Dallas Willard once wrote:
“People desperately want to be good, even though they are prepared to do what is wrong ‘if necessary’.”
Willard’s statement reveals the core issue of the human experience. Most people want to do good. We really want to. But we’re prepared to do wrong and even justify the wrong. Our thoughts, feelings, bodily habits, and relationships have been trained and conditioned to automatically and naturally respond with wrong. And that preparation easily overrides our want to do good.
So what do we do? Most of us try to exert more willpower to do good. And sometimes in the moment, we’re able to do good. We’re able to muster a smile, to say a kind word, to forgive, to be generous, to resist temptation, or to put another person first.
But we’re like a car out of alignment that is constantly pulling to the left. Our willpower might temporarily pull the steering wheel to the right and straighten the car’s course for a moment. But as soon as we let go, the car automatically pulls to the left again. And none of us are able to exert willpower 24/7. We’re still “prepared” to do wrong. Ultimately, willpower fails.
The solution is to cooperate with God’s grace as it trains us to be prepared for doing right rather than wrong.
“For the grace of God has appeared that offers salvation to all people. It teaches us to say “No” to ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright and godly lives in this present age, while we wait for the blessed hope—the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us to redeem us from all wickedness and to purify for himself a people that are his very own, eager to do what is good.” Titus 2:11-14
The ultimate goal of being trained from doing wrong and for doing right is so we become a people eager to do what is good. And that good is love.
St Paul poetically describes the good that love does:
“Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails.” 1Corinthians 13:4-8
Paul is not exhorting us to be patient or kind or any other aspect of goodness described in his poem. Love does this, not us. That’s why Paul ends his poem with the exhortation, “Pursue love.”
When we pursue love by training with God’s grace to become people eager to do what is good, then love becomes our character. Love becomes our overall disposition so we’re poised and prepared to promote the good of others. As such, love is far deeper than any action, feeling, or intention. As the overall disposition of a person, love cannot be toggled on or off. With a character possessed and shaped by love, we encounter every person and circumstance as a loving person. It is then natural and automatic for us to love every person, whether they are a neighbor or enemy.
A good illustration is Jesus on the cross. Even as he’s being murdered, Jesus cries out on behalf of his murderers, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing” (Luke 23:34). This wasn’t an exertion of willpower, to bless when he would have preferred to curse. He genuinely and naturally forgave, blessed, and loved his enemies because love was his character.
Likewise, we are not called to love our enemies but to become the kind of people who naturally love our enemies. We are to become people possessed by love as an overall character of life. Then every person and situation is met with this overall character. I don’t try to love my enemy. I become a loving person that can’t help but love them.
For those who desire a character shaped by love, it’s tempting to think we can develop this by direct effort. We can mistakenly focus on doing right, exerting our willpower to do good. Back to the car metaphor, no amount of pulling the steering wheel to the right will fix the misalignment that automatically pulls the car to the left. In the same way, no amount of acting right will fix our inner preparedness to do wrong.
Practically speaking, we pursue love by putting into place the conditions from which love arises. Paul writes:
“The goal of this command is love, which comes from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith.” 1Timothy 1:5
Love flows from a pure heart, a good conscience, and sincere faith. These are the sources of love from within a person. So, if we are currently prepared to do wrong, we must change the sources of action in the depths of the human self. In cooperation with God’s grace, we identify and turn from the internal sources of wrong that shape our thoughts, desires, habits, and relational triggers and retrain those dimensions so they become sources of good.
As we pursue love and are reformed and transformed by love, we become people poised and prepared to do what is good.
