Question:

Paul said in Romans chapter 7 that he wanted to do the right thing and yet he continued to do the wrong thing, even though  he knew is bad for him,  I feel torn between being a saint and a sinner…  I do not understand why God has planned it that way especially when he knows we are trying to grow in him.  As Paul said we are never free from these two forces..and sometimes it becomes extremely hard to do the right thing owing to one’s weaknesses and shortcomings.  My question is this.  Why did God make us this way?  Doesn’t He feel disgusted with us every day trying to live a better life for him and yet falling most of the times?

Answer:

God created us with free will.  This is a good thing because, without free will, we cannot truly love God true love of another is only real where there is the ability to choose to love.  The problem, of course, is that love is not an easy choice, otherwise it is not real, true, deep love.  The fact that it is sometimes “hard” to love God does not negate the fact that God loves us or that he desires for us to love him.  God is disgusted by/with our sins, but this does not stop him from loving us.  It is like human parents.  We do not like the sins our children commit.  We do not like their mistakes or their lack of respect, but we still love them in spite of their sins.  In fact, nothing could cause me to stop loving my children.  Parents who really love their children do not make it easy to do right.  They do not always “rescue” their children from doing wrong. That does not mean that I approve of all my they do or that I do not love them!

I believ e that you should not feel torn between being a saint and a sinner because to choose to be a sinner is to choose  to hate God, to hate yourself and to hate the people around you.  The better choice–between saint and sinner–is obvious.  This is a difficult process of doing right, but, logically, it is not a difficult choice.  Your choice is heaven or hell.  Is that a difficult choice?   Your choice is between obeying your Creator or rebelling against him.  Is that a difficult choice?  No.   Is it difficult to practically live out a choice to love and to serve God?  Yes, but the choice itself is easy.  Surely you would not defend that it is “better” to be a sinner than a saint.  Surely you would not defend the idea that not loving God is better than loving God.

So, I understand that it is hard to live the Christian life.  God never said it was easy.  But it is vastly better than being a willful sinner and going to hell.  Jesus did say that “my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” (Matthew 11:30), but the Christian life is “easy” and “light” only if we willfully take his yoke on ourselves.  This does not contradict Paul in Romans 7.  All of us have a sinful nature and all of us will suffer with struggles, and I understand why you find the details of the Christian life hard, but the final analysis is not “rocket science.”  Like Solomon put it, “The making of many books is wearying to the soul….”  But the final analysis is easy.  “Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man.”

John Oakes