Imperishable Inheritance

Nathan Pitchford, in the comments of the last post, made what I believe to be the clarification that I was unable to achieve. I believe these comments are more poignant and clearer than my own. If you would like to contact Nathan please contact me, and I will give you his contact information.

First, I think it's vital to distinguish between the fact of praying 'the sinner's prayer,' and the appeal either to pray the sinner's prayer in order to secure salvation or to remember the precise time when one prayed the sinner's prayer in order to assure oneself of salvation. The statement, 'Pray this prayer, and you'll be saved,' may certainly be misleading; but given the context, the person thus admonished may possibly understand the expression to mean, 'Express your faith in Christ, because justification comes through faith alone.' I see no problem with this latter meaning ' in fact, such passages as Romans 10 seem fully reconcilable with it. But in a way I agree with Chris, in that the act of praying the sinner's prayer has, in many circles, usurped the place of that to which the sinner's prayer should give expression, namely vibrant faith, particularly in the matter of assurance of salvation. I remember countless times, growing up, when I doubted that I was truly God's child, and the preacher or counselor asked me, 'Do you remember praying for God to forgive you? Then you're saved ' don't doubt it.' This certainly makes the mere act of praying into something it was never intended to be, something that works 'ex opera operata' (to borrow the phrase from the baptismal regeneration debate). What the Catholics think that baptism as a mere action does, many Evangelicals think that the sinner's prayer as a mere action does. The Epistle of I John gives many more legitimate ways to discern if one is truly God's child, and none of them has to do with looking back to a past decision, but with discerning the legitimacy and vibrancy of present faith, the present orthodoxy of belief about Jesus, and so on. This is the way to make one's calling and election sure, but it is a way that people who teach that regeneration occurs on the basis of a 'decision' or 'sinner's prayer' cannot really employ.

Anyway, just some rambling thoughts. Perhaps, Chris, you could go to greater lengths to make clear that praying for forgiveness/grace is an appropriate, indeed necessary response to God's work of regeneration and gift of faith. But I think some of the others could think through, a little more fully, just what the moment of decision/prayer has come to represent in Evangelical circles, as the one work done by humans to meet God, and as the only decisive difference between those who, having heard the gospel, are saved, and those who remain lost, etc. In this distorted understanding of what a true prayer/plea even is, human volition takes the place of faith which looks outside of oneself, as the determining factor in salvation. So anyway, without discounting the legitimacy of crying out to Christ for mercy, we should also think about how to frame our appeal in a way not likely to be misunderstood, especially given the context of contemporary evangelicalism.