An encouraging countercurrent in our anti-Christian age is a series of apparent revivals reaching everyone from college students to celebrities. The latest notable figure to demonstrate her allegiance to Jesus Christ is Nicole Shanahan, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s presidential running mate, who was baptized last month — but she’s certainly not the only recent convert.

This presents an interesting question that Christians in many times and places have not had to face — how to treat celebrity converts — new Christians with cultural influence. The world would advise us to take pride in the number of celebrities who convert to Christianity, and to leverage their fame and influence to maximize the reach of our cause. But what does the Bible have to say?

Here are three biblical responses when celebrities profess faith in Christ.

1. Rejoice

First, if we truly desire God’s will to “be done on earth as it is in heaven” (Matthew 6:10), then we should rejoice whenever any sinner repents, including celebrities.

In Luke 15, Jesus tells a moving story of a shepherd who leaves his flock to scour the countryside for one lost sheep. Jesus concludes, “And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and his neighbors, saying to them, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost.’ Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance” (Luke 15:6-7).

Jesus immediately adds parallel parables about a lost coin (Luke 15:8-10) and a lost son (Luke 15:11-24), emphasizing the point of these parables by the threefold repetition.

On the third retelling, Jesus adds a twist. A second son in the parable becomes angry when his father welcomes back his prodigal brother, and his father rebukes him, “It was fitting to celebrate and be glad, for this your brother was dead, and is alive; he was lost, and is found” (Luke 15:32).

This twist is aimed at the Pharisees, the religious conservatives of Jesus’s day, who lived moral lives but had hearts filled with pride. This remains a useful reminder for us: if I am tempted to despise repentant celebrities, especially those whose lives were previously characterized by immorality, the cause might be pride in my own heart. (This does not preclude testing the genuineness of a person’s repentance, which will be covered below.)

2. Fear

Second, our joy in welcoming new believers should be tempered by fear lest they fall away. The author of Hebrews warns, while the promise of entering his rest still stands, let us fear lest any of you should seem to have failed to reach it” (Hebrews 4:1).

Jesus describes this at length in the parable of the sower (or the parable of the soils):

“When anyone hears the word of the kingdom and does not understand it, the evil one comes and snatches away what has been sown in his heart. This is what was sown along the path. As for what was sown on rocky ground, this is the one who hears the word and immediately receives it with joy, yet he has no root in himself, but endures for a while, and when tribulation or persecution arises on account of the word, immediately he falls away. As for what was sown among thorns, this is the one who hears the word, but the cares of the world and the deceitfulness of riches choke the word, and it proves unfruitful. As for what was sown on good soil, this is the one who hears the word and understands it. He indeed bears fruit and yields, in one case a hundredfold, in another sixty, and in another thirty” (Matthew 13:19-23).

At first, the seed sown on rocky or thorny ground is indistinguishable from the seed sown on good soil. The word produces an instant response, but only time will tell whether a professing Christian is a genuine one. It’s not difficult to think of American celebrities who professed faith in Christ but soon afterward apostatized (e.g., Kanye West).

This means that we should not get overly excited about a celebrity’s conversion until we have seen whether they “bear fruit in keeping with repentance” (Mathew 3:8).

It certainly means that we should not elevate recent celebrity converts to roles of leadership in the church, simply due to their cultural influence. In his list of qualifications for elders, Paul writes, “He must not be a recent convert, or he may become puffed up with conceit and fall into the condemnation of the devil” (1 Timothy 3:6). So, before boosting that celebrity as an example of Christian living, first wait awhile and watch his or her life.

3. Disciple

Third, this fear should motivate us to discipleship, which is what all new Christians need, and celebrities are no exception. In his parting instructions to his followers, Jesus told them, “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you” (Matthew 28:19-20).

Our evangelistic duty to the lost does not end when they repent and are baptized. On the contrary, that is the point at which it truly begins. That is the moment when new souls are welcomed into Christian fellowship and begin the difficult journey of learning to live in obedience to Jesus’s teaching. This is best handled in the context of the local church, where new believers can witness and imitate the example of more mature believers through close examination. As Paul put it in 1 Corinthians 11:1, “Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ.”

This is not the responsibility of pastors only, but of all believers. In his letter to Titus, Paul describes how all sorts of believers are to live out “what accords with sound doctrine,” which includes everything from exercising self-control to older women teaching younger women (Titus 2:1-6).

Conclusion

You may have noticed that these biblical ways to treat celebrity converts are identical to the ways we should treat any convert to Christianity. This is intentional. Celebrities who truly repent and believe in Jesus Christ should be humble enough to recognize that the loss of their superior worldly status is just one way they glorify God by living in a way that confounds the wisdom of the world.

This is how we in the church “show no partiality” to people who enjoy a higher social standing in the world’s eyes (James 2:1). Recall that God has “chosen those who are poor in the world to be rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom” (James 2:5). Otherwise, we have “made distinctions among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts” (James 2:4). God’s kingdom does not advance according to the principles of this world, and one implication of this principle is that worldly social standing does not matter in God’s economy.