What is free will? Before determining if we have truly free will, we must define our terms. I asked a lawyer once if he had a free will, and he said “no, but I do charge a flat fee for one!” So we aren’t talking about that kind of a free will.

If you are talking about the ability of absolute self determination, then we also don’t have free will. God will determine that at the judgment, no matter what we say we want. He alone gives eternal life to whom He pleases.

How about not being a robot? Well we do have the ability to choose many things. People have always been willful. So yes, to that extent, we have a free will. But the qualifier is that we are still slaves. At best, we are willful slaves. Here’s what I mean.

John 8:34 says, “Jesus answered them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who practices sin is a slave to sin.”

So in this slavery, we can be willful, but not exercise fully free will. According to Ephesians 2:3, we are by nature children of wrath. As we grow up we add our actions to that nature and deepen our slavery. In Romans, Paul Romans 3:10-12 wrote:

as it is written:

“None is righteous, no, not one;

no one understands;

no one seeks for God.

All have turned aside; together they have become worthless;

no one does good,

not even one.”

What is needed is for a change in our nature, so that we desire to seek after God and be saved. When that happens, we freely choose to follow after God. According to Ephesians 2:1 we were dead in trespasses and sins. There is nothing a dead person can do to respond to anything spiritual. That’s why it’s called “dead”. We were not sick. We were not deaf. We were dead. So how are we made alive so that we can hear and comprehend the Word of God and have a changed nature?

Ephesians 2:4-5

“But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved”

God makes us alive. That’s the only cure for dead people! Once we are live, we use our free will to choose God. Not because we are robots, but because we are now spiritually alive and have the desire to seek after God!