The One Who Wills to Do Good

Here Paul states his own experience as a model for what all Christians should expect to experience at various times in their Christian life. “For what I am doing, I do not understand.” “For what I will to do, that I do not practice; but what I hate, that I do.” Here is a regenerate man; we know this for he had “a will to do” what was right, but he found he did not practice it consistently. The thing that he hated, which was sinning against God in his heart and his thoughts and at times even in some of his actions, and his neglect of doing God's will at other times and not keeping His commandments, this was what he was doing. He was not committing gross sins; he was walking in the truth, but he found to his dismay that his progress in righteousness and holiness was not at all what he would have hoped or liked it to be. He does not understand this inconsistency, this conflict between what he willed to do and what he actually found himself doing which was sinful.