world. Ephesians speaks of believers “being predestinated according to the purpose of him who worketh all things after the counsel of his own will” (1:11). Here the will of God is what he has decided and is carrying out, whether anyone knows it or not.
The second sense is what God asks of us, and this we can know, obey or refuse. Paul urges his readers to be “transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God” (Romans 12:2). To prove, here, is to test and find out. In the Old Testament this will is bound up with God’s law, and the psalmist delights in it: “I delight to do thy will, O my God: yea, thy law is within my heart” (Psalm 40:8).
Jesus joins the two. “I came down from heaven, not to do mine own will, but the will of him that sent me,” he says (John 6:38), and he teaches his disciples to pray, “Thy will be done.” That prayer asks God to carry out his purpose, and it asks that we on earth do what he wants as gladly as it is done in heaven.
| Sense | What it means | Where the Bible says it |
|---|---|---|
| God’s purpose | What God decides and brings about | Ephesians 1:11 |
| God’s command | What God asks people to do | Micah 6:8; Romans 12:2 |
Which Bible verses say what God’s will is?
Several New Testament verses say it outright. Here are six of the plainest, each naming something God wants for us.
| Verse | What it says | God wants |
|---|---|---|
| 1 Timothy 2:4 | “Who will have all men to be saved” | Everyone saved |
| John 6:40 | “every one which seeth the Son, and believeth on him, may have everlasting life” | Faith in Jesus |
| 1 Thessalonians 4:3 | “For this is the will of God, even your sanctification” | A holy life |
| 1 Thessalonians 5:18 | “In every thing give thanks: for this is the will of God” | Thanksgiving |
| 1 Peter 2:15 | “For so is the will of God, that with well doing ye may put to silence the ignorance of foolish men” | Doing good |
| Matthew 7:21 | “he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven” | Obedience, not words alone |
Read them together and the question is answered. God wants us saved, trusting his Son, made holy, thankful and doing good. Matthew 7:21 adds a warning: calling Jesus “Lord, Lord” is not the same as doing what his Father wills. The fuller list, with the verses on trusting God’s plans, is in 18 Bible verses about God’s will.
In the end, what God wants for us is our own life with him. Irenaeus tied God’s glory to that life in one line: “For the glory of God is a living man; and the life of man consists in beholding God” (Against Heresies IV.20.7). The Orthodox Faith, a handbook published by the Orthodox Church in America, says the same in terms of God’s will: being what God wants and doing what God wants “is the sole meaning of our human existence.”
How do I know God’s will for my life?
Most of it is already written down. Whether to tell the truth, forgive, keep a promise or help a neighbour is no mystery to be solved; the verses above and the commandments settle it. The hard questions are the ones Scripture does not name: which job, which city, whether to marry this person. For those, the Bible points to several helps, and the churches weigh them differently.
Ask God for wisdom
James gives a plain promise: “If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him” (James 1:5). What he promises is wisdom, the ability to choose well. We still do the choosing. Prayers for this moment are gathered in prayers for God’s will.
Take counsel
“Without counsel purposes are disappointed: but in the multitude of counsellors they are established” (Proverbs 15:22). People who know you, and who know Scripture, often see what you cannot.
Listen to conscience
Paul writes of people whose “conscience also bearing witness” shows “the work of the law written in their hearts” (Romans 2:15). The Catechism of the Catholic Church says that conscience “enjoins him at the appropriate moment to do good and to avoid evil,” and that “When he listens to his conscience, the prudent man can hear God speaking” (1777). Augustine gave a short test of motive in a sermon on 1 John: “Love, and do what you will.” He meant that an act is judged by its root, and he went on, “let the root of love be within, of this root can nothing spring but what is good” (Homilies on the First Epistle of John 7.8).
Weigh what happens
In Acts 16 Paul and his companions were “forbidden of the Holy Ghost to preach the word in Asia.” They tried Bithynia, “but the Spirit suffered them not.” Then Paul saw a man of Macedonia in a vision, saying, “Come over into Macedonia, and help us.” Luke writes that they went “assuredly gathering that the Lord had called us for to preach the gospel unto them” (Acts 16:6–10). They made plans, two of them were blocked, and they read the next step from what happened and what Paul saw.
Where the churches put the weight
Catholics are taught to discern in prayer. “By prayer we can discern ‘what is the will of God’ and obtain the endurance to do it,” says the Catechism (2826), and in forming conscience they are “aided by the witness or advice of others and guided by the authoritative teaching of the Church” (1785).
Many Presbyterian and Reformed churches hold the Westminster Confession, which places the whole counsel of God in Scripture, “unto which nothing at any time is to be added, whether by new revelations of the Spirit, or traditions of men” (1.6). So Reformed teaching is cautious about treating events or inner impressions as fresh messages from God. They are weighed by Scripture.
Orthodox Christians speak of salvation itself as shared work. The Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America says salvation is accomplished by God “in cooperation (synergy) with humanity,” and quotes the Orthodox writer Lev Gillet: “two unequal, but equally necessary forces: divine grace and human will.” That teaching is about salvation rather than a single decision, but it shapes how Orthodox Christians think of following God. Grace does not replace a person’s own choosing.
