Henry Krabbendam - James - World Evangelical Alliance

holiness. The tapestry is rich and enriching: Word-Prayer-Holiness. Praying Scripture
clearly gives “steel” to one’s prayer not only in terms of solid substance, but also of
unwavering confidence. Finally, this warrants the conclusion that if no Scripture,
whether precept, promise, prohibition, principle, pattern, model, or example, can be
found to give content to prayer, there is no basis for prayer. Consequently one should
abstain from it. In other words, every prayer should have at its foundation a Word of
God, in whatever form it comes to us, either explicit or implicit. And every prayer can
expect the answer warranted by this Word.
Be this as it may, in Church history the grateful acknowledgment of God’s twofold
will came to expression in a stream of literature on both the Sovereignty of God
and the Decalogue. This demonstrated its avowed God-centeredness and its unmistaken
holiness-centeredness. About a century ago, however, the theological climate
began to shift, first subtly, but soon at an accelerated pace. Both the will of God’s sovereign
control and the will of God’s absolute command were shown the door. A rampant
Arminianism was able to convince large portions of the ecclesiastical world that
absolute divine sovereignty simply was not compatible with unfettered human responsibility,
and would turn man into a robot. So by and large sovereignty, and therefore
the will of God’s absolute control, was “tossed,” even if lip service was paid to biblical
terminology. “Tossed” as well was the Mosaic Law. A rampant Dispensationalism declared
that Paul’s phraseology “You are not under law, but under grace” (Rom. 6:14)
made short shrift of that law in the NT dispensation. In a truly NT Church God’s OT
law does no longer, neither should, function in any substantive and meaningful way. In
a rather piecemeal fashion an exception was made for OT commandments (sparingly)
repeated in the NT, but the rest was basically “history.” All this is extremely serious
business. The upshot was that by and large the Christian Church turned more and more
man-centered instead of Godcentered and, as its corollary, happiness-centered in stead
of holiness-centered.
However, something had to give. One cannot ignore large chunks of fundamental
biblical truth without impunity, without feeling the pinch, even if only instinctively.
The dismissal of both God’s will of decree and God’s will of command created a vacuum.
Man was virtually left rudderless in a world of chance. This, of course, had to be
offset by something. Suddenly enters the concept of “God’s Ideal Will for my Life!”
In this concept the tables were fundamentally turned. Man no longer lives and fits in
the world of God to serve him, but God lives and fits in the universe of mankind to
serve it, all pious disclaimers to the contrary. Soon streams of books were devoted to
the subject, and published with titles that focused on the so-called “Ideal Will” or
“Perfect Will” of God. Surrender of man to God for God’s sake was replaced with
guidance of man by God for man’s sake. In a rather convoluted way even the frequent
urgings to find the “Center of God’s will,” while God-centered in its formulation is
man-centered in its substance. After all, this “Center” spells security and safety.
Frankly, in the final analysis this concept is an unbiblical and errorful construct
that is regrettably swallowed in a wholesale fashion by many sincere and wellmeaning
Christians. I hope that what follows will liberate every Christian from this
“Bondage of the Immature,” and slay this “Goliath of Subjectivity,” as it has been
called in an excellent work on the subject (Garry Friesen, Decision making & the Will
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