Perfecting Your Will
(week 11, 2003)
Olubi Johnson
We are living in the season in which we will see a perfect Church arise: a Church without spot, blemish, wrinkle or any such thing (Eph. 5. 27).
This perfection will be firstly individual and then corporate.
The scripture speaks of individual perfection: walking as Christ did and doing works that He did in 1 Jn. 2. 5-6, Jn. 14.12 and Col. 1. 27-28.
It speaks of individual and corporate perfection in 2 Cor. 7.1 and Eph. 4.11-15.
Perfection is the spiritual state in which the divine nature in the human spirit completely floods and dominates the soul: mind, will and emotions and the flesh or physical body (Mt. 13.33, 1 Th. 5.23 and 2 Cor. 4.10, 11).
In our article this week we will begin to look at the perfection of the will.
Freewill and the creation of evil
When God made the archangels like Lucifer, Gabriel and Michael and then later man, He gave them a free will that could be used either in submission or rebellion to God.
Now the degree of the freewill given to men is greater than that given to the angels since man was made so much closer to God than angels.
When man fell he became lower than angels, but in his original state he was higher than angels and in Christ now he is higher than angels (Eph. 1.19-2.6, Heb 1.4).
The giving of a free will to created beings is what created the possibility of evil.
Without a free will there would be no evil.
But also without free will there would be no satisfying love and fellowship: all God would have would be robots.
God went ahead to make man with a free will believing that if man saw the folly of using it in evil and provision was made to forgive, correct and overcome any evil man made through the misuse of his free will, then the love and fellowship God desired to have by making man would far outweigh any evil that was created by the misuse of the free will.
This is why Jesus was a lamb slain before the foundation of the world (Rev. 13.8, Eph. 1.4): God made the provision through the sacrifice of Christ to forgive, correct and overcome any evil that is created through the misuse of man’s free will.
Now any man who wilfully refuses to take advantage of this provision will be eternally incarcerated in hell, which was prepared for the devil and his angels who had previously misused their limited free will in rebellion against God (Matt. 25. 41).
Lucifer, or Satan, misused his free will in rebellion against God (Is.14.12-15).
In stunning contrast the Lord Jesus Christ exercised His freewill, as a man on the earth, in submission to God:
John 5:30
I can of mine own self do nothing: as I hear, I judge: and my judgment is just; because I seek not mine own will, but the will of the Father which hath sent me.
(KJV)
Luke 22:42
Saying, Father, if thou be willing, remove this cup from me: nevertheless not my will, but thine, be done.
(KJV)
