Do We Have Free Will?

Question 5037.

Free will is one of those subjects where philosophers tie knots, theologians draw swords, and ordinary believers quietly wonder what they are allowed to think. So let me say at the outset where I stand: yes, we have free will, because the Bible everywhere treats human beings as responsible persons whose choices are real, and everywhere summons them to choose. But that freedom is creaturely, wounded by sin, and never for a moment independent of God. Getting those three qualifications right is the whole task, so let me take them in turn.

Scripture Assumes Free Will on Every Page

From Eden onwards, God addresses man as a chooser. “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat” (Genesis 2:16-17) is a command with a real alternative attached; a puppet needs no prohibition. Moses sets the pattern for the whole Bible: “I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse. Therefore choose life” (Deuteronomy 30:19). Joshua thunders it: “choose this day whom you will serve” (Joshua 24:15). And the Bible’s last chapter is still extending the offer: “let the one who desires take the water of life without price” (Revelation 22:17).

Judgement itself presupposes free will. God “will render to each one according to his works” (Romans 2:6), and no honest court punishes a machine for doing what its programming compelled. When Jesus wept over Jerusalem, His words were, “How often would I have gathered your children together… and you were not willing!” (Matthew 23:37). Note where He locates the tragedy: not in the Father’s decree but in their will. Whatever theology cannot accommodate that sentence needs revising.

Free Will Does Not Mean Unlimited Will

Now the first qualification. Creaturely freedom operates inside limits we did not choose: you did not select your century, your parents, your abilities, or the number of your days. The king’s heart is a stream the LORD channels (Proverbs 21:1); man proposes, God disposes; “many are the plans in the mind of a man, but it is the purpose of the LORD that will stand” (Proverbs 19:21). Scripture sees no contradiction here. Joseph’s brothers acted freely and wickedly, yet “God meant it for good” (Genesis 50:20); wicked hands freely crucified Jesus, yet He was “delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God” (Acts 2:23).

God’s exhaustive foreknowledge does not cancel free will either. He knows every choice you will make, and even every outcome of choices you will never make (1 Samuel 23:11-12; Matthew 11:21), but knowing is not causing. A weather forecaster with a perfect record still does not make it rain. I have worked through this puzzle at length in if God knows everything, do we have free will?. The God who knows the end from the beginning governs history through, not despite, billions of real decisions, and He is King enough to do it without turning persons into puppets.

Free Will in Chains

The second qualification cuts deeper. Since the fall, the will is free in its choosing but enslaved in its direction. “Everyone who practises sin is a slave to sin”, said Jesus (John 8:34). The sinner freely does what he wants; the bondage is in the wanting. A man is at liberty to choose between a thousand roads while his compass is broken, and fallen hearts, as I showed in are we born sinners?, are bent from birth. We do not lose the faculty of choice; we lose the taste for God. “No one seeks for God” (Romans 3:11) describes not an inability to lift the hand but an unwillingness to lift the eyes.

This is why salvation can never be a simple exercise of willpower, and why Scripture says the new birth is “not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God” (John 1:13). Left entirely to ourselves, we would freely and forever choose the far country. Any doctrine of free will that forgets the chains is flattery, not theology.

Grace That Frees the Will

But God has not left us entirely to ourselves; that is the gospel’s hinge. Jesus said, “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him” (John 6:44), and He also said, “And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself” (John 12:32). Put the two together and you have my position exactly. The drawing is indispensable, and the drawing reaches everyone. The Holy Spirit convicts “the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgement” (John 16:8); the light “enlightens everyone” (John 1:9); grace brings the prodigal to his senses in the pigsty. God takes the initiative, opens the eyes, woos the rebel.

Yet drawn is not dragged. The drawing can be resisted, and tragically is: “you always resist the Holy Spirit” (Acts 7:51); “you refuse to come to me that you may have life” (John 5:40). Here I part company with my Calvinist friends, who make the effective drawing selective and unfailing, and with any view that leaves man to initiate his own return. Scripture presents a God who genuinely enables every sinner to respond and genuinely holds every sinner responsible for the response. When a person believes, all the glory is God’s, whose grace made it possible from first to last. When a person perishes, all the blame is his own. “You were not willing” remains the epitaph of the lost, never “you were not chosen”.

Faith Is Not a Work

Someone objects: if my free will supplies the believing, does faith not become a work that earns salvation? Paul answers directly: “to the one who does not work but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness” (Romans 4:5). Faith, by its very definition, is the opposite of a work; it is the empty hand that receives, the beggar accepting bread. No one boasts of having accepted a rescue. In my understanding, faith logically precedes regeneration: it is the one who believes who is then born again and justified, not the regenerate person who is afterwards enabled to believe. “Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved” (Acts 16:31) means what it says, in that order.

And once saved, the believer’s will itself is progressively healed. “It is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure” (Philippians 2:13). The Christian life is not the surrender of free will but its restoration: for the first time, the compass points true, and choosing God begins to feel like coming home. “For freedom Christ has set us free” (Galatians 5:1).

Why Would God Risk Free Will at All?

Why did God make creatures who could refuse Him? Because He wanted sons, not circuitry. Love that cannot be withheld is not love but reflex; obedience with no alternative is mechanics, not worship. The same free will that made the fall possible makes genuine love possible, and God judged the treasure worth the tragedy, knowing the cross was the price. Even the angels were made with this dignity, as I explored in do angels have free will?, and the redeemed will carry it, confirmed in holiness, into eternity, where free will in heaven will finally be freedom in its fullest form: wanting one thing, and wanting it forever.

So the doctrine of free will is not a concession God made to human pride. It is part of the image of God in us, the terrible and wonderful capacity to answer our Maker with a yes or a no, and to mean it.

One pastoral word before we finish. Some sensitive believers torment themselves over whether their faith was truly their own choice or somehow not theirs at all. Scripture gives you permission to stop the interrogation. The Father drew, the Son died, the Spirit convicted, and you, enabled by all that grace, believed; both things are fully true, and heaven records it as your faith while you record it as His gift. “Whoever comes to me I will never cast out” (John 6:37) covers the philosophy you cannot untangle. You came. He keeps. Rest there.

So, now what?

Stop using either extreme as a hiding place. If you lean fatalist, “whatever will be will be”, remember that God has set life and death before you and commands you to choose. If you lean self-made, remember that without the Spirit’s drawing you would never have wanted God at all, so let gratitude replace pride. Believer, present your freed will daily to the One who freed it; that is worship. And if you have never yet said yes to Jesus, understand what your hesitation is: not a lack of evidence but a decision in progress. He is drawing you even now, or you would not have read this far. What will you do with the freedom He died to redeem?

“I call heaven and earth to witness against you today, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse. Therefore choose life, that you and your offspring may live.” (Deuteronomy 30:19, ESV)