What I Would Do

Non-believers point to hypocrites in the church, those who say they love God yet do not follow His words. When church leaders are caught breaking God’s commandments as well as men’s laws, their leadership is destroyed. There are examples across our world today, as there have been in ages past, that cause people to ask why serving God is so hard, if God is so good.

The answers are found in these verses – in some ways they appear to be a tongue-twisting paradox. And, the hardest truth is that all have sinned, and will do so again.

For that which I do I allow not: for what I would, that do I not; but what I hate, that do I.

That boils down to doing what I must, not what I want, to do. Then Paul explains this is the result of acknowledging the law:

If then I do that which I would not, I consent unto the law that it is good.

Just as we must, he understands that we live with sin within ourselves:

Now then it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me. For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh,) dwelleth no good thing:

Even when we want to do good, have every desire to do good, the ability to do so is not there:

for to will is present with me; but how to perform that which is good I find not.

It is so obvious that Paul is writing to make us understand that his desire to do good, just as our desire to do good, is overcome by the sin that is in all of us. The selfishness that dwells within all of us:

For the good that I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do. Now if I do that I would not, it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me.

We constantly battle within ourselves, striving to do what we know is good – good for us, good as told to us in God’s word:

I find then a law, that, when I would do good, evil is present with me. For I delight in the law of God after the inward man: But I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members.

So it is that we love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, (Matthew 22:37b KJV)

While acknowledging that we struggle with sin:

O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death? I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord. So then with the mind I myself serve the law of God; but with the flesh the law of sin. (Romans 7:15-25 KJV)

Where, then is our hope? But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin. (1 John 1:7 KJV)