Willing and Doing

The words of my text, this evening, you find in Romans and Philippians. Romans, the seventh chapter, the second half of the eig-hteenth verse: “For to will is present with me, but how to perform that which is g“ood, I know not.” And then Philippians, the second chapter and the twelfth verse, the second half, and the thirteenth: “Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling-, for it is God which worketh in you, both to will and to do of His g-ood pleasure.” You see how these two texts appear to contradict one another. The first text g-ives us the experience of a man who says, “To will is present with me.” My will is rig-ht; I am willing to do God’s will; I am willing to do what is g-ood. “But,” he says, “I have not the power. How to perform I find not.” It is a man with whom there is a g-reat gulf between willing and doing. Just the state of a great many Christians. They will what is good, and somehow they have not the strength to perform. They cannot understand it themselves, and others cannot understand it, and yet it is exactly as you have it here. “To will is present with me, but how to perform I find not.” In the second text you have the very opposite. There Paul says, “Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling-, for it is God which worketh in you, both to will and to do according to His good pleasure.” Here is a man in whom Paul says that God does both the thing-s, not only the willing but the doing-, also. Now in these two texts we have just the exact description of the two stag-es of the Christian life that I have been speaking about so repeatedly. You know when we began, last Tuesday, to speak about the carnal and spiritual, I pointed out that there are two styles of Christian living. The one is that of the carnal Christian, who tries to be good but can’t succeed. He always fails; temper and strife and sin get the better of him. The other is the spiritual Christian, who gets the victory. Just so here. There are people who are always complaining. Oh, I do desire to please God; it is my will and purpose to do His will, but I can’t do it. They have not the strength. But there are other Christians, to whom Paul’s words to the Philippians come as a reality. God works, not only to will, but He also works to do in them. Let us try to find out what the difference is between these two states; what the reason is that so many continue in the former state; what the way is to get out of it into the second. Dear friends, don’t you see clearly how much better the second life is than the first? A

man always willing but not succeedingin doing-, or a man both willing and doing- — which is best? Every heart can give the answer. Let every heart pray, God reveal to me how I can get into this blessed life, willing and doing, both.

Now, in speaking about this first stage, I just want to remind you of the place that the teaching in chapter seven has in the Epistle to the Romans. This morning we had the sixth chapter and we saw that Paul says there, to every believer, You are dead in Christ, you are alive in Christ, you must believe it and reckon upon it and then come and present yourself to God. But that is only the beginning of the work of sanciification. He goes on in the end of the chapter to tell them, Now begin at once and work that out; live for righteousness, as servants of righteousness, obeying God in everything. In the seventh chapter he tells them there is something more. After a man begins to try and obey God and live as God’s servant in the performance of righteousness, he comes to an unexpected experience. He finds that he fails, and so Paul, in the beginning of the seventh chapter, says to him, I have to tell 3’ou of something more and something better: 3-ou are not only dead to sin — everybody can understand that that ought to be — but you are actually dead to the law. The Christian answers, The law is good and holy, how can I be dead to the law? Paul tells him the law is indeed good and spiritual; but the law is unfitted for 3’our state, because you are sinful by nature and you cannot keep the law, and so the law just kills you. Your mistake in the Christian life, after your conversion, is this: You try to keep the law and you always fail. The law was g-iven by God, at Sinai, to stir men up to their highest activity, and urg-e them to do their very best, that they mig-ht learn that they must fail, and that they were utterly impotent. That was the work of the law — to convince men of their sinfulness. The believer, when he thinks, I am a reg-enerate man, I must try and keep the law, always fails, because the law always calls you to self-effort; it stirs up self, and when self does its best it can do nothing*. And so Paul, here in the seventh chapter, tells us, you are not only dead to sin, as I told you in the sixth chapter, but you are actually dead to the law. He then g“oes on to teach us more about this. I want you, as you study the Kpistle carefully, to note the teaching” of the second half of the seventh chapter. In the first division of the Epistle that I spoke of this morning- — chapters 1:18 to 5:11 — Paul had spoken about sins, sins in the plural, sinful acts, as transg”ressions, and justification had to do with them. But from the fifth chapter and the twelfth verse he does not talk any more about sins in the plural, but all about sin, s-i-n. Why? In the first half of the Epistle, when he was talking about justification, there he had to speak about sinful deeds, but here in the second half he is about to speak of the power of sin that works in us, and how that power is to be conquered. That is the reason why, in the second half of the seventh chapter, we enter on a new discussion of the subject of sin. The Epistle would have been terribly discouraging if we had not had this seventh chapter. Some people are troubled about it, but I thank God exceedingly for it. What would it have helped me if Paul had, in the first chapter, told me all about sin, the sins of the heathen and the sins of the Jews, and pardon and justification in the blood of Christ, dying- for our sins, but had not told me about the power of sin in my own life? What would it have helped me if Paul had only told me about the sins of the unconverted man? As a believer, I want to know how about the sin of the converted man, sin in the reg-enerate man. And therefore the second half of Romans, seven, is indispensable to a rig-ht knowledg-e of the will of God, it teaches us the precious lesson of our impotence, as the way to full deliverance. I spoke, in one of the addresses,

