I.　God is a God of purpose, having a will according to His own pleasure—Rev. 4:11; Eph. 3:9-11; Col. 1:9:

A.　God's will is God's wish; God's will is what He wants to do—Eph. 1:9:

1.　God's good pleasure is of His will and is embodied in His will, so His will comes first—v. 5.

2.　God has made the mystery of His will known to us through His revela?tion in Christ, that is, through Christ's incarnation, crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension—v. 9; 3:9.

3.　God works all things according to the counsel of His will; God's will is His intention, and His counsel is His consideration of the way to accomplish His will, or intention—1:11.

B.　Colossians is a book concerning the great, eternal will of God—1:9; 4:12:

1.　Colossians reveals what God's will is according to His desire and intention in the whole universe, in creation, in redemption, in the coming age, and in eter?nity.

2.　God's will in Colossians 1:9 is His will regarding His eternal purpose, regard?ing His economy concerning Christ—Eph. 1:5, 9, 11.

3.　To have the full knowledge of God's will is to have the revelation of God's plan so that we may know what God plans to do in the universe—Rev. 4:11.

C.　The will of God is concentrated in Christ and is for Christ; Christ is everything in the will of God—Col. 1:9:

1.　In verse 9 God's will refers to Christ; the will of God is profound in relation to our knowing, experiencing, and living the all-inclusive, extensive Christ, who is God, man, and the reality of every positive thing in the universe—2:9, 16-17.

2.　Christ is the preeminent One, the One who has the first place in everything—1:18.

3.　The all-inclusive, extensive Christ is the centrality and universality, the cen?ter and circumference, of God's economy—vv. 15-27; Eph. 1:10:

a.　In God's economy Christ is everything; God wants Christ and Christ alone—the wonderful, preeminent, all-inclusive Christ, who is all in all—Matt. 17:5; Col. 3:10-11.

b.　God's intention in His economy is to work the wonderful, all-inclusive, extensive Christ into our being as our life and our everything so that we may become the corporate expression of the Triune God—1:27; 3:4, 10-11.

4.　The will of God is that the all-inclusive, extensive Christ be our portion—1:9, 12.

5.　God's will is that we know Christ, experience Christ, enjoy Christ, be sat?urated with Christ, and have Christ as our person and our life—3:4, 11.

D.　God's will is to have the church as the Body of Christ—1:9, 18; 2:19; 3:15:

1.　The will of God is to obtain a Body for Christ to be His fullness, His expres?sion—Rom. 12:2, 5; Eph. 1:5, 9, 11, 22-23; 4:16:

a.　To live the Body life is to "prove what the will of God is"—Rom. 12:2, 4-5.

b.　If we are proper members of the Body, acting and functioning in the church life, we will be persons in the will of God—1 Cor. 1:1-2; Eph. 1:1; 5:17; Rom. 12:2, 4-5.

2.　The church is the Body of Christ, which is an entity constituted with the Triune God and His chosen and redeemed ones—Eph. 1:22-23; 4:4-6.

3.　Christ is the Head of the Body, and we are the members of His Body—Col. 1:18a; 2:19; Eph. 4:15-16:

a.　To live in the Body is to live corporately with the members under the Head—v. 15; Col. 2:19.

b.　To live the Body life, we must be under the Head and take the Head as our life, the principal object, and the center of our whole being—1:18a; 2:19.

4.　The Body grows with the growth of God; the growth of the Body depends on the growth of God, the addition of God, the increase of God, within us—v. 19; Eph. 4:16.

II.　Satan, the enemy of God, is exceedingly active in opposing God's will and in working to frustrate God's purpose, and he has a threefold strategy against the church—Isa. 14:12-15; Ezek. 28:12-19:

A.　Satan brings in substitutes for Christ—1 John 2:18, 22; 4:3:

1.　These substitutes include philosophy, culture, the law, religion, and gifts—Col. 2:8; 3:10-11; Heb. 8:6; 9:23; 10:5-10; Gal. 3:1-3, 24; 1:15-16; 2:20; 4:19; 1 Cor. 1:22-23; 12:31.

2.　The principle of antichrist is first to deny something of what Christ is and then to replace Christ with something else; to be an antichrist is, on the one hand, to be against Christ and, on the other hand, to have something instead of Christ, something that replaces Christ—1 John 2:18, 22; 4:3.

