How Do I Become a Christian?
Say yes to Jesus!
Jesus came from heaven to seek and to save people who know they’ve messed up. When the religious elite in Jesus’ day saw Jesus spending time with “sinners” they accusingly asked why he had such a disgusting habit.
Mark 2:17 (NIV) On hearing this, Jesus said to them, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”
Jesus did not come to find people who had it all together to form a movement of people who were the cream of the crop. Why not? Because from God’s perspective, we are all infected with sin, and since God is Holy, and we are not, we have a problem. Holiness and unholiness do not share a friendly relationship. God sent Jesus to do something about the problem we have that separates us from Him. The only way a relationship with Almighty Holy God will work is if we see ourselves as people who have a problem and we see Jesus as the solution. We are not “mistakers” in need of a life-coach, we are a sinners in need of a savior.
How was Jesus the solution to our problem? Jesus the Son of God was fully God (the Son) from eternity past, but when the set time had fully come, he came in bodily form as a man to become for us our sacrificial substitute to pay the ransom price, the penalty price in our place, for our sins. Before actually going to the cross, Jesus spent time with us revealing himself to us so that we have a context of who he was and why he did what he did. God, the Father, also took great pains for centuries before Jesus’ saving work, to help us understand the context and the necessity of what Jesus was about to do. Without an understanding of this context the significance and purpose of his death, burial, and resurrection is lost to us. Without this context one might view a resurrection of a person as merely the strange unexplained unbelievable anomaly that only an alien could perform. However, the detailed revelation, prophecies, and life context of Jesus gives us far more than an unexplained fluke. Jesus did miracles, proclaimed truth, and was full of grace, truth, and love in a powerfully magnetic way. He made audacious claims that caused people to have to decide if he was who he really claimed to be, or something far more sinister. Prophecies from ages past predicted his coming, but these prophecies were just cryptic enough to set up the occasion of the crucifixion which was actually God’s purpose. The prophecies were just cryptic enough that the very people who cherished these prophecies decided to reject him. Jesus continuous invitation and challenge split the crowd. This was by design. Those who rejected him, had him crucified. What they intended as harm to Jesus, God intended for our good, and the saving of the world. And yet, his crucifixion shocked his followers whose interpretive filters never expected a crucified Messiah, or a humble first coming, and a glorified second coming. They thought all the prophecies were at once about this glorified coming. After his crucifixion, his most loyal followers immediately plunged from the heights of hope to the depths of confusion, doubt, and despair.
Three days later, Jesus rose from the dead, then appeared to them alive after he was clearly and undeniably dead. He manifest himself repeatedly in a bodily resurrection, to be touched, held, and to converse with for a period of 40 days. He appeared to individuals and groups, and the largest group was over 500 people. A movement exploded, and all of this before any documents were written about Jesus of Nazareth. It was the faith in the fact of his resurrection—that he truly had conquered death, and darkness, and our sin—that caused this movement to explode almost immediately after he was executed as a criminal.
After his resurrection, Jesus’ claims, challenges, and invitations to believe and follow him became crystal clear. He really was the Lord Jesus Christ: He was the LORD (he was God himself, the I AM, just as he claimed); He was JESUS (the savior of the world, the Lamb of God who came to take away the sins of the world); He was the CHRIST (Greek for the Hebrew word Messiah, the one fully anointed fully “christened” by the Holy Spirit predicted one). And this Lord Jesus Christ has all authority to give his believing followers authority and give us his Holy Spirit, and have our sins washed away by him. Resurrection power through Christ’s Spirit is given to every follower who says “Yes” to Jesus New Covenant offer.
The entire story of God’s saving work, from the Old Covenant through the New Covenant, is fulfilled in the person of Jesus at the epicenter of Jesus’ death, burial, and resurrection.
Luke 22:19-20 (NIV) And he took bread, gave thanks and broke it, and gave it to them, saying, “This is my body given for you; do this in remembrance of me.” In the same way, after the supper he took the cup, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you.
Now all of God’s promises are fulfilled in Jesus and given to you as an inheritance when you believe in Jesus and receive him as your Savior and Lord. When the apostles proclaimed this message about forgiveness and salvation through Jesus, the immediate reaction was the question, “What do we need to do? And this answer was given:
Acts 2:38 (NIV) Peter replied, “Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.
These people heard the truth, and believed the truth about who Jesus was, and what Jesus did. This calls for action. The action called for is a completely new way of thinking which is what “repentance” means. Repentance is a complete “change of mind” turning 180 degrees from living for me, to living for Jesus. Baptism celebrates the change that is made possible through Jesus’ death, burial, and resurrection, uniting us with Jesus and his life through His Spirit. (See more about baptism in Why Should I Get Baptized?).