The Bible teaches that sinful humans cannot cooperate in becoming Christians. They lack a free will to choose to believe in Christ. Every person is born with an enslaved will in spiritual matters.

After the Holy Spirit turns sinful unbelievers into Christians, how much can those Christians then contribute in making spiritual decisions and in living for Christ? In this matter the Bible teaches that we Christians can and do contribute, although with great weakness. As long as we live here on the earth, we are weakened by the sin still living inside of us. Yet each of us also has a restored free will that wants to live for our Savior.

Christians are a new creation

Christians have God to thank for the presence of a free will. He worked a great change in us, because sin left us totally dead, ignorant, and in darkness. “Because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions” (Ephesians 2:4,5). Just as God will work a miracle when he raises dead bodies, so he worked a miracle when he made us spiritually alive. Through the Holy Spirit’s power, we believe in Jesus and joyfully confess him as our Lord and Savior (1 Corinthians 12:3). We give God all the credit for what he has done.

At our baptisms God made us new creatures who love him and delight to do whatever he commands. In the Scriptures we are encouraged “to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness” (Ephesians 4:24). In a similar statement from God’s Word, we are told that we “have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator” (Colossians 3:10). By his power God restores his image in believers—an image he created in humans in the beginning. It reappears in the new self.