In the first two episodes of our discussion on the human will, we saw:
b. The Human Will – God’s gift to man
In this episode, we shall briefly look at two key points: how the human will is corrupted and its consequences.
Corrupting the Will of man
The will can hardly be imprisoned, for even while bodily in prison, a man can choose to be free in the soul. Since Satan is unable to imprison your will, he gives you options to choose from – options of what to think about, how to dress, what to eat, do, read, watch, listen to etc because your will remains yours. He aims to corrupt this pure gift that your Creator gave you.
So, what satan does most times is to attempt to determine the options available to you. He knows that if he can generate as many unholy options as possible, you’re likely to pick from one of them. He’s ready to give you as many bad options as possible until the good option becomes marginal in your eyes and unappetising to your flesh. And when he can’t make the good lose importance, he’d still make you tend towards the evil, harmful options.
Although it’s yours, the actions of the Will are significantly conditioned by your flesh. So, in the end, it is the stimulus (option) that pleases the flesh most that often determines the decision the Will takes. That doesn’t mean that the will doesn’t go against the flesh sometimes, however, most times we choose what will appease the body and make us feel good.
Now, remember that the body doesn’t get born again, so it is easy prey for satan to deceive through the lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh and the pride of life. So, satan can reduce man’s willpower to a mere fleshpower, blunting out the sharpness and force of this precious gift. When this happens, the will becomes a servant to the flesh, a colony of the body kingdom.
We saw what happened in the Garden of Eden. Adam and Eve had the freedom to choose whether or not to eat the fruit of the forbidden tree. Adam and Eve were free to choose whether to listen to the serpent (thereby eating the fruit) or to listen to God (thereby not eating the fruit). And we know what choice they made – they chose to eat the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (Genesis 3) and corrupted man’s will.
Consequences of the decisions of the Will
One thing to note however is that whatever we do with our will has consequences, which could be good or bad depending on the choices we made. Adam and Eve used the free gift of this will to make a choice of eating the fruit from the forbidden tree (Genesis 3:6). The consequence of their choice was death and the entire human race inheriting the fallen nature of sin at birth. Jesus made a choice to surrender His will to God (John 5:30; 6:38; Matthew 26:39) and the consequence is the salvation of our souls as we believe in the vicarious death on the cross, renounce our sins and accept Him as Lord and Saviour.
The prodigal son made a choice to leave his father’s house with his own quota of his father’s wealth. But the consequences of that use of his will wasn’t palatable after a while. But when he decided to return his father out of his own will, his father received him back (Luke 15:11-32).
God says in Ecclesiastes 11:9, “Rejoice, young man, while you are young, and let your heart be glad in the days of your youth. And walk in the ways of your heart and in the sight of your eyes, but know that for all of these things God will bring you to judgment.”
People will be judged and thrown into hell because they used their will wrongly. I pray that you won’t be among that group.
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God bless and keep you.
click here to read Part 4: The Potency of an Aligned Will
