More
powerful than our mind and more powerful than our emotions is the act of our
will, or in the case of the Christian, the submission of our will to the will
of God.
Nowhere
do we see that battle better than in Romans 7, where Paul acknowledges the war
raging in his soul, “to will is present with me, but how to perform what is
good, I do not find.” Although he is writing in the present tense, it is a victory
that he will explain in chapter 8, and obviously he knows it in chapter 7 but
is allowing the readers to journey with him into the solution.
He also
alludes to this fight in Galatians 5, describing the flesh lusting against the
spirit and vice versa, with the field of combat waging in his soul. Peter also
speaks of doing the will of the Gentiles (that is, those who are not led by the
Spirit). Paul discusses that the mind of Christ submitted to the will of God,
and that gave Him and us the victory over the flesh. The will of God is
stronger than the will of the flesh for those who submit to it.
It was the
mind of Christ who prayed “let this cup pass from Me” but it was the will of
Christ submitted to the will of God which prayed, “nevertheless not My will but
Thine be done” (see Luke 22:42). Like a body builder who works out his muscles,
we are to work out our salvation by allowing God “to work and to will according
to His good pleasure” (Phil. 2:13).
Suddenly,
when we surrender our will to His, His pleasure becomes ours. Paul said in the
next few verses that it was his pleasure even to be poured out as a drink
offering for the church at Philippi (2:17).
Someone
asked me the other night what JUBILEE meant. It was taken from the Levitical
law, Leviticus 25, when the people celebrated their freedom, when they were
released from their debts. They sounded a trumpet. We burned a note of our
debt.
But
when we celebrate the fact that we are spiritually set free, we do something even
more powerful than burning a piece of paper or blowing a sound through a ram’s
horn. We surrender to God, heart body and soul. And it is then that we find
true liberty and freedom.
