Psychological Effect of Redemption The Will

Philippians 2:13 NIV

…for it is God who works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose.

What Determines Your Actions?

When I asked Mary Jo to marry me, it was an important moment for her.  She had to make a decision that clearly would dramatically impact her life.  No one else could decide for her although others could influence her decision.  Her parents may not have been happy to have me as their son-in-law but they weren’t the ones given the responsibility of saying “yes” or “no” to my proposal.  Mary Jo might have had many factors weighing on her when I “popped the question”.  She could have thought about my extremely good looks and my hilarious sense of humor and that might have influenced her.  She might also have considered how poor I was, how limited my earning power was as well as all my quirky ideas and how skinny I was and been pushed the other way.  Unconscious forces within her might have impacted her opinion of me, determining factors that she could not explain.  Perhaps early childhood experiences with taller men influenced Mary Jo’s decision.  Maybe fears or lusts or angry feelings had an effect on how she responded.  In the end though, it was her will and hers alone that acted upon my question of marriage.

You have a will, the part of your personality that decides for you what you shall do.  It is what closes the deal.  All day you make decisions.  Your passions influence how your will acts.  You have done things simply because you were angry or broken-hearted or elated.  Your conscious thinking impacts how your will responds to what you face.  You think about things, weigh the evidence and ponder what is happening and how it affects what you might do.  Your unconscious thoughts influence your will.  Sometimes childhood trauma, a destructive forgotten relationship or a humiliating experience will without your conscious knowledge determine the direction your will takes.  Because your heart is poisoned by sin, the will you possess is also damaged by Sin.  For obvious reasons, a healthy and effective will is critical to your well-being because what you decide can have lasting ramifications for you and those you love.

Let us think of the will as the part of us that creates the outward push of self.  When you reach outside yourself and act upon what is percolating within you; that is the will making the determination. Your will drives your actions.  We see this in Philippians 2: 13 in which the Bible says,”…for it is God who works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose.” (Philippians 2:13 NIV)  The will is linked to whatever you do or decide you won’t do.  The Lord’s intention for you is that your will would be free to do as it wishes.  You, my brothers, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the sinful nature; rather, serve one another in love. (Galatians 5:13 NIV)  However, with a free will, we can be wicked and cruel, selfish and filthy or loving and kind, truthful and generous.  It is our will that decides what we shall do.

What is amazing is that the God of the universe does not usurp your will.  Christ asked the two blind men who begged Him for help, "What do you want me to do for you?" (Matthew 20:32 NIV)  When two disciples of John the Baptist started tagging along behind Jesus, He asked them, "What do you want?" (John 1:38 NIV) The assumption underlying God’s relationship with us is that we are free to choose it or not.  “But if serving the Lord seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your forefathers served beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you are living. But as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord." (Joshua 24:15 NIV)  The very call of Jesus to Andrew and Peter was, “Come follow me”.  (Mark 1:17 NIV) It seems that they did not have to follow Jesus if they didn’t want to do so, if they weren’t interested in being “fishers of men”. Even when the Bible calls to us, "Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved…", the will is left to decide how to respond.(Acts 16:31 NIV)

Consider the strange account of King David and his affair with Bathsheba.  The decision David made to sleep with her had disastrous ramifications for him.  It certainly impacted his family as well as those who saw him as a spiritual leader.  How did it affect God’s plans for David and the good He wanted David to accomplish?  The affair did not just hurt David’s reputation but God’s too.  What kind of God chooses men like David to lead His nation?  Given all the bad David’s act of Sin brought, it is interesting that God did not stop him somehow.  But David had a will that God was not willing to usurp even if it meant a disaster would be averted by doing so.  God has made us sovereign in the Will we have been given.  We are free to have Him as Lord or not, free to follow Him or not.

The will does not act in a vacuum however and in many ways it is a slave to forces beyond it.  Saul, the newly crowned king of Israel had been told by God through the prophet Samuel to wait seven days until Samuel returned before offering a sacrifice to God in preparation for the war that was about to begin.  He did wait for seven days but he did not wait long enough for Samuel to return and against God’s will, Saul and his soldiers offered a burnt offering to God.  Some of us have bought expensive presents for people we love even though they have told us not to do it and usually it works out well anyway.  In this case, it didn’t for Saul.  God punished Saul for his disobedience.

