Do Christians believe in free will to believe or are we predestined to be saved and unsaved

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Thank you so much for this really important question. My wife actually struggled a lot with this for many years. To reconcile free will with predestination, specifically questioning whether her actions truly matter at the end of the day and how fair this was. She says she will still struggle with the mysterious aspect to some of this, but what helped her find peace was accepting a baseline truth that made everything else make more sense to her.

The foundational premise that she had to accept was that "all have fallen short of the glory of God". As King Solomon noted in , everyone sins, and we are all heading toward the consequences we deserve because, in our free will, we chose to rebel against God and continuously do little and big things that we know are wrong every day. While we deserve those consequences, God, in His grace, sought a way to save the people who turned from Him. We were all going to perish. In that context, He stepped in to open a way for everyone to be saved. Everyone who believes that Jesus died and rose again to save us from our sins would have eternal life. This is more than we deserved. That God would freely choose to save any of those who spat on Him and ignored Him is mind boggling to me. To fully understand and believe in that wholeheartedly gave my wife the ability to see the goodness of God and humbly accept how God decides to operate in this.

The really hard part for my wife to understand is that God gives the gift of true belief and faith to some people, causing them to see God's goodness, recognize who their true savior is and choose God out of their free will and become saved, while others are ultimately left to keep turning away from God and go down a destructive path.

The question of why God does not ensure that all are saved, or why He does not gift everyone with belief that’ll influence their free will to align with Him is based on an unbelievably complex, divine and infinitely nuanced thought process that is God’s wisdom. He allowed pharaoh to continually choose his stubborn ways, and we were able to see what God would do to free His people. He intervened to make Saul, someone who was persecuting Christians, see the truth and transform completely into a person of great faith . He didn’t do this for other people in His position; the reason for why He chooses some and not others to receive faith is a mystery, but God has His reasons for doing so.

Let's look through some other verses: says that "For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters." The idea of God "foreknowing" something is that because God is not limited by space and time, but is outside of it, He can see the entire timeline of creation and human history, and be able to know what events will happen as He is the one that establishes and is not only aware of things that happen, but is sovereign over the things that happen . From a predestination standpoint, God already knows who is saved, and who is not saved.

Now regarding the free will to believe, in , it says "faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God". What this means is that faith comes from hearing about who God is, who Jesus is, and what God has done for humankind by sending His only son Jesus, to die for our sins so that we might be able to be with him. Mankind does have the free will to decide whether or not they want to hear the word of God, which then in turn, leads to them to believe down the line, given that God enables them to have faith (but it requires God to enable a person to have faith).

In the passage of "for this people's heart has become calloused; they hardly hear with their ears, and they have closed their eyes. Otherwise they might see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their hearts and turn, and I would heal them". It is mankind that chooses to close their eyes, and refuse to hear with their ears that is stopping them from having faith.

One final passage in describes that non believers are encouraged to call out to God for being able to see, hear, and to understand. In , a man called out "I believe; help my unbelief'. He knew that he needed God's help to have the belief that he didn't have.

A final thought, if you do not yet believe, but wish to believe, I encourage you to continue to read the Bible, to ask questions, and to ask God to give you the belief that you are looking for.

May God bless you!

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