Whipping Up the Will

E. Stanley Jones was a missionary, a theologian, and a prolific writer. In his devotional book Victorious Living he shows how the will is ineffective in dealing with sin until the self is united with Christ:

"There is one more thing we must look at before we can get to grips with the center of our problem. There are many who feel that the problem will be solved and they will go on into victorious living if they only try a little harder. So they proceed to whip up the will.

"Much of our present-day Christianity is founded on this idea. So our preaching partakes of that note. We lay a demand on the souls of our people--our gospel is a demand. But somehow after a few days the will relaxes and we are where we were. It doesn't work. Why? The reason is that when we say, 'I'll try,' we are still on the basis of self. It is self-effort. But before the self can put forth any real effort it must be released from its inner conflicting desires. On the other hand, when a man says, 'I'll trust,' then he shifts the basis from self to Christ. His attitude is no longer self-centered, but Christ-centered. Niebuhr rightly says, 'The moral fruits of religion are not the result of conscious effort to achieve them . . . Merely taking thought cannot strengthen the will . . . What men are able to will depends not upon the strength of their willing but upon the strength which enters their will . . . Deeds of love are not the specific acts of the will' (An Interpretation of Christian Ethics, p. 220).

"Since the will is the self as it is organized at that particular moment acting against recalcitrant impulses, the strength of the will is in direct proportion to the strength of the self. This strength depends upon the unity of the self.

"But if the self is divided? Then the will is weak. The problem, then, is not the whipping up of the will, but the unifying of the self. But that self cannot be unified until it comes under the control--the complete control of the power of Christ."