I. Our Lord, being fully human, had amongst other prerogatives that of liberty and freedom of will. This was much more perfect than in us; it had greater range and power; it was not weakened and misdirected by mere physical impulses. 1. Our Lord could not sin. But this was not a restriction of His freedom; it was exemption from slavery to the domination of the body. His sinlessness was His freedom. So it is with us. A man of high principle and sense of honour, who has associated with others of like character, cannot do a foul dishonourable action; and in this he is not the less a free agent, but he has a fuller liberty than the man who is led away by bad company, ignorance and weakness to act basely or fraudulently. 2. Our Lord was necessarily obedient to His heavenly Father and subject to Him; but this again was an exercise of liberty, for it was the result not of compulsion but of deliberate choice. He suffered and died in obedience to His Father; “as the Father hath given Me commandment so I do” (John xiv. 31). But also it is written: “He was offered because it was His own will” (Isa. liii. 7); and again: “I lay down My life . . . and I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it up again. This commandment I have received from My Father” (John x. 17-18). There is no true freedom without subordination. Your highest liberty consists in willing subjection to the supremacy of God.
II. Our Lord’s human will is admirable for its unswerving conformity to the divine will. For instance in the Garden of Gethsemani Jesus asks that the chalice may be removed from Him if possible, but at once His will conforms itself to the will of His Father (Luke xxii. 42). The will of Christ exercised this virtue of conformity: 1, in eliciting all the acts demanded of it by the Father; 2, in acting upon the same principles and with the same motives as the Divine will; 3, in desiring the same immediate objects as the Father; 4, in seeking the same general end and object in all particulars, viz., the greater glory of God. The same is the rule of perfection for your will. It has two functions, to command and to obey. Like all things else in creation, it has to render and receive service, to rule and to be ruled. It stands between the most perfect will of God, which is above it, and the irregular desires of the sensitive appetites below it. Of these it is written, “the lust thereof shall be beneath Thee, and Thou shalt have dominion over it” (Gen. iv. 7); but in order to have this power, the will must be subject to the supreme will of God. Too often men reverse this order; they revolt against the divine will, and render slavish obedience to degrading lusts.
III. Another important quality of the human will of Jesus Christ is an intense and burning charity, “which surpasseth all knowledge” (Eph. iii. 19), exhibited towards God and men. Love is one of the predominant perfections of God, operating within the Holy Trinity, and externally towards all His creatures, and towards man in particular. In God, love sums up all His goodness towards us; in man, love sums up the observance of all laws regarding God and our fellow-men. This predominated consequently in Our Lord both as God and as man. It inspired all His action, whether for the glory of His Father or for our redemption. We recognize love in its earthly form as the most universal, irresistible, generous and beautiful of emotions. In Jesus Christ it was infinitely more. It moved Him to annihilate Himself, in a manner, for us; to come from heaven, lay aside the glory of the Divinity, and suffer every indignity and cruelty. Love is the perfection of your will also: it ought to be the motive power of your life. But it must be well-ordered and holy. It must take its rise in God, and extend thence to men. We must love them for God’s sake, and as Jesus loved them.
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