Dear Mom,

Lately I’ve been thinking back to when the kids were little — how their wills showed up early, fierce and unshaped. One day they’d cling to obedience with all their might, and the next they’d resist even the smallest request. But as they grew, their desires changed. What once looked like defiance softened into understanding, and I watched their wills bend — not from lost freedom, but from love and growing maturity. Watching that transformation has made me think a lot about our own hearts before God.

I remember as a child you told me that God gave everyone free will, and that anyone can choose to follow Him if they simply decide to. I understand why that sounds right — it seems fair, even comforting, to think that salvation depends on our choosing. It even appears to get God off the hook for sending people to hell. I get why that sounds reasonable. But the more I’ve studied Scripture, the more I’ve realized that the Bible doesn’t describe human will as free in that sense. It says our will is bound — not by force, but by nature. We act freely, yes, but always according to what our hearts love most.

That’s why Jesus said, “Everyone who sins is a slave to sin” (John 8:34), and why Paul wrote that “no one seeks for God” (Rom. 3:11). Our problem isn’t that God locks the door — it’s that our hearts don’t want to leave the prison.

Let me paint you a picture: if you locked a vulture in a room with a pile of meat and a pile of carrots, which would it eat? It would “freely” choose the meat every time — because that’s its nature. But if that vulture were miraculously changed into a rabbit, its desires would change too. It would just as freely choose the carrots.

That’s the difference between fallen man and the redeemed. In both cases the creature acts freely, but only one has been given a new nature. When God saves a sinner, He doesn’t violate their will — He changes it. He gives a new heart with new desires, so that what once hated Him now loves Him. True freedom isn’t the power to choose sin or righteousness; it’s the power to finally delight in righteousness.

When God saves us, He gives us a new heart. Ezekiel says, “I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you” (Ezek. 36:26). Paul says, “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation” (2 Cor. 5:17). Only then can we freely choose Him, because He has changed what we love. In Christ, vultures, have become rabbits.

John Calvin put it this way: “Man is said to have free will, not because he has free choice of good and evil, but because he acts voluntarily, and not by compulsion. His choice, however, is corrupt, and enslaved to sin.”

So yes, we both believe in free will. But free will only brings us to Christ when it has been set free by His Spirit. Otherwise, it is a will bound in sin, like the vulture bound to meat.

Mom, this is why I find such rest in God’s sovereign grace — the same grace that called us, changed us, and keeps us. My salvation doesn’t rest on the strength of my will, but on the power of His transforming work. I want us to talk more about this, because it cuts to the heart of what the gospel really is.

With love,
Your son

Passages to read together:

• John 8:34–36
• Romans 3:10–12
• Ezekiel 36:26–27
• 2 Corinthians 5:17
• Philippians 2:13