1 Pet. 3:15 tells me to “be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you with meekness and fear;” So I guess you are asking for something more specific than “I’m a Christian.” Here is the rest of that answer. I am a Christian because I believe that Jesus was God in the flesh who visited Earth to die for the sins of every person who accepts his death, burial, and resurrection as the ONE and ONLY way of salvation and remission of sins. My faith is ON the Lord Jesus Christ…not simply IN Jesus. A person who merely believes IN Jesus as a prophet, teacher, or good man, has missed the point. Its not simply believing in One God. James 2:19 says: “Thou believest that there is one God; thou doest well: the devils also believe, and tremble.” Believing ON the Lord Jesus Christ means relying upon nothing else except the one thing your trust and faith rests upon…and that is that God is not a man that he should lie. When God promises in 1 John 1:19 “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” Then I believe that. God said it. That settles it. The bible also says that “the wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23) and that “for sin is the transgression of the law.” (1 John 3:4) and lastly when Jesus summarized the law he specifically mentioned bearing false witness. (Matthew 19:18). So put that all together…bearing false witness is a violation of the law…violation of the law is sin…the wages of sin is death.
What happens then if God promises salvation and fails to deliver? Yep, as a righteous judge he would be obligated to carry out the sentence…in other words…God just committed suicide. As is obvious…this line of reasoning ends in absurdity. God is not a liar, His promise of salvation is true.
If you are curious what in particular got my attention. It wasn’t the resurrections that convinced me. The bible records 10 people who died and came back to life…Well, 12 people if you count Jonas and Paul after he got stoned and visited heaven in his near death experience (2 Cor 12:2-4) but there is ONLY 1 of those people who died and came back that knew it was going to happen before it happened, and knew how long He was going to be dead and when exactly he was returning BEFORE IT HAPPENED. One could speculate that the Apostles just lied about the story of Jesus telling them in advance, but the problem is that they all stuck to that story under threat of death…and not some gentle little injection and go to sleep kinda peaceful deaths…Matthew was killed by a sword, Mark died by being drug behind horses, Luke got hanged in Greece, John was boiled in Oil in Rome then miraculously survives only to be sentenced to work in the mines of Patmos…He’s the olny one who later died naturally, Peter was crucified upside down, James got thrown off a hundred foot pinnacle of the Temple in Jerusalem because he wouldn’t deny his faith in Christ, he survives the fall and then got beat to death with a club, James son of Zebedee was beheaded in Jerusalem – His Guard hearing James defend his faith at trial, accompanied James to the place of beheading and confessed his own faith and submitted for beheading also. Batholomew was flayed to death by a whip in Armenia. Andrew was crucified on an X shaped cross in Patras, Greece, Thomas was stabbed with a spear in India, Jude was killed with arrows for refusing to deny his faith in Christ. Matthias (Judas’ replacement) was stoned and then beheaded, Paul was tortured and finally beheaded in Rome in AD 67 after writing much of the New Testament, Simon the zealot is believed to have been sawn in half, And lastly Philip die in Phrygia where a group of Jews had him tortured, but the exact method of being killed was either by crucifixion or stoning.
THE POINT of all that being simply this…They didn’t recant the story. None of them did. They SAW Jesus resurrected…They KNEW with absolute certainty. I do not believe they all would have stuck with the story and faced death if they knew they had made it up. Sure, all the turning water to wine and multiplying an enormous bunch of fish from just a few, and walking on water was cool, but knowing when exactly you are going to die, knowing who is going to turn you in, knowing who is going to deny you 3 times, knowing exactly how long you are going to stay dead, and knowing that you will return from death…Only God can do that.