In the first chapter of Colossians we find the beloved apostle Paul praying for the saints in relation to the will of God. He sought that they might be filled with the knowledge of God's will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding. This shows us what the moral condition of every Christian should be. We can never walk worthy of the Lord unto all pleasing without this moral condition.
The subject of the will of God is a vast one, and to enter into it we must first of all understand what was wrought out in the death of Christ. That blessed One had come into Manhood to enter into the sufferings of death that God might be glorified in relation to sin, and because of what Christ has done God is able to justify all who believe in Jesus. Not only that, beloved, but God has raised Jesus from the dead, and in His resurrection divine power has been displayed, and it is in Christ risen from the dead that we are justified. Every bit of fear is taken from our hearts; we have peace with God, and we boast in God through our Lord Jesus Christ through whom we have been reconciled to God. The cross has brought to an end before God all that we were as in the flesh, in order that we might be able to take account of ourselves as in Christ. Having learned these great truths, we can enter into God's mind for us.
The will of God can be viewed in many ways; we can think of it in relation to His people of Old, or can view it in relation to His Son who carried it our perfectly, or we can consider it in relation to the work of the Father in making us meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light. How wonderful to think that it was in the Father's will to deliver us from the authority of darkness, and to translate us into the kingdom of the Son of His love. And this is what He has done: He has brought us to where we can be engaged with the Son of His love, who was ever the object of His affections.
It is the Father's will to have us in the Son before His face, redeemed from all that we were, having redemption in the Son, and occupied with the Son in the glories of His Person. In Manhood, the Son is the image of the invisible God, and the Firstborn of all the creation, but these things belong to Him as Man because He is God. What lay in the depths of the heart of God has been told out in His own Son, who stepped into this present world to bring to light all the will of God for the blessing of His own.
R. Duncanson.