“That ye might be filled with the knowledge of His will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding” (Col. 1:9).
The first principle of this practical, heavenly life was the knowledge of the will of God to be filled with it, not to run after it as a thing without us, nor in indecision, in uncertainty, as to what it was, but to be filled with it by a principle of intelligence which comes from Him and which forms the understanding and the wisdom of the Christian himself. The character of God was livingly translated in the appreciation of everything that the Christian did. And remark here that the knowledge of God’s will is based on the spiritual state of the soul wisdom and spiritual understanding. And this is of all practical importance. No particular direction by man as to conduct meets this at all rather saves us from the need of spiritual understanding. No doubt a more spiritual mind may help me in the discernment of God’s will, but God has connected the discovery of the path of His will, His way, with the inward state of the soul and causes us to pass through circumstances human life here below to test and to discover to ourselves what that state is and to exercise us therein. The Christian has by his spiritual state to know God’s ways. The Word is the means. (Compare John 17:17, 19.) God has a way of His own which the vulture’s eye has not seen, known only to the spiritual man, connected with, flowing from, and to, the knowledge of God. (Compare Exodus 33:13.) Thus the Christian walks worthy of the Lord; he knows what becomes Him, and walks accordingly, that he may please Him in all things, bearing fruit in every good work, and growing by the knowledge of God.
J. N. Darby (from Synopsis Colossians)