Why am I a Christian?

I put myself in a hypothetical situation recently, as a sort of thought exercise. In it, I pretended that someone asked me, “Why are you a Christian?” To my confusion, I didn’t know how to respond. But my lack of words helped me realize, after a few awkward moments of soul searching, the strangeness of the question. When a Christian is asked this question, it is almost as if they are being asked, “Why are you a human being?” Anyone would say, “Because I am.” We feel the inclination to respond this way because it is an obvious matter: it is a question of our mere existence. There is no other answer. Likewise, in the truest sense, I am a Christian as a matter of existence, not as a matter of choice. I am not a Christian because I made myself to be one. True Christianity is not a matter of mere human effort or will, but a matter of spiritual rebirth, and that by the power of God. Indeed, the children of God are those “who were born, not of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.” Thus, when an outsider asks a Christian why they are one, the proper response is not to direct them to things about Christianity that they find attractive and that compels them to claim Christianity as their faith, but rather to direct them to drama; to the truth of the gospel that God has done something for them. That God has done something to them. That God has changed something about their lives. That God has acted, in space and time, to rescued them and do something about their sin problem, and that that is why they are a Christian.