3.　The self is versus Christ and seeks to replace Christ—Matt. 16:16, 23-25; Gal. 2:20.

B.　Satan works to divide the Body of Christ; the sects, denominations, and divisions in the Body wipe out the corporate expression of Christ—1 Cor. 1:10-13a; Gal. 5:19-20.

C.　Satan kills the function of all the members of Christ's Body by the clergy-laity system—the works and the teaching of the Nicolaitans—Rev. 2:6, 15:

1.　In Revelation 2:6 and 15 Nicolaitans refers to a group of people who esteem themselves higher than the common believers; this is the hierarchy adopted and established by Catholicism and Protestantism.

2.　The goal of the clergy-laity system is to annul the Body of Christ and to re?place it with a religion—cf. Eph. 4:12-13, 16.

III.　The Lord's recovery is the recovery of Christ as our center, reality, life, and everything, the recovery of the oneness of the Body of Christ, and the recov?ery of the function of all the members of the Body of Christ—Col. 1:18; 2:19; 3:10-11; Eph. 4:3-6, 12; 1 Cor. 14:26:

A.　God's intention is to have a recovery purely and wholly of the person of Christ—Gal. 1:15-16; 2:20; 4:19:

1.　God's goal in His economy is that Christ be everything—Col. 3:4, 10-11.

2.　It is crucial for us to see that God wants nothing but Christ and that in the eyes of God nothing counts except Christ—1:18; 2:9; 3:4, 10-11; Phil. 3:7-10:

a.　Christ is preeminent in the Triune Godhead (2:9; John 15:26; Col. 1:18b-19; 2:9), in God's old creation (1:15b; Heb. 2:14a), in God's new creation (Col. 1:18; 1 Cor. 15:20; Rom. 8:29; Eph. 1:20-23), and in God's exaltation (Acts 2:33a; Eph. 1:22b; Phil. 2:9a).

b.　Christ is everything to the believers—our God-allotted portion (Col. 1:12; 1 Cor. 1:2), our life (Col. 3:4a; Gal. 2:20a; Phil. 1:20-21a; Gal. 4:19; Col. 2:19b), our hope of glory (1:27), and our necessities and enjoyment (John 8:12; 6:51, 57b; 1 Cor. 10:4; John 20:22; Gal. 3:27; John 15:7a; Col. 2:16-17; Matt. 11:28).

c.　Christ is the divine provision—God's power to us (1 Cor. 1:24a) and wisdom to us from God as our righteousness, sanctification, and redemp?tion (vv. 24b, 30).

d.　Christ is everything to the church—the Head of the Body (Col. 1:18), the Body of the Head (1 Cor. 12:12), the foundation (3:11), the cornerstone (Eph. 2:20), and all the members of the new man (Col. 3:10-11).

B.　The Lord desires to recover the oneness of the Body of Christ—Eph. 4:3-6:

1.　The Lord's recovery is based upon the truth that Christ has only one Body—1:22-23; 4:4, 16.

2.　The Body of Christ is uniquely one universally; since the Body is uniquely one universally, the fellowship of the Body of Christ also is uniquely one univer?sally—Matt. 16:18; Eph. 4:4-6; Acts 2:42; 1 Cor. 1:9; 2 Cor. 13:14.

3.　The unique Body of Christ is expressed in many localities as the local churches; the one universal church—the Body of Christ—becomes the many local churches—local expressions of the Body of Christ—Rom. 12:4-5; 16:16; Eph. 4:4; Rev. 1:4, 11.

C.　The Lord wants to recover the function of all the members of the Body of Christ to practice the New Testament economy according to the God-ordained way—Eph. 4:12, 16; 1 Cor. 14:26:

1.　All the believers are members of Christ, priests of God, branches of Christ, and slaves of the Lord—Rom. 12:4-5; 15:16; 1 Cor. 12:14-22; 1 Pet. 2:5, 9.

2.　The gifted persons perfect the saints to do what they, the gifts, do for the organic building up of the Body of Christ by nourishing the saints with the life supply for their growth in life—Eph. 4:11-16; Acts 20:20, 31; 6:4; 1 Cor. 3:2, 6; 1 Pet. 2:2.

3.　The Body is built directly by all the members of Christ functioning, each in his own measure—Eph. 4:16.