Most if not all of us here today would profess to be Christians, that is, followers of Jesus Christ. And most of us could probably explain why we became Christians.

We might say that we became Christians because we didn’t want to spend eternity in hell, we wanted to be forgiven of sin, or we wanted a right relationship with God. It could be that some became Christians to rescue their marriage or to solve some other personal problem. Some might say they became Christians because the Bible convinced them that Jesus is the Son of God. We might give a number of reasons why we became Christians. We all became Christians in the same way—through repentance of sin and faith in Christ—but we all may have different reasons why we accepted Christ.

Today I want to examine this question a bit more closely and see what the Bible says about why people become Christians. Much more is going on behind the scenes when people become Christians than we might think.

I want to look at the two sides of this issue—God’s perspective and man’s perspective. We’ll find that they are somewhat different.