** this is part 3 in a series on man-centered Christianity, see part 1 & part 2.
Now I lay my fears to sleep
I prayed, now the Lord must keep.
Nothing to lose, everything to win
I prayed the prayer, now I’m in.
The above prayer is patently absurd. Yet many actually do think that praying the sinner’s prayer is what guarantees they will be saved. God’s hand is forced. Rom. 10:13 obligates Him to keep His promise. They have “called upon the name of the Lord”, and He must save them.
Often people are encouraged to give Jesus a try. Commit yourself to Jesus and you will enter a brand new and exciting life! It only takes a few minutes, don’t you want to know that you will spend eternity in Heaven? Just pray this prayer and mean it, and on the authority of the Bible I guarantee you will be saved! Come on, what have you got to lose?
Anyone will have to admit that this is extremely common. Some form of the above appeal commonly ends most evangelical messages. It is often employed at the end of 1-on-1 witnessing conversations. But put yourself in the shoes of the lost person. The promises of life change sound pretty good. I would like to be accepted and these people are really nice, after all. What would it hurt? Sure, I’ll pray this prayer.
Or think of the Hindu: I want to have the gods accept me. This Jesus must be a powerful god. If I can appease him, I’ll surely be better off. I’ll pray to him and worship him, just like my family worships their god of choice.
Or what about the Catholic: I pray to Mary all the time for acceptance. I never knew you could actually be sure of heaven. I’m not sure how this works, but maybe it will add to the merits my efforts have been giving me. I receive Jesus at communion, receiving him in this prayer makes sense. I hope this works, maybe I won’t have to keep going to confession. Here goes.
Many are simply building their spiritual lives on a wing and a prayer. They enter Christianity as if it were a club. They pray the prayer and gain acceptance. They hear messages about how they are to feel about themselves and about various Christian ethical concerns. They give to charity, and dress nicely for their church gatherings. They feel generally good about themselves, and if they doubt their salvation, they are often assured on the basis of having prayed the prayer, that God will save them, because He doesn’t lie. Doubt is of the devil, after all.
Certainly there are many examples of those who have savingly believed at the time of their sinner’s prayer experience. Many are genuinely converted and trust in Jesus alone, even though they employed a sinner’s prayer. I want to be careful as I critique this popular method. But please consider the following.
1) No one in the NT is ever instructed to pray for salvation, or to pray “to be saved”.
2) The Bible witness is clear: believing Jesus saves you. So then, as I’ve wondered before, what would the “sinner’s prayer” do? Only those who believe in Christ will even pray the prayer and mean it. If the belief is what saves, why is the prayer framed in such a way as to imply that the asking is what saves? Does asking for salvation save, or does believing Christ alone save?
3) Rom. 10:13 in context does not teach that a prayer for salvation results in salvation.
Rom. 10:13-14 “For everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. But how are they to call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard?”
This is absolutely clear, before the “call” there must be faith. How can they “call” if they haven’t believed?
4) Why is “call on the name of the Lord” so quickly assumed to be “called out unto the Lord for salvation”? There is no object of the prayer in view in the text. In fact, if you trace the concept of calling on the name of the Lord, you will find something completely different. Let’s do that quickly.
1 Cor. 1:2 speaks of the saints as being “those who in every place call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ”. 2 Tim. 2:22 also speaks of “those who call on the Lord from a pure heart”. In both of these places the idea is used as a descriptive term for those who are worshippers of Jesus. This again is seen in Acts 9:14. Also, “call” is a continuous present tense idea — not those who did call (for salvation), but those who do call.
The NT use follows a pervasive OT usage of this idea. In the OT the phrase is often used of praying to God in specific circumstances for help, but it also refers to a general concept of worship: “I will call upon the Lord…”. The wicked are those who do not call on the Lord (Ps. 14:4), but the righteous do. Sometimes God delivers them physically or spiritually after their calls for help (Ps. 116:13) and other times God’s deliverance provides the impetus for the believers to call upon him (Ps. 80:18). In one sense, calling is what believers do — they come to God for help. But in another, it is who they are, they are worshippers who call upon their God.
Everyone, then, who calls on God, who is a worshipper of God, who worships God now and continually, all of these can expect ultimate salvation. “Salvation” is often referring to ultimate salvation or glorification, not justification, remember.
