How do you change when you became a Christian?

How do you change when you became a Christian?

You become a Christian when you hear the grace gospel and then respond to it in faith. Responding to the grace gospel changes your spiritual standing with God*. The grace gospel justifies you and saves you from God's wrath and hell, and you will go to heaven when you die, but the grace gospel does not change your physical life. You still continue to sin, your mind remains carnal and at enmity with God (1Cor.3:1; Rom.8:7), you continue to be unprofitable for God in your current condition (Rom.3:12). Unfortunately, many Christians remain in this condition because of ignorance. They believe that they are saved, and rightfully so, but they fail to 'continue' in salvation, because the church teaches them that they've made it, so they don't seek to continue in 'the faith' (Rom.1:5;2Cor.13:5); the doctrine in Paul's epistles that informs them how to die to self, how to grow up in Christ, how to walk in the Spirit, how to labour in love, and how to be patient in suffering as they wait for that great day of salvation.

The ONLY way that you can change in your Christian life, growing in righteousness and godliness and steadily overcoming the sin nature that remains in you (Rom.6:16; Rom.6:22), is to increase in your knowledge and understanding of God's Word, but more specifically, in the doctrine written to you, which is Paul's epistles, Romans to Philemon. As you increase in the knowledge of your doctrine through reading and learning the words written to you, it will start to transform your mind, renewing your thoughts (Rom.12:1-2), your actions, your speech and your responses to life. You will start to live the Word of God in obedience unto righteousness (Rom.6:16). You will learn how to reckon yourself as dead to sin (Rom.6:11) and what it means to be delivered from the law (Rom.7:60; the two pillars of sanctification that we learn in Romans 6-8. 

Unlike justification, sanctification is not a gift of God. It costs work and commitment from you. It costs time and effort to study the Word of God and get it into your head and your heart. The Word of God is what washes you clean and sanctifies you unto God (Eph.5:26). Knowledge and subsequent obedience of God's Word, and specifically Paul's epistles, is what changes you as a Christian, maturing your faith, forming Christ within you (Gal.4:19), and making you profitable to God (2Tim.3:16; Tit.3:8), a vessel in which He works in you, through His Word, to will and to do according to Hs pleasure (Phil.2:13).

Sanctification is the continuation of your salvation. Justification saves you from hell, and sanctification saves you from loss (1Cor.3:15); a loss of honour and position, and a measure of the glory of Christ in the ages to come.

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*Believing the grace gospel justifies you. Justification is a gift of God. Because you choose to believe in Jesus Christ, God's Son, God nails your sins to the cross of Christ and imputes the righteousness of His Son to you. Justification guarantees your eternal life in God's presence.