about there being- needed two convictions of sin; a conviction of sin for the unconverted man to bring- him to repentance and faith, and for the believer a conviction of sin and sinfulness to prepare him for full salvation. That is the apostle’s teaching” here in the second half of the seventh chapter. Dear friends, if you read it carefully, you will see that Paul is speaking- there about the Christian who is a reg-enerate man, who delig-hts in the law of God, longs to do what is right and good, and yet is not able. And why not? The answer is, simply because he has not yielded to the Holy Spirit to work allinhim. Notice in chapter seven, from the seventh verse, the name of Christ is not once mentioned except down at the very verse before the last, “I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord.” Notice, the Holj Spirit is not mentioned. Notice, the man is speaking” always about the law. The word law occurs from twenty to thirty times. The man is always speaking about I and me. It is a regenerate man, doing his very best to keep the law of God, but he fails utterly. That is just the life of the multitude of believers. They are sometimes doing their very best, trying hard, praying and crying to God, Lord help me! but it does not help. What a change comes in the eighth chapter. Paul begins in the second verse, the law, the dominion of the Spirit, of the life in Christ has set me free from the dominion of sin and death. That is it. A new power comes in. The power of the Holy Ghost, to enable a man, not only to will, but to do the will of God. That is the transition from the first state to the second state.

This second state you find described in Philippians second, verses twelve and thirteen. “Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling for it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do.” I remember being very much struck by hearing a^oung missionary at the Cape, when he was preparing to leave the congregation from which we were sending him out, tell of something that had comforted him much. I think it was in a life of David Brainerd; he had read that when he had resolved to go to the mission field, some one said, Well, you are very willing to go, aren’t you? Yes. But how do you know that you will succeed? How do you know that you will be able to hold out and that you won’t turn back? And his answer was this, Well, the God who has given the will, will g“ive the power to perform it. He works to will and to do. That is all we need to have in the Christian life. That is what I want to speak about to-nig-ht, that the same God who has given the power to will, will also g’ive the power to do, so that a Christian need not always live complaining-, I will, I will, but how to perform, I do not find. God will bring- a man to the place where, by the living- power of the Holy Ghost, he can do God’s will and obey God’s command. And that is the life we want. In Romans, seven, we have, as we said, the language of the renewed will. Some people think that it refers to the unregenerate will, I cannot think that, the language is far too strong. In the first place, why should he introduce the condition of the unregenerate man between the sixth and eighth chapters, where he is entirely dealing with sanctification? It would be out of place. He is talking about sanctification and why should he put in this passage about the unregenerate man? I cannot think it. But it is in its right place if he comes to tell me what is of far more interest to me than the state of the unconverted man, if he comes to tell me how things are in the heart of the converted man, this is exactly what I need to know. Therefore I take my text, “to will is present with me, but to perform I find not,” as the language of the regenerate man, and I want to give you some simple lessons which I think these words teach us.

