Can Conversion Be A Process?
Jul 01
I’ve always said yes. Why? Because not everyone can recall a “crisis” moment of salvation where they can point back and say, “That’s when I became born again.” That’s because humans don’t usually make instantaneous decisions–the vast majority of our decisions come about through various lengthy processes. Unfortunately, I realize more fully today that I have often equated conversion as merely “when a person makes their decision to surrender to Christ,” and that is why I’ve considered the conversion of a soul to sometimes transpire as a process.
But that’s because I’ve been one of those Arminians Gone Wild who often finds themselves reducing conversion to the un-supernatural realm of persons merely making a decision.
And it’s true, many decisions we make in life are indeed not “crisis” decisions–many happen more as a process. So if we focus on conversion simply as a decision humans make to believe in Jesus, it’s obvious that we will conclude that conversion often happens over time as a process, with no definable crisis moment.
Yet, today I’m reminded that conversion isn’t defined by a decision we humans make, so I must qualify my answer. According to the Bible, when we are born again, we become inhabited by the Holy Spirit. This is something God miraculously does–He converts us by giving us His Holy Spirit, we don’t slowly convert ourselves as we make this decision over time. There is no other way to understand God’s part in this process, except that it should occur in a precise moment in time–where at some specific moment, the Holy Spirit inhabits us and we become spiritually reborn. At any point in time, either we have the Holy Spirit or we haven’t received Him yet. There is no “halfway” having the Spirit or being “halfway” alive to God–or God is “in the process of” placing the Holy Spirit inside of me, and He’ll be finished getting Him in there in a couple of weeks. Ha!
While we may not be able ourselves to pinpoint the exact moment when God made such a change take place (since there may have been quite a lengthy process in our hearts/minds leading up to the point where we were open to God’s saving work in us), nevertheless it indeed happened at some real point in time. In an instant.
Should we frustrate ourselves in trying to determine that exact moment in time when this happened? I don’t think so, but we must understand that at some point in time, we did become redeemed by God in an instant. It always happens in that instant, because we cannot save ourselves by slowly coming around to God–it is God in that moment who puts His Spirit in us and saves us, instantaneously making all things new. The instant before, we were still dead in our sins.
So according to my current understanding, conversion always happens at an instant in time, even if we cannot point to that instant. Yet there is undoubtedly almost always quite a process that leads us to that point.
While many of us (including myself) cannot pinpoint that exact moment in time when Christ’s work instantaneously took us from dead in sin to 100% right before God, it should be very disconcerting to any “Christian” who cannot tell a difference between his/her life as a believer today vs their life before they believed. I’m not necessarily talking about how pure or holy we live our lives now, although that is an important issue to consider as well. What I mean is that if indeed there was a point when my spirit was dead to God, and now the Holy Spirit is living in me and has awakened my spirit to God, I should be able to vividly sense this difference on the inside.
After all, who out there is going to tell me that God invading your spirit and waking it up is a subtle, or hard-to-detect, thing? Give me a break! If we are indeed now alive to God in our spirits, where we once were DEAD to God, this should be readily perceived by us. And that is an understatement. I’ve used the following paraphrased quote by A.W. Tozer a couple of posts ago in the context of the Church, but I’d like to now consider it in the context of our daily walk with God:
If the Holy Spirit were suddenly removed from our lives, making us as we once were before becoming Christians, would we sense the difference inside of us?
Would we feel an emptiness where there once was fullness? Check yourself–are you alive to God? Has the Holy Spirit made you born again? Have you been converted by God’s power? Do you recognize the presence of the Holy Spirit inside you?
For the purposes of this post, I am purposefully laying aside the discussion of “dark nights of the soul,” when there are certain times when we seem unable to feel God’s presence. I’m also not arguing for a feelings-based faith. What I am trying to convey here is that conversion is God’s doing, not ours. Therefore, conversion must always happen at a specific moment in time, not over some lengthy process (although there is usually a significant decision process leading up to the crisis event). And if this instantaneous conversion by God is a true reality, surely we can tell that such a dramatic event has taken place inside of us, although we may not recall when exactly this change first began. Let’s avoid mistaking God’s work of conversion inside us with the process leading up to it–it’s fine if we want to include both of these parts as our “conversion process.” But let’s never forget that at some point in this process, there is indeed always a crisis event when God does His saving work and we are infused with His Holy Spirit–instantaneously saved by God’s grace!