At the risk of making it seem that Saul should not have been held accountable for his rebellious act, we must consider the forces working upon Saul’s will.  First, there were his conscious thoughts.  He looked about and saw a great army of Philistines before him who were battle tested and far superior in numbers and weaponry.  As the Bible puts it, they were “as numerous as the sand on the seashore.” (1 Samuel 13: 5) Not only that, his own soldiers were going off and hiding in caves and behind bushes and in cisterns.  It seemed unreasonable to Saul as he considered the situation, not to hurry and offer the sacrifice so that he might gain God’s favor because if he waited much longer, nearly his entire army would desert him and the Philistines would attack.  Saul’s passion was pressuring his will certainly as fear began to overwhelm him.  He may have been angry too with Samuel for taking so long.  Consider Saul’s unconscious thoughts that pushed up against his will.  It was not that long ago that Saul was made king and even though Samuel had told him that he was God’s choice to be king, when it was time to present him to the nation, Saul hid among the baggage gathered off to the side.  When originally informed of God’s plans for him, Saul referred to himself as from one of the most insignificant of all the families among the Israelites.  How this impacted Saul unconsciously, we cannot say but it had to have some effect.  From birth, he saw himself as not good enough, as inadequate and incapable of accomplishing much in life.  Even when assured that God believed he could be king, Saul couldn’t buy it.  This embedded way of seeing himself made it difficult for Saul to accept the challenge of courageously trusting God.

What our Lord did for us as Savior was to take out of us the corruption of our will.  The Sin that makes the will unstable and untrustworthy is removed from it through Christ crucified.  It can function as God intended when He gave Adam the challenge of rejecting the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.  What is more, with Christ joined to us, we can have a will that agrees with God on everything.  Philippians 2: 13 reminds us that now, with Christ as part of us, it is God who works in you to will and to act in conjunction with what He wants.  In other words, God gives your will backbone to withstand the sort of pressures Saul faced. 

There is one powerful force that works on the will that must now be given its due consideration.  Our body, our physical desires can and have made the will a slave.  There is a supernatural component to the will that alters altogether the way we can live.  Do you not know that the wicked will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor male prostitutes nor homosexual offenders nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.  And that is what some of you were. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God. (1 Corinthians 6:9-11 NIV)  There is a tremendous promise here that we must take into account when we consider all those acts that it seems our bodies force us to perform.  It is seen, and we cannot say this strongly enough, that with Christ taking out of us our Sin and the Holy Spirit a part of us, the body cannot force our will into anything.  The will is altogether free in Christ to withstand even the most powerful urges of the body.  We must face this statement head on.  Either God is for us and we are able to fight off any addiction or behavior pattern that our will rejects or the Scripture is a mythology littered with colossal empty promises.

How can you ever know if your will, joined with Christ is strong enough to make free decisions that honor Christ and make your life good?  Jesus offers you an experiment to try.  Find out just how powerful Christ is and how effective His work is in you.  He says without pushing you, "Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it.  But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.”  (Matthew 7:13-14 NIV)  Impose your will upon every single desire that goes against what God is saying to do.  The will is like a great muscle. You must train it to follow God or it will be a slave to your passions, your body, your conscious or unconscious thoughts.  If you take your will in through the narrow gate you might find the way hard and uncomfortable and even some times unreasonable and maybe boring.  But as you train your will to follow Christ, something will happen to you that may surprise you.  God’s peace and contentment will begin to take over your heart and a joy that is supernatural will creep into you also.  The term the Bible uses for this experience is “life” and it is promised to those who bend their will to that of God.  Eventually as you train your will to follow Christ, God’s will becomes your will and you will be “the will of God”.

Passions

Hosea 7:6 NIV

Their hearts are like an oven; they approach him with intrigue.  Their passion smolders all night; in the morning it blazes like a flaming fire.

What Is The Source Of Your Passion?

A few weeks ago I was coming out of the church parking lot and traffic on my side of the road was packed.  Two lanes merge into one right at the driveway of the parking lot and no one was moving due to the stop light at the cross street on the next block.  Normally I just inch into the traffic and drivers let me through.  After all, they aren’t going anywhere and I am not trying to get ahead of them.  I just want to cross into the lane going the other way.  As I began to work my way into the traffic, the first car waved for me to come through and so I started but then all of a sudden, the driver in the car in the second lane quickly lurched forward to block my way through her lane.  At first I could not believe what I had just seen.  Why did she do that?  What good did it do her to not let me through?  Was she crazy?  I did not recognize her and when I stared into her head, she would not look my way.  There I sat in my little car, blocking one lane of traffic but unable to let that lane move forward because I was prevented from going on into the other side of the road.  As soon as the traffic light turned green and the woman was able to move forward and clear the way for me, I wondered at my temper.  What had happened to it?  Why didn’t I get mad at the woman for being rude to me?  More importantly, what if I did get angry and try to retaliate.  What would I have done?

