Do humans have free will to choose God? Can a starving vulture freely choose a fresh salad over rotting flesh?

Picture a gaunt vulture released into a room where two heaps of food await. One is a pile of fresh vegetables like kale, carrots, and spinach. The other is a mound of decaying carcasses with the stench thick in the air. Which will the vulture choose? Without hesitation, it will lunge toward the rot and feast as though the greens beside it do not exist.

The vulture is completely free to choose. No constraints. No one compels it. No invisible hand guides or restrains it. Two choices lie before it, and with conscious volition, it chooses freely according to its nature.

So in what sense is the vulture free? And in what sense are humans free to “choose” God?

In light of the metaphor, some Christians hold to the idea of “omnivorous vultures,” as if the unregenerate person has a neutral appetite, able to choose the things of God. But Scripture paints a different picture. The human will is enslaved to its desires, and those desires are bent. Left to ourselves, we do not desire, honor, or acknowledge God. We cannot.

John 6:44 No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him. And I will raise him up on the last day.

John 6:65 And he said, “This is why I told you that no one can come to me unless it is granted him by the Father.”

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

Romans 3:10–12 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.

Romans 6:20 For when you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness.

Romans 8:7-8 For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God’s law; indeed, it cannot. Those who are in the flesh cannot please God.

1 Corinthians 2:14 The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned.

1 Corinthians 15:22 For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive.

2 Corinthians 4:4 In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.

2 Corinthians 5:17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.

Ephesians 2:1,4-5 And you were dead in the trespasses and sins. 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.

I’ve noticied that new believers often naturally focus on the part of salvation they felt most directly: “I chose God.” And that’s true. We really do choose Him. But if you rewind the story far enough, you begin to see that behind every step, every desire, every moment of conviction and illumination, God was already at work. Why did you want to read Scripture? Why were your eyes opened to see beauty and truth in Christ? Why did your heart soften instead of harden? Follow the thread back far enough, and you always end at God’s gracious initiative. The deeper you look, the more clearly you see that we chose Him only because He first chose us. Because He softens our hearts, opens our eyes and ears, and changes our very nature so that our desires are transformed. Only then are we truly free. Regeneration precedes faith.

Ezekiel 36:26-27 And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules.

When God steps in to override and alter the physical and chemical nature of His created world, we call these scenarios “miracles” (e.g. water becomes wine, a wooden staff becomes a snake, multiplication of bread and fish, the dead coming back to life). He acts in a similar way when He transforms the sinful, rebellious nature of humans. The salvation of every Christian is therefore a miracle: a divine intervention that changes the very nature of the person such that they can truly choose Him. Soli Deo Gloria.