And the first lesson is, the renewed will teaches me the power of regeneration. That God changes the heart and the will and the life and the desire of a man. He turns right from them, and the man who has loved sin, who has not loved God’s will and God’s law, a man who has loved himself and his own will and done it, that man is changed entirely, and he begins to delight in the will of God. I am going to speak to you about the impotence and insufl&ciency of that renewed will to-night. But before I do that, want to magnify that renewed will as the gift of the Everlasting God, and I want to say to you, Thank God, if you can honestly say, “Lord, with my whole heart I have purposed and sworn to do that will.” Never mind if you fail, never mind if you haven’t got the strength to do it yet but hold on and say to God, “Lord, I delight in Thy will, I delight to do it and I want to do it.” The renewed will teaches me the power of regeneration. You find men trying to change their own hearts, to change their own wills, to change their inclinations, but they have found that they could not change it. But God changes it. I have read the story of a Christian woman losing her temper week after week, and going to her bed-room and praying and crying to God for deliverance, and telling how she did it for years and no deliverance came. The will was right, it has been so with many. That was evidence that God’s work was in them, that they did not sit down with the thought, ’ ‘Well, never mind, there is no great harm.” But they never get rest in it. Their will was set upon doing the will of God, though they utterly failed in performing it. And therefore I say to you, my fellow Christians, thoug-h you have not attained yet to the doitig- of God’s will, begin and hold fast that and say, I will what God wills. Say that. In affliction say, even though your heart trembles and you cannot submit; though you cannot bring your heart to do what you want and to be perfectly submissive; say, “Lord, I will what Thou wiliest. I give up my will and I choose Thy will, though my heart refuses to rest.” Or, with regard to any sin that is troubling you and conquering you, say it to God, “Lord, I will to do what Thou hast commanded.” This is my first lesson. The renewed will in my text teaches me the power of regeneration.

But it teaches me, in the second place, the impotence and powerlessness of the regenerate man. Regeneration gives a man a new will, but the regenerate man, after he has got the new will, is an impotent thing. And the great mischief in our churches and among our Christians is that they don’t know that. People think. Well, I am regenerate and I have the grace of God in me and I have got somewhat of God’s Spirit in me and I ought to be able to do God’s will, and they try and do their very best, and they fail. But here comes now the important lesson about the second blessing and the higher life, or the spiritual life, or whatever name you call it by, that God comes and tells the regenerate man, “My son, I have given you a new will, but that new will, alone, cannot help you.” Many a man thinks. If I were only fixed and firm in my will, I would be able to obey God. He groans and cries to God about it. He delights in the law of

God and jet he cannot do what he wants to do. Does that not teach me clearly that a regenerate man is an impotent man? Do I not see it every day of my life? And are there not a hundred witnesses in this building, to-night, who can say it is so? There are some things that a man can’t do; there are some things that he can’t forsake; when you come to the daily temptations of the inner life, the regenerate man is an impotent man. There are men who, for thirty or forty years, have fought against their temper and never conquered it, and they have admitted it with grief. There are men who have fought for thirty or forty years against self-will and unlovingness and they have never conquered it. Why? Because the regenerate man is an impotent man as long as he tries, in virtue of his regeneration, to serve God.

Then comes my third thought. That the regenerate man, if he is actually to do God’s will, needs a new blessing. Needs a new blessing. Yes, that is the great truth which the eighth chapter of Romans teaches us. Paul, in the seventh chapter, is silent about the Spirit, not a word about it. All about the law and the regenerate man who is under the law, still, trying to obey the law. But then he comes in the eighth chapter and says, “Not the law, the power of the Spirit of life in Christ hath set me free from that law which took me captive and which prevented my doing what I really willed to do.” He says, “The Spirit of Christ does set me free.” In chapter seven I have a man who is a captive; in chapter eight, a man who has been set at liberty by God’s Spirit. He goes on to tell me that the Spirit of Christ enables me to walk after the Spirit; by the Spirit I can mortify the deeds of the body, so that I do not do any longer what I do not want to. Oh, the blessedness of knowing” there is a second step! That second step need not be longafter conversion. It sometimes comes with conversion, when the Holy Spirit comes very mightily down upon a man and he at once begins to will and to do. But in the church as it is now, in most cases it does not come at once, and therefore we must preach to you, beloved brethren, that there is a different stage from that, on which most of us live. And what is that stage? That stage is when the Holy Spirit comes and fills the heart and a man believes, not only God does work in me lo will, but God will work in me to do. Oh, the difference between the willing and doing. Take a child. You give a child a sum in arithmetic — a little boy of ten and he is so willing and he does work so hard, and he does his very best. The will is not wanting but he can’t do it. Ah, that is just the will of most Christians; 3’ou have not the power — you cannot do it. We learn here, from Paul, in chapter seven, that the man of whom he speaks hasn’t it. But I can say something else. Oh, my brother, the Holy Spirit is the mighty power of God for doing, and if you will come and begin to say. My whole life must be entirely given up to the Spirit of God, and I must allow the Spirit of God to take the place that I, with my own strength, have been trying to take. My whole life lauat be one of waiting upon the

