Have you ever thought about why you believed in Jesus when so many others don’t? Were you smarter? More spiritual? Were you just born in the right family or did you just meet the right friend? Was it luck, or was it something deeper at work? Before someone hears the good news, they usually assume that they can save themselves. With enough moral effort, they believe they can earn God’s approval because they underestimate the consequences of sin and their need for God’s grace. I’m convinced that the same tendencies exist with Christians even after they trust in Christ. We still underestimate the consequences of sin and our need for God’s grace. As a result, we misunderstand how we came to believe and struggle with verses that say that God grants some people repentance (2 Timothy 2:24-25) and gives grace to people that they might believe (Acts 18:27). If you believe in Jesus, consider how the Bible says that took place.

1. You were too sick to believe on your own

Christians know that Jesus earned their salvation, but they assume that they at least had the good sense to believe. And it’s true that we must repent and believe in Jesus to receive eternal life. The problem is that sin had left us too sick to ever respond to God on our own. The Bible describes the problem of sin as more like a pandemic than a cold. For example, the prophet Jeremiah said that “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick” (Jeremiah 17:9), and he wasn’t just singling out particularly bad people when he said this. Jesus compared people to a “diseased tree” that can’t bear good fruit (Matthew 7:18). And Paul made it clear that this condition is one that we inherited from Adam, saying: “by the one man's disobedience the many were made sinners” (Romans 5:19). This disease of sin has so sickened us that “no one understands” and “no one seeks God” (Romans 3:11). In addition, Satan has “blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel” (2 Corinthians 4:4). How are blind people with sick, deceitful hearts ever going to respond to Jesus? You were too sick to believe on your own.

2. God provided the cure as well as the faith for you to receive it

The only way that someone is rescued from this hardened, sick condition is if God first heals them. Jesus said, “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him” (John 6:44). Although the gospel invitation goes out to everyone, nobody just feels like turning from their sin to trust in Jesus. It’s a miracle of God’s grace. And that’s exactly how Luke describes it in Acts 18:27 when he talks of “those who through grace had believed.” When we talk of people repenting and believing in Jesus, then, on one hand, those are actions that they make without any sense of pressure or compulsion. On the other hand, it’s God who enables them. That’s why Luke describes God’s work leading up to Lydia’s conversion in this way: “The Lord opened her heart to pay attention to what was said by Paul” (Acts 16:14). It’s also why the Bible often says that God “gives repentance” (Acts 5:31) or “grants repentance” (Acts 11:18; 2 Timothy 2:25). God not only provided for your salvation. He also drew you to Himself because you wouldn’t seek Him on your own. He opened your heart to pay attention because you weren’t naturally interested in Him. And then He gave you repentance because you wouldn’t have otherwise been willing to let go of your sin.

3. God didn’t preserve your freedom; He set you free

People become very uncomfortable anytime the Bible talks about God granting repentance and choosing some people for salvation because they fear it turns us into robots. ‘God preserves our free will,’ they often say. The more you read the Bible, though, the more you realize that it speaks more about our slavery to sin than it does the freedom of our will. Jesus said that “everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin” (John 8:34). The point of calling us slaves is to make it clear that we can’t stop. We’re addicted to sin, so we need an intervention. For God to just hope that we’ll freely turn from our slavery to sin would be to hope in the impossible. If God preserving our free will means letting us just do what we want, then no one would ever be saved because “people loved the darkness rather than the light” (John 3:19). Instead, God chose to grant certain people repentance, heal their addiction, and cure their blindness so that they would believe. As it says in Acts 13:48, “as many as were appointed to eternal life believed.”

If you believe in Jesus, it’s because God first healed your sickness and gave you the gift of repentance and faith. It’s because He appointed you to eternal life. It’s because He chose you as His own. It’s all a gift and we owe Him everything. If that doesn’t fill you with wonder and gratefulness, I don’t know what could!

In awe of Him,

Paul