“Man is born to toil!”, is an intrinsic principle of the Torah, upon which all of the continued existence of the Torah and Judaism depends. What is the point of a person working under the sun? Fortunate is the one whose toil is in Torah to conquer his evil inclination and to withdraw his hand and flee from any slight possibility of sin, be it in thought, speech or action, and to fulfil any good thing, be it in thought, speech or action.
If a person will say “I did not work hard and I still managed!”, do not believe it, for anything worthwhile is only attained through hard work. It is absolutely certain and obvious that all of the holy people, even our forefathers Avraham, Yitzchak and Ya’akov and our teacher Moshe, had an evil inclination just like ours, but through hard work and much toil they overcame their evil inclinations to cleave to their Creator, until in the end He became their loved one.
It is of course true that there are differences in natures and characters of each person. Some are born holy and their souls are holy souls, and others are exactly the opposite. However, this does not constitute an excuse to sin, nor does it completely exonerate him from the judgment, as even if it lightens the weight of the sin according to the just measuring scales that the omniscient Hashem uses, nevertheless it is evident that Hashem will bring every person to justice, for all that he had the ability to perform and did not do it, and for not having fought with his evil inclination to enable himself to flee from every sin and to fulfil all good things, and it is in the hand of every man to overcome his evil inclination and to overrule his desire in favour of the desire of his Creator, until he becomes great and holy, to the extent that each and every person can become like Avraham, Yitzchak and Ya’akov.
