Imperishable Inheritance

Good post…like all of them. :-) Thanks for giving me some­thing to ponder. It’s very good insight, and oh so true.

1. So is the sinner’s prayer bib­li­cal and if not where did it orig­i­nate?
2. How else would one make that com­mit­ment to faith in Christ?
3. I would beg to argue that a lack of pre­sent­ing the Gospel in the right way would lead to a false under­stand­ing or false hope in the sinner’s prayer being imme­di­ate sal­va­tion. Not the person believ­ing that because they said the prayer they are now saved.

So are you saying that John Doe is walkin down third street in Dayton and all of a sudden he is saved. How does this work? Is there any verbal acknowl­edge­ment of sal­va­tion?

Yes, I agree, but I still think that a lot of this could be cleared up by a better expla­na­tion of the Gospel.

I respect your views Chris. In fact in most part I agree. I just don’t see the light at the end of the tunnel.

A mild rebuke? Wow, that’s quite a bold claim. There is con­fu­sion I believe in how people have inter­preted this arti­cle (except for Hannah).

I ques­tion simply the roots of the “sinner’s prayer,” its role in evan­gel­i­cal­ism, and the effect of false con­verts as a result.

I am not saying we shouldn’t “confess with our mouth” or “ask,” but I am saying that I think the basis for this min­istry method­ol­ogy is based on un-​biblical assump­tions and con­clu­sions.

Chris: “A mild rebuke? Wow, that’s quite a bold claim.”

What does that mean?

Ok, geez. Maybe I’m not con­vey­ing some­thing cor­rectly. My issue is how this pre­sen­ta­tion of “accepting the Gospel” leads to false con­verts, and also I believe it has an un-​biblical under­stand­ing vis-a-vis deci­sional regen­er­a­tion.

Why do I need a rebuke?

Inter­est­ing dis­cus­sion — I don’t get online much these days, so if some­one responds to my com­ment, I can’t guar­an­tee that I’ll be able to reply. But anyway:

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 coun­sel­lor 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 deter­ming­ing 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.

Editor’s Note: Nathan’s access to Inter­net is scarce, if you would like to con­tact him please e-mail me.

@Keith: From arti­cle: “it is impor­tant to note that it is a foun­da­tional stance in which to crit­i­cize the deci­sional regen­er­a­tion that so plagues the church today.”

Is that what you’re refer­ring to as far as not sub­stan­ti­at­ing?