Do I Have Free Will to Choose God?

In the ordinary business of life—what job to take, whom to marry, what to make for dinner—you have a will that chooses freely enough. Lutherans do not deny that. The question here is narrower and far more serious: can you, by your own free choice, turn to God, believe in Christ, and save yourself? To that, the answer of Scripture is no.

Here Luther’s Bondage of the Will speaks bluntly, because Paul does. By nature we are not neutral parties calmly weighing God’s offer; we are “dead in trespasses” (Ephesians 2:1), and the dead do not choose to rise. The natural person “cannot understand” the things of the Spirit (1 Corinthians 2:14); the sinful mind “does not submit to God’s law—indeed, it cannot” (Romans 8:7). A will bound in sin can no more choose God than a corpse can choose to breathe. So conversion is not our decision that God then responds to; it is God’s work that creates faith where there was none. As Luther’s Catechism confesses, “I cannot by my own reason or strength believe in Jesus Christ… but the Holy Spirit has called me by the Gospel.”

This is monergism—salvation is God’s work alone, not a joint venture between God and a willing sinner. And it carries a crucial asymmetry. If you are saved, the credit is entirely God’s; you contributed nothing but the sin He rescued you from. But if anyone is lost, the fault is entirely his own. Lutherans do not teach that God predestines anyone to hell or drags the unwilling to heaven. God earnestly desires all to be saved; where He is resisted, the resistance is ours, not His decree.

Far from being grim, this is the very ground of assurance. If coming to God depended on the strength of your choosing, your salvation would be as shaky as your resolve. Because it depends on God’s choosing and God’s power, it is sure. You did not talk yourself into the kingdom—so you cannot stumble your way back out of God’s grip by running low on willpower. He chose you, and He holds you.