Day 44: Living Daily in Reality: Why Can We Not Do Right?
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Paul expressed in the first century the paradox many of us
have experienced: “We know that the law is spiritual, but I am carnal,
sold under sin. I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what
I want, but I do the very thing I hate. Now if I do what I do not want,
I agree that the law is good. So then it is no longer I that do it, but
sin which dwells within me. For I know that nothing good dwells within
me, that is in my flesh. I can will what is right, but I cannot do it.
For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I
do. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I that do it, but
sin which dwells within me. So I find it to be a law that when I want to
do right, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God, in
my inmost self, but I see in my body another law at war with the law of
my mind and making me captive to the law of sin which dwells in my
nature. Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of
death?” Then he answers: “We know that our old self was crucified with
him so that the body of sin might be destroyed, and we might no longer be
enslaved to sin.”

Our Maker made us part of his only Son so that he could have
other children who would live with Him forever. To give us the chance
to freely accept his will, he allowed us to express or repress his son’s
Spirit in us so that we could see in this world what life without him is
like and what life with him is like.

Thus we see day by day what happens to the world and us
ourselves when we live as if there’s no God and as if we know best. So
we miss badly our maker’s love and approval and we try to make up for
them by getting them from the world of people and things around us.
This whole attitude is known as sin – living as if there’s no God. The
result is a deep perversion of our own natures which become more and more
like “bodies of sin” – personalities – minds, emotions, wills that are
twisted to get from the world what we’re meant to get from God. This
corruption is so complete that only the Maker can remake us – and this is
what God did in eternity outside this time-space world – in his Son’s
death and resurrection. Here is set forth the reality of God
maintaining his own integrity by bearing in himself the parody we have
created as part of his son.

This perversion of our psychological and spiritual natures
is worked out daily in our practical lives; it is part of the temporary
unreality in which most of us live, but which all of us can replace with
the new version of ourselves that has already been made in Jesus Christ.
Our own frustrations and failures come from thinking they stem just from
our own weak wills rather than the total corruption of our natures that
only our Maker can rectify. This also explains why our endless
self-help techniques are always unable to bring us total deliverance or

change. The problem is not just our wills or our minds or our
environment or our heredity – the problem is the radical perversion that
has occurred in our original nature. We have to be changed deeply –
really destroyed and remade by our Maker. But this can occur only if we
see the need for it – and only if we want it! These are the two factors
that we confront day after day on this earth.