Many assume that God’s will is some kind of torture, that God wants us to abandon our own best interests for a stodgy, joyless existence. Does following Jesus mean giving up our dreams and desires? It is true that taking up our cross to follow Jesus comes with challenges and even persecution. But it is hardly joyless, and leads to eternal joy!
Our mistake begins in our thinking, when we buy into Satan’s lie that life is better when we live independently and self-sufficiently apart from God. That is the lie Adam and Eve believed in the Garden, and we know how that worked out, don’t we?
Jesus embraced the Cross “for the joy set before Him,” because He understood that there is no real life outside of God’s love and dependency on His grace. Humans are neither independent nor self-sufficient, and acting as if we are is rooted in self-deception.
In today’s passage, which begins the final section of the Ephesians, we discover that we don’t give up anything good in order to follow Jesus. We only exchange the deceitful desires of a hard heart for the life-giving choices that come from God’s will and Spirit. And in turning our backs on selfishness, we, in turn, build up one another and delight our Father.