Spirit of God and rejoicing- in Him. Then God will g-ive, not only to will but to do, also. Glory to God’s name. Let us depend upon it and believe it and rejoice in it. “It is God which worketh in you both to will and to do.”

You ask me, perhaps, why has God arrang-ed it so that there are to be two separate stagfes, the willing- and the doing-? Wouldn’t it have been better and more blessed if God, when He g-ave the will had g-iven me the do at the same time? Why did not God give it to that man in Romans, seven? There is a divine reason for it and that reason is this: When an unconverted man comes to Christ and God asks that man, Will you live to do My will? The unconverted man cannot answer the question, because he does not understand what God’s will is. He is blind. He thinks he knows what God’s will is, but he cannot, in his unconverted state, know what the depth and purity of God’s will is, and how the will of God reaches to the inmost being-. A man, at conversion, cannot yet give a fully intelligent answer to the question. He does not know what it means when he says. Lord, I will do all Thou sayest. Israel, at Mount Sinai, said, “All that the Lord hath spoken, we will do,” but they did not know what they were saying. Just so, when an unconverted man comes to conversion, he does not know what the will of God is. But after he is converted, then God gives him time, a year, or two years, or three years, and, as a regenerate man, he begins earnestly to try and do God’s will. As a rule, he fails utterly. Then God comes and deals with him a second time, and He says, My child, I gave you a new will to love My will and you thought you were able to do it; I want to cure you now entirely of self and self-confidence; I have allowed you to try your best and you have seen how you have utterly failed in the doing of my will. Come now, a second time, and let me give you a new blessing. And if he asks, Father, what is this blessing? Hast Thou not given me the Holy Spirit? God answers Yes, thou art a temple of the Spirit and the Spirit is in thee, but thou hast never understood what it is to have thy whole being entirely filled with the Spirit. Thou hast never understood what it is, all the day and every day to be entirely dependent upon the Holy Spirit. Thou hast never understood how fully and entirely I want thee, in everything, to glorify Me. Come, my child, and I will have a second transaction with thee, and if thou wilt come and transact with Me, as thou didst at conversion, and with a new meaning and a new depth and with new intensity of purpose, will yield thyself to Me, come and say, My God, I have begun to see what is wrong and how I have failed. I now want to come and give up everything to Thee, I want to give up self to Thee, I want to give up self-confidence and self-effort. Then God will give answer, My child, if thou art willing to go down into the death of Jesus, to come to the end of self, I will give the Holy Spirit fully in thee. Jesus had to pass through the two stages. He was born the first time in Bethlehem, but He had to die. He had to give up the life of Bethlehem and He was born a second time out of the grave. He is called the first born from the dead, he was born from the grave into a new life, a life of victor)^ His first life was a life without sin, but a life of weakness and very little power, as compared with His life on the throne. And just so in your life, there can be these two stages. The first stage created in you a willingheart — brought you into the position of a child wishing to do God’s will. My child may wish to do my will, but he is unable to do it. He must grow up into a strong man, at twenty-one he comes of age, and then he can do it. God does not require twenty-one years to do His will, and He sometimes gives it to His child at conversion. But when the church is in such a feeble state as it now is, you find men living as Christians forty or fifty years without it. I come, to-night, to plead with you and to say, God is

willing, my brother, to lift you out of the lower to the higher stage, where you can will and do both. Don’t you understand it is an absolute necessity? God must train us gradually, and God wants us to come to a right sense of our sinfulness and to a right sense of our utter helplessness; when He has so prepared us, He will make true, full Christians of us, with the Holy Spirit dwelling and ruling in us.

