What it Means to Become a Christian

A Christian is a person who believes that God has revealed himself in the person of Jesus Christ, in order to bring human beings back into fellowship with him. That fellowship was broken by sin. Through his death and resurrection, Jesus Christ overcame sin and death. Those who put their trust in him can also overcome the power of sin and can have eternal life.

But many people are uncertain what it means to trust Christ and become a Christian. This act involves your total being, for Jesus said we are to love God with "all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, and all your strength." So there are several basic steps involved in becoming a Christian.

• First, becoming a Christian involves your mind. To become a follower of Christ, we must turn from the old way of living and thinking, and believe Christ's message of hope, forgiveness and love. We must admit that we have sinned and rebelled against God. We must then repent of that sin and turn toward God through his son, Jesus Christ. Becoming a Christian means accepting the truth that in Christ, God has judged sin and evil and has overcome death. So the first step in salvation is to turn from your old ways of thinking and acting and to believe that through Christ's life, death and resurrection, God has accomplished your salvation.
• Becoming a Christian also involves the heart, the capacity to depend on Christ and trust in him to apply his saving work to our sinful lives. You must do more than merely give mental agreement to the facts of the gospel. Rather, you must allow God to work in you, giving you the ability truly to depend on Christ to forgive your sins and to bring you from death to life. This means that you trust Christ to provide for you what you cannot provide for yourself: deliverance from sin. You must ask him to forgive you and to save you.
• Finally, becoming a Christian involves the will, your capacity willingly to follow Christ each day in every aspect of your life. Christ calls us to deny ourselves and follow him in obedience to his command. He has given us a new commandment: that we are to love God with all our heart, mind and soul, and to love our neighbor as ourselves. Becoming a Christian thus includes not only mental assent to the gospel message and heartfelt trust in Christ's work to secure your forgiveness, but also a willful commitment to follow Christ and submit to him as your Lord.

So becoming a Christian is a response of the mind, heart, and will to the call of God, who invites us to be reconciled to him and follow him. Becoming a Christian occurs at the moment of commitment, but the process of becoming Christian takes a lifetime of growth and communion with God.