I became a Christian without knowing for sure that Jesus was God. I think more descriptive is that a person gives up his own will and trades it all for the life of Christ.
If a person does not push all his chips into the center of the table and declare "I'm all in"; then he is not a Christian according to the opinion that Jesus had...which is the only one that really matters. In Luke 14, Jesus makes this crystal clear:
"If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple. And whosoever doth not bear his cross, and come after me, cannot be my disciple. For which of you, intending to build a tower, sitteth not down first, and counteth the cost, whether he have sufficient to finish it? Lest haply, after he hath laid the foundation, and is not able to finish it, all that behold it begin to mock him, Saying, This man began to build, and was not able to finish."
As Jehovah's Witnesses, we set out to be righteous, but failed, we were not able to finish the task because we weren't willing to give/pay ALL to Jesus and be born again. We still wanted human masters AND PERSONAL CONTROL. .
Jesus states the actual military state of alert that we are all in:
"Or what king, going to make war against another king, sitteth not down first, and consulteth whether he be able with ten thousand to meet him that cometh against him with twenty thousand? Or else, while the other is yet a great way off, he sendeth an ambassage, and desireth conditions of peace."
Jesus is the King with the "Twenty Thousand"; we are the king of our own will with the lesser force. Unlike the Roman armies who only exacted a small percentage for the Pax Romana; when we seek to make peace with God, Jesus himself states his terms and price in the very next verse:
33 "So likewise, whosoever he be of you that forsaketh not all that he hath, he cannot be my disciple."
His terms are ALL OF IT.
