634 The Spiritual Man
he has spent time in examining the will of God. Wherefore in the
practice of obedience the believer goes through the following steps:
(a) willingness to do God’s will (John 7.17); (b) revelation of that
will to his intuition by the Holy Spirit (Eph. 5.17) ; (c) strengthening
by God to will His will (Phil. 2.13) ; and (d) strengthening by God to
do His will (Phil. 2.13). God never substitutes Himself for the
believer in carrying out His will; consequently, upon knowing the
will of God he must will to do it and then draw upon the power of the
Holy Spirit to work it out.
Why must the Christian. draw on the power of the Holy Spirit?
Because standing alone his will is very weak. How true are those
words of Paul: “I can will what is right, but I cannot do it” (Rom.
7.18). One must be strengthened by the Holy Spirit in the inner man
before he can practically obey God. Hence God first works in us to
will and then works in us to work for His good pleasure (Phil. 2.13).
God reveals His will in our spirit’s intuition and there supplies
strength to us both to will and to work out His will when our volition
is united to Him. He demands that we be one with Him, but He never
uses our will for us. The purpose of God’s creation and redemption is
to give man a perfectly free volition. Through the salvation
accomplished by the Lord Jesus on the cross we Christians now can
choose freely to do the will of God. All the charges in the New
Testament concerning life and godliness are to be either chosen or
rejected as we so wish and will. Such charges would mean nothing if
God were to annihilate the operation of our volition.
A spiritual Christian is one who has full authority to exercise his
own volition. He always should choose God’s will and reject Satan’s.
While at times he is uncertain whether something is from God or
from the devil, yet he is able to choose or reject. He can declare:
Even though I know not if this is of God or of Satan, yet I choose
what is God’s and reject what is Satan’s. He may continue to be
uninformed but he can continue to maintain the attitude of wanting