‘For the good which I would I do not, but the evil which I would not, that I practise.'
Meanwhile he continues to describe the effects of his fleshliness. ‘(At times),' says Paul, ‘I find myself failing to do the good that I want to do.' The doing of that good is the aim of his life. But sometimes (and in some ways all the time) he finds himself failing, and practising the evil that he does not in his heart want to do. Perhaps he has in mind times when he had intended to pray, but had allowed himself to be diverted, or to sleep over. Or when he would have spent time with God and His word, but had instead found himself doing something else. Or when he had wasted time in trivialities. Many a time he must have regretted having failed to heed the signs which had demonstrated a soul in need whom he had overlooked because he was too busy on spiritual affairs. The judgment of the use of time is a constant problem for the mature Christian in the face of all the possibilities, and in the face of a lost world, and we all fall short in our use of our time, and sometimes feel guilty about it. And the same can apply in our use of money. What should we allow ourselves to spend on ourselves when so many in the world are starving? It is a difficult question. Indeed the truly righteous life presents many problematic decisions that have to be made, and we all fall short at times because of the effects of the flesh.
So at times Paul found that he had to pull himself up because he was doing ‘the evil that he would not'. He was falling short of his own high standards, and more importantly of God's high standards. Even Christians who are seeking daily to please God can at times catch themselves out as being lazy, or greedy, or casual, or lustful, or wrongly judgmental, and so on. They fall short of the glory of God.