Unless you are a robot, you have passion.  It could be blocked or stymied by your will but you have access to passion, a treasure trove of it.  What you do about your passion is up to you.  It can be poisoned by sin and become a source of tremendous turmoil for you or it can be transformed by God into a valuable part of your personality.  Many are afraid of the passion they possess and try to keep it in check by either fighting against it or attempting to dismantle it.  Others are controlled by their passions and like Legion with his many demons, find themselves taken captive by their passions and made a slave of them.  Perhaps you have known people who showed no emotions and although they seem passionless, it is more likely that they live in constant fear of being dominated by passions that scare them.  Shows like Star Trek romanticize the passionless person and yet that is a mistake.  Passion is a critical part of who we are and how we have been made.  To discount or discredit your passion is like rejecting your lungs or hating your blood vessels.  What we need is an approach to our passions that is not only reasonable but even beneficial.  That is what we shall consider today.

Passions can be defined psychologically as the ruling forces within the heart that drive our actions. They are the powerhouse motors we possess that get us going.  They push us into actions that our will alone can’t initiate.  Without passion we live and act mechanically; just going through the motions of daily life without ever leaving our comfort zone.  Biblically, the heart is the center of who we are.  It is the root of our thinking, our will and our passions.  Sometimes in the Old Testament a term which in the Hebrew is translated kidneys or “reins” is used but it is essentially the same as the heart.  When you read the term heart in the Bible, don’t think of it as the pumping muscle in your chest but as the idea of you and who you are internally.  The heart however, which is the source of the passions, is broken by sin.  As we see in Jeremiah 17: 9, The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure.  Who can understand it? (NIV)

The question of course is rhetorical.  Our hearts are a great mystery to us and nearly unfathomable.  Sin has corrupted them to the core and whether it is the damage brought about by the sins we commit or the sins committed against us, they are a wreck of what God intended them to be.  Each of us is stymied by the heart we have.  We may change a certain behavior or alter some habits, but in the end, there are depths to the heart that make a mess of our “good intentions”.  Paul, in speaking of the heart and its warping of passion said, “I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do.” (Romans 7: 15 NIV)  This a universal experience.  Whether you are from Asia or Africa or Australia, you have acted in ways that were unfathomable to you and maybe even embarrassing.  Why is that?  It is because your heart is warped and unpredictable.

Jesus has a strong take on how damaged your heart is.  For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander. (Matthew 15:19 NIV)   You cannot count on a heart that is so unstable and wrecked.  Any sin imaginable can come out of you and without warning.  Out of this pot come your passions; unpredictable and unreliable.  It is possible though to not be dominated by the passions coming out of your sin damaged and corrupted heart.  The Bible says, So I say, live by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the sinful nature. (Galatians 5:16 NIV) “Desires” is nothing more than your passions as they flow out of the sin percolating in your heart.  There is nothing laughable about what is possible with a heart such as the one you and I possess.  The worst that humanity has to offer is there in your heart and my heart and the passions can drive them out of us like dynamite.

Before we have been born again with Christ living through us, all we have to rein in our corrupted passions is the conscience.  Depending on how strong or weak our conscience is morally and how developed it is will determine what our passions drive us to do.  Of course, as is hinted in Romans 7, the law also can constrain our passions.  But when we have been transformed by the power of Christ crucified into Christians, there is a new force working in us.  For the sinful nature desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the sinful nature. They are in conflict with each other, so that you do not do what you want. (Galatians 5:17 NIV)  The Holy Spirit wages war with the corruption in the heart and this can have tremendous psychological ramifications.

Some of the most anxious and depressed individuals are often Christians who struggle to accept the changes God wants to make in them.  Anger and stress manifest themselves in believers who don’t want Christ to change everything in the heart.  Galatians 5:19-21 provides an ugly picture of what comes out of the heart that is not converted fully by Christ.  The acts of the sinful nature are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions, and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like. I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God. (NIV)  The only curb other than conscience against such behavior is the fear of being caught for doing something bad.  We can hold back some of this ugliness but eventually anything we see in this list of fruit produced by corrupted passions can come out of us without warning.  We find we are angry or bitter or jealous and we say that isn’t us but it is us.  All of this is floating about in the heart unchanged by the work of Christ.  This is the fruit of passion developed in a sin corrupted heart.

We discover in Galatians 5: 22 what God can do with our passions when He remakes them.  They can produce a lifestyle straight out of heaven.  But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law. (Galatians 5:22-23 NIV)  How can our passion begin to develop these qualities?  Romans 5: 5 gives us a hint at the mechanism God utilizes for the transformation of our passions.  And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us. (NIV)  How can the passion in your heart be changed into something that generates the goodness of God in you?  It can only happen when God’s own love is poured into your heart by the Holy Spirit.