Will

“Will” in Scripture names two related things: the human capacity to desire, consent, and choose, and God’s own purpose — what he is pleased to do and what he requires of people.

The Hebrew Bible carries the idea through ordinary words rather than one technical term. The heart is the seat of willing and deciding, as in God’s lament over Israel, “Oh that there were such a heart in them that they would fear me and keep all my commandments always” (Deuteronomy 5:29), and Isaiah’s “If you are willing and obedient, you will eat the good of the land” (Isaiah 1:19) uses a verb of consenting. In the Greek New Testament the noun thelēma and the verb thelō are the standard terms, and they are applied without embarrassment to God and to human beings alike (Matthew 12:50; John 6:38).

God’s will in these texts is both a purpose he accomplishes and a standard his people are to do. Jesus defines belonging to him by it — “whoever does the will of my Father who is in heaven, he is my brother, and sister, and mother” (Matthew 12:50) — and in John he describes his own mission as doing it: “My food is to do the will of him who sent me” (John 4:34), “I don’t seek my own will, but the will of my Father who sent me” (John 5:30). The content of that will is then stated plainly: that of all the Father has given him he should lose nothing but raise them up at the last day, and that everyone who sees the Son and believes in him should have eternal life (John 6:39–40). Romans 12:2 speaks of it as “the good, well-pleasing, and perfect will of God,” proved by a renewed mind rather than assumed.

Human willing appears in the same passages as something real but not self-sufficient. In Gethsemane Jesus prays, “not what I desire, but what you desire” (Matthew 26:39), setting a human desire alongside the Father’s and submitting it; John 7:17 ties willingness to knowledge — “If anyone desires to do his will, he will know about the teaching.” One way to read Isaiah 1:18, “Come now, and let’s reason together,” is as an appeal that presumes hearers capable of responding, while Deuteronomy 5:29 presumes the opposite problem, a heart not yet disposed to obey.

Christian traditions weigh these texts differently. Accounts of free will and grace diverge sharply — whether the human will is freely capable of turning to God, as in much Eastern Orthodox and Arminian teaching, or is bound until graciously renewed, as in Reformed and Augustinian thought, with Catholic teaching defining its own position on cooperation and merit. A separate historical dispute concerned Christ himself: whether the incarnate Son has a human will as well as a divine one, denied by monothelitism and affirmed by the Third Council of Constantinople (681), a reading to which Matthew 26:39 and John 6:38 are directly relevant. Many readers also distinguish God’s revealed will (what he commands) from a hidden will (what he decrees), while others treat the distinction as unnecessary.

AI-generated reference entry, grounded in the passages where this term appears — history and Scripture stated as such, interpretation labeled as interpretation. Not a substitute for the text itself.