5) Rom. 10:9 is also not a formula for salvation. Merely saying “Jesus is Lord” does not save. Vs. 9 follows the order of the OT quote given in vs. 8 (“The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart”). Vs. 10 seems to explain the logical or chronological order: belief is first, which brings justification; confession follows that, even as ultimate salvation follows justification.
6) The concept of asking Jesus in one’s heart is also unbiblical and unhelpful. See this booklet [PDF] by Pastor Dennis Rokser of Duluth Bible Church. Or this article by Todd Friel, of Way of the Master Radio.
7) The repentant publican who says “Lord be merciful to me, a sinner” had his repentant believing heart before he verbalized his prayer. And the thief on the cross changed his mind about Jesus, and ceased railing against him, before he called on him for mercy.
As humans, a prayer is sometimes inevitable. We may feel like we need to do something. We will pray to be saved and forgiven, but Scripture testifies that it is faith that saves. Requiring a prayer or encouraging someone to ask for salvation, muddles the waters and can potentially confuse matters. Enduring faith in the substitutionary Lamb of God is what saves. Trusting a personal act (praying) doesn’t. Worse, this theology can lead to a wrong assumption that even unrepentant faith can demand things of God.
I understand that there may be questions and difficulty in accepting what I’ve said here. I welcome further interaction in the comments. This post is sort of an aside from my current series on man-centered Christianity. I think the self-centered focus that the sinner’s prayer promotes is a contributing factor in the pervasive problem of man-centeredness in the church. In the next post, we will show how a wrong view of eternal security is likewise contributing to this problem. Then we will be ready to see what a God-centered view really is.
Anyone have any ideas for more verses of my opening poem??
Good post.
Personally, I’ve never heard of ‘the prayer’ that you mentioned at the beginning of this essay. But, there is something obviously amiss if one relies on the works of a prayer. Secondly, Bob hints strongly at the ordo salutis in the ‘order’ of salvation– all of which means that the Calvinist understanding of how God effectually calls the sinner into repentance and faith is paramount. It is God who saves, not some prayer that one makes. I can’t wait to read more of this…. thanks for clarifying a GREAT misconception!
Bob,
The word wrap still isn’t working here at home, so I think I may have to do a ‘copy and paste’ in order to comment in length. Better yet, I should upgrade to MSIE 7…..
Larry,
Don’t go for IE 7. You’ll do better downloading Firefox.
For longer comments clicking the “+” sign might help, too.
It seems this theme is giving lots of people problems, so I may be changing it again soon. Either way, Firefox is worth the download. It’s free and really good.
Ryan,
Thanks for the comment. Looks like you’re starting up a similar series on your blog.
I didn’t even know Osteen had a board game based on his book!
Blessings from Jesus,
Bob Hayton
Bob, an excellent post; thank you.
Regards,
Bnonn
Thanks, Bnonn.
God bless.
The “sinner’s prayer” formula is nothing but good old, American mass-production of tares. This is one of the ways that Baptists, who demand a “regenerate church membership,” have taken in so many unregenerate professors to the degree that Baptist leaders currently bemoan the level of unregenerate members.
That was a good survey of what it means to “call on the name of the Lord.”
Great questions! I agree with your answers.
I am starting to work my way through Owen’s “The Death of Death in the Death of Christ”. J.I. Packer’s introduction is a book in itself, and in it he details how to preach the gospel. It is worth reading in regards to this whole question of what do you do after you clearly present the gospel. When we call people to repent and trust Christ, what are we actually calling them to do? If we aren’t calling them to pray, what are they to do? I won’t put Packer’s answer down as it is lengthy, but it is worth reading. (It will probably be showing up at my blog sometime in the next month or so.)
Thanks guys.
I’ll be looking for that post, Don!
You’re pretty much preaching to the choir, Bob. Who reads you that believes that the “sinner’s prayer,” is all that salvation is? Here might be a better question to explore among your readers: Is no-sinner-prayerism the correct position? Peter seemed to think that this call was the right response to their conviction in Acts 2:21 and seems also to be within the context of Joel 2 from which it comes. It also fits in with Isaiah 55—seek the Lord while He may be found, call upon Him while He is near. The prayer doesn’t save, but what is it? We are to drink of the water of life freely, but what if we don’t drink. Do we have to drink? Or is it that since you were elect before the foundation of the world, the point of time for your justification just doesn’t make any difference?