This bring“s me now to my fourth thought, and that is the question. Wherein consists the secret of entering into this second blessing? My answer is simply, entire dependence upon God. Let us now look at the text in Philippians, “Work out your own salvation, for it is God which worketh in you to will and to do.” Now just listen a moment. Which of these thing-s must come first? “]]ork out your own salvation, for it is God that ivorkcth in you. Which of the two must come first? Of course God works in you. Work you because God is working-. Work you stands g-rammatically before God works, but really and spiritually it comes after. Paul saj’s, God works, now you work. And, oh friends, what is the g-reat reason that you try to work and 3’ou cannot, that you will and cannot perform? Because you do not believe in the working- of God. You trj’ in your own strength to work. You take one half of the text, “Work out your own salvation,” and you try hard but you fail. Why? Because you do not take the first half — the foundation — work you because God is working- in 3’ou, both to will and to do. What God wants is to bring us there where we let Him work. That is what we had yesterday about Christ bringing us to God. That is what we had this morning about our, when we are alive from the dead, at once coming and presenting ourselves unto God. Don’t you begin to see that God must take a much larger and higher place in our life. If I want, not only to will, but also to do, then the Holy Spirit must teach me to come and wait upon God with a dependence and with a helplessness and with a patience that I never exercised before. I mus’t understand that every day of my life God must, directly from heaven, by the operation of His Holy Spirit, Himself do the working in me. Do you see that? Work for God worlreth in you to will and to do. Ah, it is no wonder that we will so much and do SO little in the spiritual life, and that our life is so full of failure. God has not the place that God must have. It is not wrong” that the whole heart of the sinner is occupied with Christ, for Christ wants to g-et hold of him and to win his love and to take him to Himself. But, when once I am converted and in the hands of Christ, Christ wants to bring me on a step and to bring- me to God that I may receive from God everything- just as Christ did Himself. Christ’s whole life — we saw that yesterday morning — was dependence, dependence, dependence upon God and nothing- else. Every morning- and every nig-ht, from Bethlehem to Calvary, dependence upon God. And if Christ is living- in me, and if my life is to be the life of Christ, and if my life is to be a life of power and of fruit and of work, I must let God work both to will and to do of His g-ood pleasure. Dear Christian friends, I ask myself, sometimes, “Is not the reason of all the weakness in the church of Christ just this: peopled© not know their God?” In the prophet Daniel we read that people who know their God shall be strong- and do exploits. You must know your God. Your God is the great power in the universe that works everything-. He keeps the sun shining. He keeps every little grass green. It is God that clothes the lilies with their beauty. How does He do it? Not from without, not from above, away at a distance, but He gives His life into the beautiful lily as it grows. God is everywhere present in nature; and God wants to be much more distinctly and really, practically present in the heart of the believer. But we do not know it and we do not think about it. Why? It is because we do not listen to His word. God worketh in you, and we do not let His Spirit teach us what God would do for us. Therefore, the question comes to us with unutterable solemnity, Does not the renewed will call us, call all of us, to a life of more dependence on God? Dear friends, if we will consent to live a life of nothing-ness, waiting- upon the living- God, He will work both to will and to do according- to His good pleasure.

