[QUOTE=PeterJens;2659633]Total inability is a belief that who we are means we are sinners to the day we die.
We can never walk righteously or be acceptable to God, only if God looks at us through Christs righteousness.[/QUOTE]
Not total inability, but partial.
Romans 7:14-25 (NASB)
[SUP]14 [/SUP]For we know that the Law is spiritual, but I am of flesh, sold into bondage to sin. [SUP]15 [/SUP]For what I am doing, I do not understand; for I am not practicing what I would like to do, but I am doing the very thing I hate. [SUP]16 [/SUP]But if I do the very thing I do not want to do, I agree with the Law, confessing that the Law is good. [SUP]17 [/SUP]So now, no longer am I the one doing it, but sin which dwells in me. [SUP]18 [/SUP]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. [SUP]19 [/SUP]For the good that I want, I do not do, but I practice the very evil that I do not want. [SUP]20 [/SUP]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. [SUP]21 [/SUP]I find then the principle that evil is present in me, the one who wants to do good. [SUP]22 [/SUP]For I joyfully concur with the law of God in the inner man, [SUP]23 [/SUP]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. [SUP]24 [/SUP]Wretched man that I am! Who will set me free from the body of this death? [SUP]25 [/SUP]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.
ALL PRESENT TENSE, all currently happening as he writes. Because of our carnal, corrupt flesh, we are never in total ability to perform God's will. But our inner man has the heart to do it.
Romans 7:22 (KJV)
[SUP]22 [/SUP]For I delight in the law of God after the inward man:
[HR][/HR]2 Corinthians 4:16 (KJV)
[SUP]16 [/SUP]For which cause we faint not; but though our outward man perish, yet the inward man is renewed day by day.
The Lord searches & knows the inward man, for it is the heart of man that matters to Him
Psalm 44:21 (KJV)
[SUP]21 [/SUP]Shall not God search this out? for he knoweth the secrets of the heart.
[HR][/HR]Psalm 139:23 (KJV)
[SUP]23 [/SUP]Search me, O God, and know my heart: try me, and know my thoughts:
[HR][/HR]Jeremiah 17:10 (KJV)
[SUP]10 [/SUP]I the LORD search the heart, I try the reins, even to give every man according to his ways, and according to the fruit of his doings.
[HR][/HR]Jeremiah 29:13 (KJV)
[SUP]13 [/SUP]And ye shall seek me, and find me, when ye shall search for me with all your heart.