The Spirit Is Willing and the Flesh Is Weak (Matthew 26:36-46).

Class Outline:

Thursday February 26, 2026

 

Intro:

 

God will not answer a prayer outside of His will. Paul discovered this and found out that what God said was exactly right - “Power is perfected (matured) in weakness.” Human weakness is not a bad thing when it is understood as the need to draw near to God and receive strength from Him alone. 

 

ACT 10:38

You know of Jesus of Nazareth, how God anointed Him with the Holy Spirit and with power,

 

The spirit is willing - most see this as the inner human spirit, but is it possible that the Lord also has in mind the Holy Spirit that He is to soon send to them.

 

MAT 26:40-41

And He came to the disciples and found them sleeping, and said to Peter, "So, you men could not keep watch with Me for one hour?  41 "Keep watching and praying that you may not enter into temptation; the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak." 

 

No strength:

 

“You cannot watch with me, and yet for me you wanted to give your life?!” [Chrysostom]

 

“Could not” - ischuo = you did not have the strength, ability. 

They were not strong enough to stay awake. 

 

Weakness: inability to do God’s will.

 

People will boast about their human strengths to do things that are not God’s will.

 

JAM 5:16

The effective prayer of a righteous man can accomplish much.

 

PHI 4:13

I can do all things through Him who strengthens me.

 

PSA 51:11-12

And do not take Your Holy Spirit from me.

12 Restore to me the joy of Your salvation

And sustain me with a willing spirit.

 

The spirit is willing, but / and the flesh is weak.

 

Willing means eager. 

 

We are often eager to do things but then do not do them.

 

The flesh is weak. The context points to being human with all the weaknesses that come with it. 

 

Jesus was weak humanity without sin. He was strong humanity because He relied on the Father for everything - just as humanity was designed for.

 

"You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you." [Augustine]

 

The Lord promised them the gift of the Holy Spirit. 

 

Most interpret spirit, lower case s, as the human spirit, or the inner self. Some think it is the Holy Spirit (few) and some take the middle ground, the human spirit dependent on the Holy Spirit. 

 

Let’s explore: 

 

First, the Lord just promised them that He was going to send the Holy Spirit to them: 

 

JOH 14:16-17

“I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may be with you forever;  17 that is the Spirit of truth,”

 

Second: I find it unlikely that He would give us such a memorable statement just to convey that we’re going to be eager to do stuff and not carry it through.

 

Paul expresses the willingness / inability of himself followed by his great ability by the Holy Spirit.

 

Paul in Rom 7 expresses a clear experience in his own life with “the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak”.

 

He doesn’t leave it there. In Rom 8 Paul makes a drastic switch to a new way of life by the power of the Holy Spirit. 

 

ROM 7:18-25

For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh; for the willing is present in me, but the doing of the good is not. 19 For the good that I want, I do not do, but I practice the very evil that I do not want. 20 But if I am doing the very thing I do not want, I am no longer the one doing it, but sin which dwells in me. 

 

21 I find then the principle that evil is present in me, the one who wants to do good. 22 For I joyfully concur with the law of God in the inner man, 23 but I see a different law in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin which is in my members. 24 Wretched man that I am! Who will set me free from the body of this death? 25 Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, on the one hand I myself with my mind am serving the law of God, but on the other, with my flesh the law of sin.

 

He is setting us up for chapter 8 - now the Holy Spirit gets involved.

 

ROM 8:1-11

Therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. 2 For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death. 3 For what the Law could not do, weak as it was through the flesh, God did: sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and as an offering for sin, He condemned sin in the flesh, 4 so that the requirement of the Law might be fulfilled in us, who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. 5 For those who are according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who are according to the Spirit, the things of the Spirit. 6 For the mind set on the flesh is death, but the mind set on the Spirit is life and peace, 7 because the mind set on the flesh is hostile toward God; for it does not subject itself to the law of God, for it is not even able to do so,  8 and those who are in the flesh cannot please God. 

 

9 However, you are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you. But if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Him. 10 If Christ is in you, though the body is dead because of sin, yet the spirit is alive because of righteousness. 11 But if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who dwells in you. 

 

ROM 8:26-27

In the same way the Spirit also helps our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we should, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words; 27 and He who searches the hearts knows what the mind of the Spirit is, because He intercedes for the saints according to the will of God. 

 

ROM 8:37

But in all these things we overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loved us.

 

Conclusion:

 

We must be eager and seeking God’s will in faith, drawing near to Him through His Word, having faith that the Holy Spirit in us will accomplish it.

 

The Holy Spirit will fill us and our eagerness will become the reality of divine fruit to God’s glory. 

 

Your natural talents will flourish as you draw strength and wisdom from God.

 

At times you will be weak and very weak. At times you will be strong, and very strong.

 

Accept fully God’s will at that given moment and be what He wills you to be, and rejoice in Him.

 

Next time we will apply prayer to this principle of weak and strong and see how it will deliver us from temptation.