And now my last thoug-ht: How to enter into this blessing. My first thought was, the renewed will proves the power of regeneration; it proves the impotence of the regenerate man and it proves the need of something new, a second blessing. And now the last thought: How are we to enter upon the blessing? Is there for us a prospect of real obedience? The man in Romans seven had no real obedience. His heart was right, he was honest, but he failed. It was just the condition of the disciples before Pentecost. You know their hearts were right. Peter’s heart was right when he said, “Lord, I will go to prison and to death with Thee.” He loved Jesus, he was honest, and that is why Christ did not reject him. He was honest but impotent, full of self-confidence and he deceived himself. There was the will, but he could not perform. Look at Gethsemane. Christ said of His disciples when He found them sleeping, “The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.” A word of the deepest spiritual significance. “My beloved disciples, there is in you a spirit that is willing. You love Me and want to watch with Me, but the flesh is too strong”, and you can’t do it. The power of the spirit has not yet conquered the power of the flesh.” But when the Holy Ghost came at Pentecost, the power of the Spirit conquered the flesh, and they were able to do anything, even though they had to suffer for Jesus. Dear friends, how can we enter into this blessing? There is one step. One thing is needful, and what is that? Giving up our life to God. Can we do it to-night? Yes, we can, if the heart is prepared. Just think now for a moment back and ask yourself, Has the picture of Romans seven been your photograph; have you not had to say, “That is exactly my condition?’’ Give answer. When the man cries, here: “‘To will is present with me, but how to perform I know not,” has not that been true of your life very largely? Come, say so if it is before God. And say, “Alas! alas! too much that has been my life.” Well, do you want to remain in that condition? Or, would you love to come to a life in which God will work in you both to will and to do, so that when God makes you will anything that is good, you may be certain that God will help you carry it out? God will work to do in you all things good. Do you long for that? Would not you long, beloved Christians, to do the blessed will of God? “Blessed are they that hear the word of God and do it.” Oh, the blessedness of knowing that I do the will of God! Do you not long for that blessed life? Well, now you have heard about the impotence of the regenerate man. Don’t try any longer to flog and spur and urge yourself with the thought, you must try more, 3’ou must do better, you must pray more. It will not help you in this matter. You must come to despair of your present condition. Here am I, a child of God, knowing- and loving- God’s will, wanting to do it, longing to do it and yet failing. Is there no help for me? Thank God, there is help. And here is the help, Phil. 2:13: “It is God which worketh in you both to will and to do.” “Work out 3’our own salvation with fear and trembling,” for God will work in you. And isn’t that the one step I am to-night to take, out of the life of failure and the life of wrong-doing and the life of Romans, seven, so that I cry, “O wretched man that I am, who shall deliver?” and that I cry, “I thank God, through Jesus Christ there is deliverance?” Is that not the step? And then as I say, “I thank God,” that I come and present myself to God, again, as we had it this morning, as alive from the dead, and I say, “Lord God, now I begin to understand it; as alive from the dead I must present myself to Thee, every day and every hour, for the power must come from Thee, alone. When Thou hadst placed the will in me

and the delight in the law of my God, I thought that that was all, and that now I must try and carry it out. How I have failed. Now I come and present myself unto God, unto God, Himself “We heard this morning why. We heard this morning how, in thanksgiving, in entire surrender to be entirely His, but above all in holy expectancy, we are to say to God, “This life was begun by Thee and must be continued by Thee every minute.” A tree can only live on the root from which it springs.

If an oak springs, to-day, from an acorn, the oak can stand a hundred years, but it must always stand in the root from which it spring’s up to-day. And so, if your new life has sprung up from God, it can only root in God every day, and unless there is contact with God every moment, and unless there is the filling from God every moment, to work the do in you, your life must be feeble. Oh come. Christian, and say, though God regenerated me, and gave me a new heart and a new will, that is not enough. God must give me, and He will give me, the power to carry out the new will. God will do it. Oh come, let us surrender ourselves to God this very night, and enter into a covenant with Him. Dear friends, let us come. Let us plead for pardon, let us surrender ourselves and trust for mercy. I do not know if all are prepared for it, I do not Ijnow if the majority are prepared for it. But if there were only ten souls here, to-night, who have begun to say, “I see there is a second blessing, I see there is a life of liberty and victory, I see there is a life, not only of willing, but of actual performance, I see there is a life of power, in which the Holy Ghost comes and enables a man to do God’s will; I want that life,’’ let them say, “Lord, accept of me. Lord, fulfill now in me, Thy word. I believe Thou wilt henceforth work in me to will and to do. Amen.