What is conversion?
Question 07054
The word “conversion” does not appear with great frequency in English Bibles, but the reality it describes is at the heart of everything the New Testament calls people to. To be converted is to be turned, and the New Testament presents this turning as simultaneously something that happens to a person and something they genuinely do. Understanding what conversion actually involves matters, because the church has not always been precise about it, and imprecision here carries real pastoral consequences.
The Meaning of the Word
The Greek word most often behind the concept of conversion is epistrophe (the noun) or epistrephō (the verb), which means simply to turn, to turn back, or to turn around. When Paul summarises the Thessalonians’ coming to faith, he describes how they “turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God” (1 Thessalonians 1:9). The directional language is everything: there is something they turned away from, a direction they turned toward, and a new orientation that resulted. Conversion is not the addition of religious content to an otherwise unchanged life; it is a reorientation of the entire person.
Acts 3:19 carries the same force in Peter’s appeal: “Repent therefore, and turn back, that your sins may be blotted out.” The turning and the forgiveness are connected. This is not a turning produced by the person’s own moral effort, as if someone could simply decide to face a different direction and bring it off through willpower. The New Testament is clear that conversion is God’s work accomplished in and through the person who responds to the gospel.
What Conversion Involves
Conversion brings together repentance and faith as the two sides of a single turning. Repentance is the turning away from self, from the world’s governing assumptions about what life is for, and from the direction one has been travelling. Faith is the turning toward: to God, to Jesus Christ, to the promises of the gospel. These two are not sequential steps in which a person must achieve a sufficient level of repentance before faith becomes possible. They are the two movements of one act, like a person turning from one direction to face another, where moving away from the one and toward the other happen in the same moment.
Repentance is not simply feeling bad about past sins, though genuine sorrow over sin is often part of the experience. The Greek word metanoia points to a change of mind, a fundamental reassessment of one’s standing before God and one’s need of the Saviour. It is a genuine desire to turn from self-rule toward God’s rule, not a meritorious act performed to earn the right to be received. And saving faith, on the other side of this turning, is not intellectual agreement with a set of propositions. James is plain that even demons assent to the truth that God is one (James 2:19). Saving faith is personal trust, the complete entrusting of oneself to Jesus as Saviour, leaning one’s full weight on what He has done at the cross. It is not the quality or intensity of the faith that saves but its object. A small, trembling trust in a wholly reliable Saviour is entirely sufficient.
What Changes at Conversion
The New Testament uses several images to describe what conversion brings. Paul calls it a new creation: “if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come” (2 Corinthians 5:17). Jesus describes it as being born again (John 3:3), entering life from a state of death. These are not images of improvement or gradual refinement; they are images of an entirely new beginning.
At the moment of conversion, several things happen simultaneously. The person is justified: God declares them righteous before Him on the basis of Christ’s work. The person is regenerated: God gives new spiritual life where there was none. The Holy Spirit takes up permanent residence within them (Romans 8:9). They are adopted into God’s family (Galatians 4:5-6). None of these await further development or future qualification; they are the immediate reality of every person who genuinely turns to Christ.
This does not mean that conversion produces instant maturity or the complete absence of struggle. The conflict with the flesh, the world, and the enemy continues. But the orientation has changed. The person who was dead to God and alive to sin is now dead to sin and alive to God (Romans 6:11), and that reorientation, even where it is imperfectly lived out, is the defining distinction between the converted and the unconverted person.
Conversion and the Human Response
Scripture presents conversion as genuinely the person’s own act, even though everything enabling it comes from God. The New Testament calls people to repent and believe (Mark 1:15; Acts 2:38). These are real commands requiring real response. The fact that the Spirit convicts (John 16:8) and draws (John 12:32) does not remove the genuineness of the human turning. It is the person who believes, the person who repents, the person who calls on the name of the Lord. God does not believe on their behalf.
This is why the apostolic preaching in Acts is full of urgent appeal. “Be reconciled to God” (2 Corinthians 5:20) is addressed to people who have it within their power, through the Spirit’s enabling, to respond. The urgency of the appeal is not decorative; it reflects the reality that the response required is genuinely the person’s own.
So, now what?
Conversion is the beginning of the Christian life, not its completion. The person who has genuinely turned to Christ has not arrived at the destination; they have started a journey. But they have started it with everything they need: forgiven, regenerated, indwelt by the Spirit, and held by the One they have turned to. The turning itself may have been accompanied by dramatic emotion or by quiet, almost unremarkable resolution, but neither of those is the measure of its genuineness. What Scripture points to is the turning itself, and the new orientation of life that follows.
“Repent therefore, and turn back, that your sins may be blotted out, that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord.” Acts 3:19-20