My mediating position is that as long as the professing believer who “prayed the sinner’s prayer” knows the right answer to the question, “how did you get saved?” is not “I prayed the sinner’s prayer,” but that the correct answer is that “Jesus died on the cross for my sins,” and there is credible evidence of true conversion, it doesn’t matter what they did at the moment they believed, whether they prayed, got a quiver in their liver, or just said something like, “Huh. That makes sense. Now I guess I better start taking baby steps in the direction Jesus is going.”
I like the way Rod Rosenblat on the White Horse Inn puts it. He complains that his Missouri Synod Lutheran brethren at his church are so scared of works-righteousness, they won’t even tell their listeners to believe! He recommends, go ahead and tell them to believe, even if they have an Arminian assumption about it. You can straighten out their theology later in catechism class. Very pragmatic for a Reformation Master, I say.
Interesting JDChitty. So you just totally discount the passages that tell us to call, assuming that they mean that a “huh” is OK, since calling is so unnecessary even though it mentions calling. Doesn’t a Biblical theology of salvation consider all the salvation texts?
Don’t use google. Who wrote these following two paragraphs?
Is not the most obvious sense of this language, prayer? Are we not brought to the Lord by a prayer which trusts in God—by a prayer which asks God to give the deliverance that is needed, and expects to have it from the Lord, as a gift of grace ? It amounts to much the same thing as that other word, “Believe and live”; for how shall they call on him of whom they have not heard? And if they have heard, yet vain is their calling if they have not believed as well as heard. But to “call on the name of the Lord,” is briefly to pray a believing prayer; to cry to God for his help, and to leave yourself in his hands. This is very simple, is it not? There is no cumbersome machinery here, nothing complex and mysterious. No priestly help is wanted, except the help of that great High Priest, who intercedes for us within the veil. A poor, broken heart pours its distress into the ear of God, and calls upon him to fullfil his promise of help in the time of need—that is all. Thank God, nothing more is mentioned in our text. The promise is—”Whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be saved.”
What a suitable way of salvation it is to those who feel that they can do nothing! Ah, dear hearts! if we had to preach to them a very difficult and elaborate salvation, they would perish. They have not the mind, some of them, to follow our directions if they were at all intricate; and they have not enough hope to venture upon anything that looks at all difficult. But if it be true that “Whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be saved,” this method is simple and available, and they catch at it. He can pray to God who can do nothing else. Thank God, he need not want to do anything else; for if he can call for help, he gets deliverance, and, in that deliverance, he gets all that he will ever want between this place and heaven. He has called upon the name of the Lord, and all that is deficient in him will be supplied for time and for eternity. He will be delivered, not only now, but throughout all the future of his life, until he sees the face of God in glory everlasting.
Kent,
Spurgeon? Calvin? Am I close?
Okay.
I’m not exactly preaching to the choir. Although it is good to do that
Wordpress.com has actually linked to a few of these posts and I’ve had scores of readers come who don’t normally come to my blog, although I know I have a few readers in particular who might not have heard this before.
Regardless, you do have a point. Praying to God in faith asking for mercy is Biblical. But is it mandated? Required? Not exactly.
All believers will pray and worship, but precisely because they believe.
Exhorting people to repent and believe is what Peter did in Acts. He didn’t lead them in a prayer, even as he quoted Joel 2. So a “must pray for salvation” view can’t really come from Acts 2.
Am I saying we should have a “never pray for salvation” view? Probably not. I think we have over emphasized the prayer. Salvation is after all inexplicable. God does a work of regeneration in us. He calls us to himself.
Faith and repentance happen, often in a conversional way with dramatic change. But the NT does not stress a point-in-time view of salvation. Salvation, the term, is predominantly a glorification term. Often the Scripture speaks of us as the ones who are “being saved”, not saved past tense. (The modern versions help catch that understanding in places like: 1 Cor. 1:18, 1 Cor. 15:2.)
If you go to the link of my first dealing with the sinner’s prayer, where I question what it does, in that article I quoted from an interview of Mark Dever. He seems apt to encourage people to believe, and if they say they do, he is happy, but waits. “We’ll see”, he says. Biblically, perseverance is like that. We believe and we believe and we don’t stop believing (Col. 1:23). Only of those people can we say they are truly saved.
