What is conversion?

Question 07054

Christian conversion is the moment a person changes hands. It is not a church membership process, it is not a decision card, and it is not the gradual improvement of a decent life. It is the point at which someone stops trusting themselves and starts trusting Jesus, and everything after that flows from it.

The word gets used loosely in ordinary speech, so it is worth pinning down what the Bible means by it, how it relates to the other great words of salvation, and what it does and does not look like from the outside.

What Christian conversion actually is

The word behind it is epistrepho, to turn or turn round. Luke uses it in Acts 3:19: “Repent therefore, and turn back, that your sins may be blotted out.” Christian conversion is that turn, considered from the human side. You were facing one way; now you face another.

It has two aspects that arrive together. There is the turning from, which Scripture calls repentance, and the turning to, which Scripture calls faith. Neither happens without the other, and both are the response of a real person making a real decision rather than a mechanical process performed on a passive object.

So Christian conversion is not something done to you without your knowledge. It is the response of a person who has heard the gospel, been convicted by the Spirit and turned. What God does invisibly at that same instant is a different matter, and that is where the other great words come in.

Luke also uses the same word of believers turning back after failure, as when Jesus tells Peter in Luke 22:32, “when you have turned again, strengthen your brothers.” The vocabulary of turning is flexible. Christian conversion in the full sense, though, refers to that first decisive turn by which a person passes from death to life.

Conversion, regeneration and justification

These three happen at the same moment and are not the same thing. Christian conversion is what the person does: turning in repentance and faith. Regeneration is what God does within: giving new life to a spiritually dead person. Justification is what God declares: not guilty, on the basis of the finished work of Jesus.

Temporally there is no gap between them. Logically the order matters, and I hold that faith precedes regeneration rather than following it. The one who believes receives life, as John 1:12 has it, “to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God.” The receiving comes first in the sentence and in the logic.

That ordering is not a small technical preference. It preserves the genuine responsibility of the person hearing the gospel and keeps the invitation of Scripture honest. When Paul told the Philippian jailer to believe, he was not describing something the jailer was incapable of until God did something else first.

A helpful way to picture it is a wedding. There is what the couple do, which is say yes to each other publicly. There is what happens legally, which is a change of status. There is what begins, which is a shared life. Christian conversion is the yes; justification is the change of status; regeneration is the new life beginning. One event, three angles.

Keeping the angles distinct saves a lot of confusion. When someone says they cannot feel any different, they are usually asking a question about regeneration while looking at their conversion story. When someone fears they did it wrong, they are usually treating justification as though it rested on the quality of their yes rather than on the finished work of Jesus.

What Christian conversion is not

It is not baptism. Baptism is the obedient public sign of a conversion that has already taken place, and I have handled the question at length in the article on whether baptism is necessary for salvation. Getting the sign and the reality the wrong way round has caused enormous confusion.

It is not a prayer formula either. There is nothing wrong with helping someone put their trust into words, and I have prayed with many people at that moment. But the words are not the mechanism. The article on the sinner’s prayer explains why I am cautious about treating a recited prayer as the thing itself.

And it is not moral reform. Plenty of people clean up their behaviour without ever meeting God, and plenty of genuinely converted people carry habits that take years to deal with. Reform is a fruit of Christian conversion where it happens, never the root of it.

Nor is Christian conversion the same as an emotional experience in a meeting. Emotion often accompanies it, and I am not suspicious of tears. But feelings rise and fall with sleep, health and circumstance, and a salvation resting on them would be a fragile thing indeed.

Neither is it joining a church. Church membership is the right and expected consequence for a converted person, and I would urge it on anyone. It is not the doorway into the family of God. Sitting in a garage does not make anyone a car.

Does conversion always look the same?

No, and expecting it to has done real damage. Paul was knocked flat on a road with a light and a voice. Lydia’s heart was quietly opened while she listened by a river, and Luke records no drama at all. Both were converted. Only one of them had a story worth putting in a magazine.

Children raised in believing homes often cannot name a date, and that troubles them later. It should not. A person raised near the gospel may cross the line without fireworks. What matters is not whether you can produce a timestamp but whether you are trusting Jesus now.

I have written more on that in the question of whether salvation happens at a specific moment. In short, there is always a moment, but you do not always know which one it was, and the two facts are not in tension.

The Ethiopian official in Acts 8 was reading Isaiah in a chariot. The Philippian jailer was converted in the small hours after an earthquake. Cornelius had been praying for a long time before Peter arrived. There is no template, and there is no experience you must reproduce in order to be sure.

What every account shares is content rather than choreography. In each case someone heard about Jesus, understood enough of what He had done, and trusted Him. That is the common thread through every genuine Christian conversion in Scripture and every one since.

Evidence that conversion has happened

The New Testament does give us marks to look for. A new affection for God and for His people, as 1 John 3:14 puts it. A changed attitude to sin, in which what once seemed harmless now grieves you. A hunger for Scripture. A willingness to be known as one of His.

These grow at very different rates in different people, and yieldedness affects how quickly fruit appears. Total and permanent absence of any of them over years does raise an honest question, and I would rather raise it kindly now than leave someone comfortable and lost.

But the marks are diagnostic, not the ground of assurance. The ground of assurance is the promise of God attached to the finished work of Jesus, which is exactly the point of the article on assurance.

It is also worth saying that the marks appear in the direction of travel rather than in perfection. A converted person still sins, sometimes badly. The difference is that sin no longer sits comfortably. There is a friction that was not there before, and that friction is itself evidence of a new nature at work.

If you are not sure you have been converted

Then settle it. Not by hunting through your memory for a satisfactory experience, which is a search that never ends well, but by turning to Jesus now, today, with whatever faith you have. If you have done it before, you have lost nothing by doing it again in the present tense.

God is not looking for a good enough starting story. He is looking for a person who will trust Him. The thief on the cross had minutes and no testimony at all, and Jesus took him home that afternoon.

So, now what?

If you have never turned, turn. Tell God plainly that you have been running your own life and that you want Jesus instead, and rest on what He has done rather than what you can offer. That is Christian conversion, and it is the beginning of everything.

If you turned years ago, then live like someone facing the right way. Conversion is a beginning rather than an achievement. What has God been putting in front of you that you have been walking past?

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, ESV

And once you are sure, tell somebody. Christian conversion in the New Testament is never a private arrangement kept quietly to oneself. Confession with the mouth in Romans 10:9-10 is part of the pattern, and saying it out loud to another believer has a way of settling it in your own heart as well.