God’s Permissive vs. Perfect Will

Romans 12:2 “And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.”

In the above quoted passage of scripture, the Holy Spirit speaks of God’s acceptable will and His perfect will. The word translated “acceptable”, also carries the meaning “permissible”. In other words our Lord Jesus has His permissible will for our lives, and He has His perfect will for our lives. His permissible will is exactly that. He will permit us to do what we want to do. When I speak of our Lord’s permissible will for our lives, I am not referring to living sinful lives, and saying that our Lord Jesus permits this (although He does). What I am referring to is the believer living their life as a Christian, but without seeking the Lord’s will for their lives. Our Lord Jesus permits His saints to do this.

Ephesians 2:10 “For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.”

The above quoted passage of scripture reveals to us that God our Father has pre-ordained good works for each of us to walk in. In other words these good works are God’s perfect will for our lives. However, just because God has prepared these good works for us to walk in, does not mean that every believer will automatically walk in His perfect will. For notice that the scripture says “we should walk in them”, not “we will walk in them”. Every one of us has been given a free will by God. And so before we came into His kingdom, we exercised our free will and did whatever we wanted to do. What we wanted to do before we came into the kingdom of God was to be disobedient to His will, for the scripture refers to all unbelievers as being “sons of disobedience” (Ephesians 2:2). And so when we, as an act of our free will, accepted Jesus Christ as our Lord and Saviour and came into His kingdom, one thing did not change, which was our free will. In this life God will never override the free will of any human being, which includes all of His children. Sadly because of this truth many believers never walk in God’s perfect will for their lives. The reason for that is simply because they never seek His will for their lives, and so they live mostly in God’s permissive will.