But ultimately we judge people’s fruit and see if their lives line up with Christ. Having said a prayer or remembering a specific point in time where your belief in God came all of a sudden, is really beside the point.
I know you are going to say we have to agree with God that we are lost and repent of that. I agree we need to repent. But even repentance can be a state of mind that one undergoes over the course of months or years. In the epistles the emphasis is on abiding faith, not on faith being equated with an initiation act of repenting/coming to faith.
I believe there is an initial moment when faith comes, when we begin to believe, when Satan’s blinders fall off. But particularly with young children and those confused by various winds of doctrine, remembering that exact time or knowing that an exact dramatic change happened is not easy. By faith we believe that Christ will save us. We look to our present faith and long for grace to continue trusting Jesus and not giving in to sin.
But I don’t think people need to be manipulated to pray a prayer or have their experience mesh with some group-expectation or something. A person believing Christ could presumably be told they really aren’t because they didn’t ever repent of lostness. This again becomes an experience or a work, so now that person must jump through this new hoop laid out for them. They acknowledge the guy telling them this is right, they are wrong, sure they are a sinner and they admit they were lost before Christ, maybe they are now too, they jump through the hoop, and now the hoop holds them up. Faith which they had before is seen to be not enough.
That is what I’m getting at. Are we required to submit our perfect memories to be judged before entering the church? Because someone doesn’t remember consciously in an instant turning totally to Christ, but rather gradually little by little yielded control to Christ, is that person to be told to repent or else?
If this is what you are getting at (and at least one person who was at your church would basically say this), you don’t have a lot of Scriptural basis, in my opinion.
Don,
Spurgeon. Correct. Calvin said this.
Therefore, forasmuch as no man is excluded from calling upon God, the gate of salvation is set open unto all men; neither is there any other thing which keepeth us back from entering in, save only our own unbelief. I speak of all unto whom God doth make himself manifest by the gospel. But like as those which call upon the name of the Lord are sure of salvation, so we must think that, without the same, we are thrice miserable and undone.
Consider the second half of that last sentence.
Hi. I saw ur answer and I disagree. GOD does everything. As well as make some deaf, dumb, and blind. Scripture: Exodus 4:11
And the LORD said unto him, Who hath made man’s mouth? or who maketh the dumb, or deaf, or the seeing, or the blind? have not I the LORD?
Maybe GOD is trying to tell u something.
Sorry, Kent, I forgot to return and check this thread. Thanks for the extensive treatment. I know the normal and expected method is that outward calling normally follows, but to not be legalistic about it, even if one never outward “called on the Lord TO be saved,” but does believe in his heart, and simply starts following Christ, which includes praying (or “calling on the Lord”), you’d have to admit he’s saved, too. That’s all I mean. I intend to deny no Scripture.What I intend to do is to apply a similar kind of logic that is used to answer the question “do you have to be baptized to be saved?” when reference is made to the thief on the cross, who certainly was saved even though he was never baptized. Yes, he “called.”
Read the paragraph about the “sinner’s prayer formula”:
http://www.webspawner.com/user.....index.html
Bryan
Bryan,
Thanks for sharing that link. There is much to agree with in that article. However, I disagree with OSAS strongly, yet I contend 1 Jn. 2:19 teaches us to assume that those who fall away were never genuinely believing in the first place.
In light of the truth of God’s unconditional election, it is impossible that the elect could really fall away. But none of us knows infallibly if he is elect, and thus must persevere in believing. But the Spirit will sustain all who are elect and cause that none of them will remain in a fallen state.
Other than that difference, I agree with the article.
Thanks for sharing.
Bob
Good post. I got your link from Tominthebox. It always gets me that people quote Romans 10:13 so often but don’t add verse 14.
As a lifetime SB I accepted so many of these things as true over the years but have come to find out by God’s grace in the last few years that they are not Scriptural at all.
Adding your blog to my feed.
Marc,
Thanks for coming on over. I hope you enjoy the feed.
You’re right that too often tradition is the real reason Baptists do much of what they do.
Blessings in Christ,
Bob Hayton
[...] not quite ready to pick up my Man-Centered Christianity series yet. But the latest post on the sinner’s prayer, has been well [...]
