The Source of a Separate Will

The following helpful words from Fred Pruitt in his booklet Free Will express the freedom that is in Christ from having to make our "own" choices as opposed to living by the life of Another, the Lord Jesus within us:

"There had been no impediments on Adam and Eve before that [before they ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil]; all was free, except the one thing. In breaking off and leaving the one will of God in which they were living spontaneously in freedom and innocence, they came immediately under the harsh taskmaster dominion of the 'god of this world,' which included having to worry every single day and every single moment over every choice they made, whether it was good or whether it was evil, whether it was right or whether it was wrong.

"Do we go this way to the market, or do we go that way? What had been before no issue at all--'freedom of choice'--had now become a living nightmare, as more choices than one could ever possibly contend with suddenly popped out of every inch of creation. Moral choices, emotional choices, intellectual choices, faith choices, what do we have for dinner choices, etc.

". . . Among those things which He [Jesus] restores or redeems from the fall, is the wayward human will. It was never meant to be broken off from God as if it were a separate entity alone. There is a human will, but it is eternally meant to be a reflection and expression of the one will in which it finds its existence, the will of God. It was never meant to stand alone and be something on its own.

". . . Any supposed 'will' other than God's is false, emanating from unbelief, and is sin, and Satan is the person of sin, and is sin, and its originator in us. (Likewise, even as we are never 'in charge,' we are also never originators. Everything we have we have received.) Satan is the originator of any non-God will, any separate 'I'll go my own way' will. He is the secret inhabitor of any 'own will.' (Prov 1:31; Is 53:6a; Is 56:11; Ez 22:31; Ez 36:17; John 8:44).

". . . Jesus walked around confessing only one will--God's--and He firmly confessed to be doing nothing except fulfilling it, something which made all His opponents gnash their teeth and eventually seek His death."