"For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am of the flesh, sold under sin. I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. Now if I do what I do not want, I agree with the law, that it is good. So now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin." Romans 7:14-21 ESV
Three of the most liberating truths in my life was when I understood why I don't do what I ought to do and why I do what I do. The truths are simply this:
1. WHEN I DON'T DO WHAT I OUGHT TO DO, THE REASON THAT I DON'T DO WHAT I OUGHT TO DO IS BECAUSE I DON'T WANT TO DO WHAT I OUGHT TO DO!
2. I ALWAYS DO WHAT I WANT TO DO.
3. WHEN I DO WHAT I OUGHT TO DO IT IS BECAUSE I WANT TO DO WHAT I OUGHT TO DO.
The whole issue of obedience and disobedience is about my desires. Our hearts are spiritually and morally flawed. We do not desire what we ought to desire. Yet God holds us responsible for our obedience. We may be corrupt but we are culpable for what we ought to do. So how do we obey when we cannot obey? How do we do what we ought to when we don’t want to? To get to the root, how do our "want to’s” change?
True obedience begins in the heart where God graces the heart to give it a “want to” so that when the time for obedience comes to do what you “ought to” do you will “want to” do what you ought to do; therefore, you will do what you ought to do, a peculiar obedience!
The New Covenant promise is that beneath every act of obedience is the enabling grace of God. Behind every “ought to” done in obedience, God graces our hearts with a “want to”. Augustine put it this way:
"Give me the grace [O Lord] to do as you command, and command me to do what you will! . . . O holy God . . . when your commands are obeyed, it is from you that we receive the power to obey them.”
God’s sovereign work in our heart is the key to obedience. True obedience is where God gives you a new desire so that you will want what you ought to want in order to do what you ought to do. That is to say, when temptation comes you will desire God and pleasing Him more than the temptation and its fleeting pleasures.
“But by the grace of God I am what I am, and His grace toward me did not prove vain; but I labored even more than all of them, yet not I, but the grace of God with me.” (1 Corinthians 15:10)
“Whoever speaks, is to do so as one who is speaking the utterances of God; whoever serves is to do so as one who is serving by the strength which God supplies; so that in all things God may be glorified through Jesus Christ.” (1 Peter 4:11)
"Now the God of peace . . . equip you in every good thing to do His will, working in us that which is pleasing in His sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be the glory forever and ever. Amen." (Hebrews 13:20-21)
We must pray for the desire in our heart to “want to” do what we “ought to” do and God will do give it to you. We can pray Psalm 119:36, “Incline my heart to your testimonies…” Psalm 90:14, "Satisfy us in the morning with your steadfast love, that we may rejoice and be glad all our days". Hebrews 4;16 says, “Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help (us to want what we ought to want so that we would do what we ought to do) in time of need.”
May God put in your heart a “want to” like He did in Augustine, who wrote,
“How sweet all at once it was for me to be rid of those fruitless joys which I had once feared to lose! . . . You drove them from me, you who are the true, the sovereign joy. You drove them from me and took their place, you who are sweeter than all pleasure."
Seeking to want what I ought to want so that I will do what I ought to do for God's glory and my soul's satisfaction,
Pastor Bill
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