When we speak of the will of God, we too often mean that God arranges, even controls, everything that happens to us. There are difficulties with this way of thinking. We thus tend to make God a controller, an administrator, a manipulator. Paul today guides our thoughts along a quite different way. In speaking of the design of God, the plan of God, he equates it with "the grace held out to us in Christ Jesus". After the creation of the world, God's only will, his only plan or design, is to save us through grace, the grace which Jesus won for us on the cross.

God's will for us is essentially God's love for us, that love which gave His only Son [Jn 3:16]. Whenever anything happens, especially anything like difficulties or suffering, we tend to say "the will of God". Perhaps this way of speaking is an avoiding of reality. If we effectively dismiss something as the will of God, it seems we are absolved from all further effort to reflect upon it and to enter more deeply into God's design, God's grace. Whenever anything happens to us, whether good or bad, it would rather be better to reflect: in this situation, how do I discover God's love for me?