I probably don’t know enough to speculate on the details of The Holy Spirit’s role in salvation. However, the rest of what you describe is why most descriptions of sanctification say that it is both immediate and gradual.
If I were to point to a specific moment of salvation I’d point to whatever the moment is that we allow our minds to become slaves to God’s law, even if our bodies aren’t there yet (Rom 7:25).
I hear you. I guess from my reading of Scripture I see justification (salvation and right-standing in the eyes of God) as being an instantaneous gift from God, and sanctification (living fully surrendered to Christ) as being a journey/process God works in us.
I’m not so interested in trying to define or determine exactly when the moment of salvation/justification happens, but rather to argue that there is indeed a moment for everyone, whether we are able to determine the exact moment or not. I think some of us, since we can’t determine the moment, falsely conclude that there wasn’t such a moment, and so we falsely assume that we sort of slowly morphed into a saved soul little by little over time.
I think that’s a distortion of Scripture’s portrayal of how we are saved.
I also believe it foolishly ignores God’s part in the process–which is not just a “part” of the process, but is the ONLY part of the process that brings forth salvation.
To explain further, I believe that if God hypothetically were to choose to save someone despite them never deciding to follow Christ, they would be saved. Or conversely, if someone decides over time to follow Christ, but God hypothetically were to choose not to save them, they would remain unsaved. This is hard for us Arminians to conceive, because we rightly believe that God would never act this way in either hypothetical situation, because Scripture teaches us this. Yet I believe it is important to consider these scenarios, as absurd as they are, so that we are reminded how we are indeed saved–ultimately by God’s hand to save us, not by a decision on our part. And all the Calvinists say, “Amen!”
How do you apply this post to children? How would you explain how a child’s life before believing in Jesus, and after believing in Jesus, would drastically change? (I am referring mostly to young children here.) Can a child who has a heart wholly devoted to God, and who has always seemed to display this devotion, pinpoint a “instanteous moment of salvation” anywhere in his or her life? Can such a child just move from being under the age of accountability, to being a born-again Christian, without any in-between time?
Like I said, I don’t think it’s always possible for us humans to pinpoint the moment in time when we are saved, but I still believe the moment exists even so, and God obviously knows the moment He stepped in to save, and that’s all that matters to me. I’m not concerned with trying to figure out exactly when it happened–whether there’s an age of accountability or not.
I don’t have a strong opinion on “age of accountability,” as that’s not a Scriptural phrase as far as I know. Some people believe that all children who do not yet have the mental capacity yet to understand sin, salvation, choosing right from wrong, etc do not need a salvation moment, which is what you are indicating, and if that’s the case, they wouldn’t have a salvation moment. That’s because they don’t need to be saved, according to this theology.
There are others who don’t believe in an “age of accountability,” which brings on many more questions. If there’s not, what happens to children who die before they can comprehend such things as salvation, etc? Is their fate based on their parents faith? Or do they just have no hope? This is why many people choose to believe in the “age of accountability,” even though it’s not specifically mentioned in Scripture. It’s also often why babies are baptized in some denominations who do not believe in an “age of accountability.”
If, for the sake of your argument, you just want to assume there is an age of accountability where God does not judge children as sinners, then we would assume that at some point, every child emerges from that period of life and becomes accountable as a sinner needing a Savior, just like everyone else in the world. Their moment of salvation would need to occur, just like everyone else in the world needs to be saved. I would find it hard to believe that a child could (in your words) “just move from being under the age of accountability to being a born-again Christian, without any in-between time.” Perhaps for many children in Christian homes, the in-between time would be very short, depending on how soon someone recognizes that the child is ready to respond to the Gospel, and therefore shares it with them. If that child, who is no longer under this “age of accountability” never hears the Gospel and never responds to it, they would be just as lost as anyone else in the world, right?
Regardless of whether such an age of accountability exists or not, I still believe that God must choose to save us in order for us to be saved…and that whenever this happens for an individual, it happens in an instant in time–whenever it is that God sees fit to save them. I guess I’m removing the human part from the equation, which eliminates this whole conundrum of “age of accountability,” since that’s all based on the problem of a child being unable to make a decision for Christ. I’m saying–“making a decision for Christ” isn’t what ultimately saves you. It’s God choosing to save you. Once again, all the Calvinists say, “Amen!”