The Will to Live
- Strength For Life
- 6 days ago
- 5 min read
When God saves a man, He creates in him something that wasn’t there before. That man receives a new inner man, made in the image of God’s righteousness and true holiness (Eph. 4:24). One of the ways we can think about sanctification is aligning our actions more and more with that inner man that God gave to us. We believers must continually ask how to go about putting on this new man in the many aspects of our lives. One area we must address is the mind. Romans 12 and Ephesians 4 speak of the importance of renewing our mind, or thinking differently.
Our emotions are also an area in which we must put on the new man. In the American west, we Christians have been taught by our culture that engaging our emotions is an important part of sanctification. Worship toward God, relationship with Christ, brotherly kindness for the body of Christ, and charity for the world are often framed in ways that stir up our feelings to act. However, many churches have rightly recognized that sanctification by the power of emotion doesn’t work, although it is an important byproduct of walking with God. However, as we renew our minds in the knowledge of Christ and force our emotions to be cabooses and not engines, we should not forget a third important aspect of our inner man. We are in danger of forgetting it because our culture has forgotten it. We have forgotten our will.
Consider Paul’s examples in 2 Timothy 2:3-6. We are to learn from the soldier, the athlete, and the farmer. The soldier teaches us to endure hardness and resist softness. The athlete teaches us to exert effort with virtue. The cultivator teaches us to labor in hope. Each of these examples, however, has at least one more thing in common: fighting, competing, and farming are activities that require the will to succeed. A soldier who doesn’t throw himself into the battle risks losing his life to the enemy. If a runner or a wrestler doesn’t determine to win against his opponents, he will certainly be defeated by them. Diligent planting and harvesting is a matter of having food to eat, or not. Success at each of these vocations requires will and determination to succeed and even to preserve life.
We are familiar with the idea that Christians are soldiers fighting under the banner of the Lord Jesus Christ. Paul himself identifies believers that way in verse 3. The same comparison is true for the athlete and husbandman. We strive for an incorruptible crown given to us by Jesus (1 Cor. 9:25). The sower sows the word of God (Lk. 8:11). We cannot stop there, however. The question of exactly how a soldier is to fight honorably depends on the answer to many questions. What is the terrain? What is the battle strategy? Which side has the immediate advantage? What is the soldier’s rank? What are his orders? We can ask the same questions of the athlete in verse 5. What is the sport of the one who strives for masteries? Likewise, the husbandman must consider the weather and the soil.
The point is that, just like there are many variables that make each soldier, athlete, and farmer different, every believer has a slightly different gospel calling. Paul and Timothy each had unique opportunities and responsibilities. So do we. In our town, our neighborhood, our workplace, our family, our neighbors and acquaintances, our gifts. In order to know whether we are heeding Paul’s words to “be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus” (v. 1), we are required to first understand what the Lord has placed before us. At our church, there are many different ministries that help to advance the gospel, some directly, and some indirectly. At the very least, most of us have children or grandchildren with eternal souls and the potential to advance either the kingdom of God or the kingdom of darkness.
None of us can do everything. The soldier cannot fight all the enemies. The athlete cannot run every event or wrestle in every weight class. The husbandman cannot sow ten thousand acres of land. What God requires of us is to pick a gospel cause and set our will to it. This does not mean that we think our own effort guarantees success, any more than the discipline of self-control is at odds with the Spiritual fruit of temperance. It is a good and godly thing to determine in your own heart, “as much as lies in me, my family will not go to hell.” We need the strength of will to say, “if I have anything to do with it, my city will not die for lack of gospel witness.” At minimum, our responsibility is summarized by Paul’s words to Timothy in verse 2: “And the things that thou hast heard of me among many witnesses, the same commit thou to faithful men, who shall be able to teach others also.”
The United States, and the broader West has lost its will to live. We are willing to give up our country to immigration, homosexuality, and bankruptcy for the sake of cheap Chinese products and a government safety net. We don’t have the will to preserve our nation’s heritage for our grandchildren. While these are not directly gospel issues, the church’s response to these matters indicates our resolve in spiritual matters as well. 2020 is the best example of this. While COVID and George Floyd were making havoc of the nation, did churches and Christians demonstrate greater righteous resolve than the world? In many cases, no. A Christian who cannot decide whether or not it is safe for him to be at church is not a Christian who will “endure hardness” in gospel areas. Similarly, churches who spoke out against Florida’s Amendment 4 in 2024 demonstrated that they are capable of avoiding the entanglements of the affairs of this life and able to please the Lord Jesus Christ.
Will matters. Determination matters. So does knowing where to fight, how to run, and when to plant. What gospel task has the Lord prepared for you? Identify it, roll up your sleeves, and bend your will to it, “strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus.”
The above article was written by Jonathan Kyser. He is a pastoral assistant at NorthStone Baptist Church in Pensacola, FL. To offer him your feedback, comment below or email us at strengthforlife461@gmail.com.
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