Whether God leads you to one particular husband or wife is its own question, taken up in does God lead you to your spouse?
What if I have missed God’s will?
Acts 16 answers this fear too. Paul set out for Asia and then for Bithynia, and neither was where God was sending him. He was stopped, turned and used. Scripture never describes God’s will as a single narrow path that one wrong turn closes for ever.
Where the wrong turn was sin, the way back is the one John gives: “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9). Where it was an honest mistake, Paul’s promise still holds: “all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose” (Romans 8:28).
Does everything that happens happen by God’s will?
The Catholic, Orthodox, Lutheran and Reformed traditions all teach that God governs the world and that God is not the author of sin. They part over how to describe the way his rule reaches to evil. The Bible’s clearest case is Joseph. Sold by his brothers, he told them years later: “ye thought evil against me; but God meant it unto good, to bring to pass, as it is this day, to save much people alive” (Genesis 50:20).
| Tradition | Source | God’s will and evil |
|---|---|---|
| Catholic | Catechism 311–312 | God does not cause moral evil; he permits it and brings good from it |
| Orthodox | John of Damascus | Some works are by God’s good will, others by his permission |
| Lutheran | Augsburg Confession 19; Formula of Concord | The cause of sin is the will of the wicked; God’s foreknowledge limits evil |
| Reformed | Westminster Confession 3 and 5 | God ordains all that happens, “not by a bare permission,” yet is not the author of sin |
For Catholics, “God is in no way, directly or indirectly, the cause of moral evil. He permits it, however, because he respects the freedom of his creatures and, mysteriously, knows how to derive good from it” (Catechism 311). Then comes a warning against tidy conclusions: “But for all that, evil never becomes a good” (312).
John of Damascus, in his Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, wrote that “the works of Providence are partly according to the good-will (of God) and partly according to permission.” He also wrote that “God’s original wish was that all should be saved and come to His Kingdom” (II.29).
The Lutheran Augsburg Confession teaches that “although God does create and preserve nature, yet the cause of sin is the will of the wicked, that is, of the devil and ungodly men; which will, unaided of God, turns itself from God” (Article 19). The Formula of Concord adds that God’s foreknowledge “is not the cause of evil, neither of sin,” and that “it only regulates it, and fixes a limit to it.”
The Reformed go furthest. In the Westminster Confession God “did, by the most wise and holy counsel of his own will, freely, and unchangeably ordain whatsoever comes to pass: yet so, as thereby neither is God the author of sin, nor is violence offered to the will of the creatures” (3.1). His rule extends even to sin, “and that not by a bare permission,” while “the sinfulness thereof proceedeth only from the creature, and not from God” (5.4). John Calvin warned against confusing what God decrees with what he commands: “Here will is improperly confounded with precept, though it is obvious, from innumerable examples, that there is the greatest difference between them” (Institutes I.18.4).
These are real differences, and no verse settles them for every church. On one thing they agree: no one may excuse a wrong because God brought good out of it, and no one may call a cruelty good because God allowed it. Joseph’s brothers meant evil, and it was evil, even after God turned it to good.
What do Christians ask for in “Thy will be done”?
The third petition of the Lord’s Prayer asks for both senses of God’s will at once. The Catechism of the Catholic Church explains it from 1 Timothy 2:4 and from Jesus’ commandment “that you love one another; even as I have loved you,” a commandment that “summarizes all the others and expresses his entire will” (2822). Luther’s Small Catechism answers in two lines: “The good and gracious will of God is done indeed without our prayer; but we pray in this petition that it may be done among us also.” And the Orthodox Church in America’s handbook puts it at the centre of the Christian life: “The fulfillment of the prayer ‘Thy will be done’ is the heart and soul of all spiritual effort and activity.”
When someone says a loss was God’s will
If you have come to this question because something terrible has happened, and someone has told you it was God’s will, look at how Jesus met the worst night of his life.
In Gethsemane Jesus said, “My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death.” He “fell on his face, and prayed, saying, O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me: nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt” (Matthew 26:38–39). He prayed three times. Hebrews remembers that he “offered up prayers and supplications with strong crying and tears unto him that was able to save him from death” (Hebrews 5:7). He said “thy will be done” (Matthew 26:42) with the grief still on him.
The next day, on the cross, Jesus prayed the first words of Psalm 22: “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46). Scripture does ask God why.
There is a line used in mourning, that God’s will knows no why. It is a saying, not a verse of Scripture. It leans on Isaiah: “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts” (Isaiah 55:8–9). Isaiah says God’s ways are higher than ours. He does not tell anyone to stop asking. Even the Catechism of the Catholic Church, faced with the question why evil exists, says that “no quick answer will suffice” (309).
Augustine held that a person’s wish can be good even when events go against it. He wrote of “a good son” who “is anxious that his father should live,” and said that such filial love “is more in harmony with the good will of God” than the wish of a son who wanted his father dead (Enchiridion 101). To want someone you love to live, and to grieve when they do not, is no failure to accept God’s will. Jesus prayed with strong crying and tears, and still he said, “thy will be done.”
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