[...] Read the rest of this post… [...]
in 2004, i was converted in my dorm room, no alter call, or sinners prayer, or preacher. God had been breaking me down for months before I had even really realized that He was calling me. i was one of those people who had been to several churches, down several alters and bore no changes and no friut and no salvation. it took me to be broken by the hand of God, that i understood that i was dirt, nothing and in need of Christ, to change me, take my sins, because i am deserving of death, unclean, unrighteous before a Sovereign God. God drew me , called me, and put it in me to respond to him, thats the way it should work, God’s doing ,not mans decision, or manipulated ways.
Thanks for a great testimony, Henry!
[...] that are nowhere to be found in the Bible. The first is the “sinner’s prayer.” Bob Hayton does a good job of describing the dangers of this seemingly innocent addition to the words of the [...]
Bob,
Good post. I wish I had responded earlier. I think points #3 and #4 are the most misunderstood among Christians today, fundamentalist or evangelical. Like many Christians, I also had a problem with this “sinner’s prayer.”
Question: Does today’s “sinner’s prayer” require the sinner to SAY the words of the prayer LITERALLY?
One Sunday, our pastor had an “altar call.” One lady came forward. The pastor then asked the lady to pray the prayer he was about to pray. He then started praying. After a few seconds, he stopped. He noticed that the lady was not SAYING the words of the prayer. In response, he asked the lady to SAY the prayer. Would that make a difference?
Thanks Bob for another enlightening and thoroughly Biblical post.
[...] I’m getting ready to pick up my series on man-centered Christianity (see posts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5), and I thought highlighting what my pastor, John Piper said in a recent message would help [...]
[...] this becomes an attempt to get the child to repeat a sinner’s prayer. I’ve written on the dangers of the sinner’s prayer before. It can easily mislead children, and confuse them on the all important matter of [...]
[...] For more on “the sinner’s prayer”, see my later post: “The Sinner’s Prayer Problem“. [...]
I remember the day I was “saved”, what drew me to the altar, and the day I was baptized, even what I wore that day…I can’t remember “the prayer”. Since that time many years ago, I have prayed the “sinners” prayer in many forms and each time affirmed the truth in my heart again and again…much like reciting the Apostles’ Creed, or the Lord’s Prayer…The “Sinner’s Prayer” holds no magic transformational power, but confirmation of the event much like vows at a wedding… And, each time I repeat the words in whatever form they are presented…I reaffirm…Yes Lord, I do.
Nancy,
There certainly is a good use of the sinner’s prayer, as you describe. What’s amazing is before 1900 no one had ever used that methodology before. It wasn’t about a prayer. That should give us pause to so quickly adopt this newfangled method.
Anyway, thanks for dropping by.
Bob
Hello Mr. Fundy. I like ur writing. I found ur page this morning after reading a portion of the book: VESSEL OF WRATH- The Life and Times of CARRY NATION by Robert Lewis Taylor. I used the search words ‘reformed sinners’ and ur page popped up. This book said that most of these reformed sinners are the worst prudes. Although Carry must be especially repulsive by the ‘dictatorship’ attitude she had all her life. But this whole issue is intriqing to me as it is deeply reminding me of the people who took over so many of Southern Baptist churches and changed the policy which to me made it a ‘man’s thing’ and not GODs. The Southern Baptist Convention churches has given the other half or side a bad reputation and severed the most important point of their beliefs and policy and that they deny their members to have a personal relationship with GOD now and must be looking at their authorities much the same as GOD. A middle-man, much the same as Catholics. Which is the church that these people’s ancestors broke away from in the first place to make Baptists!
One of their worst things they do as the Catholics is attempt to force their beliefs on Americans thru our law. Which is a severe violation of our civil right to privacy. Not only do they reject GOD’S words and laws, they are trying to kill Caesar.
Must be trying to be a dictator or ‘master’ of a whole nation. Now that is reminding me of Carry Nation.
I’m going to save ur link and hope to read more. Sorry I didn’t put my usual ‘f’ on the end of my name as I didn’t see the other Nancy on here ’til I already posted.
Have a great weekend and thanks for this post.
Thanks, Nancy. God bless you. Hope what you find here is helpful.
I have been dealing with just that thing, I have seen people say the sinners prayer and never step foot into church again. my question to anyone that can answer. what do I do when I see this practice in church and know its not biblical?
strangely enough I just wrote about this problem
I welcome any advice thoughts or prayer
Your Brother in Christ
Troy ” FireSpeaks” Pearsall