The following explanation has cost me many friends in evangelical circles since I was converted.  I know it to be true as I experienced it.  I was lead through the typical hoops at an altar in 2002, prayed a prayer, and was told I was saved.  After the novelty wore off, I was back to my old self with no sense of change, just a bit more morality – enough to soothe my conscience.  By God’s grace, I experienced regeneration of the Holy Spirit in October of 2004 and haven’t looked back since.  I offer the following explanation for your consideration.  Hopefully it will answer questions and stop this downward spiral of false conversion.  The examples and presentation come from several of Paul Washer’s and others’ teachings.  It is more or less a summary that has proved invaluable to me.  The video offers an example of a Biblical alternative to the sinner’s prayer.  We should labor in prayer with people, but not trust that some man-made mantra will save anyone.

There is this silly notion that if you play a song that gives people goosebumps, lower the lights and make them feel guilty until they come to the altar and answer 4 questions that you lead them through, that somehow they will have eternal security. I would challenge anyone through your Bibles and find an apostolic call or a “sinner’s prayer” anywhere in the Bible. I will save you time by telling you it’s not there. You can pray the sinner’s prayer 1,000 times and still be a two-fold son of hell.

You see, we are by nature a selfish, instant-gratification driven society. We live in an age of now. Email, text messaging, cellphones – whatever, we want it and we want it now. That bleeds over into our church and here we have the 4 magical questions that we get someone to answer the way we want them to answer and viola their pronounced saved and welcomed into the family only to never show up at church again!

We have taken the beautiful doctrine of regeneration and the supernatural gift of salvation and turned them into some silly little list of questions we get someone to answer. Let’s look at how we’ve been wrongly taught to spread the Gospel of Christ. Before we do, understand that as Tim Keller puts it, “The Gospel of Jesus Christ is shallow enough for an infant to wade in, but deep enough for an elephant to swim.” In other words, you can know the Gospel but still not completely understand it.

Usually it starts something like this, “Did you know that God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life?” Yes God does love you, but to the common man, this is not the God of the Bible. Think about this for a minute. The lost person has no starting point. Their response is often, “God loves me? Well, I love me!” and on they go to believe that this god you are describing is one that loves them and what they love and will give them those desires because he loves them in that way. (See how self-centered that is?)

We must start by telling that person who God is. By explaining how He is righteous, perfect, holy and just, they have a starting point. For them to understand who God is, is the beginning of their understanding.

God is holy

• Your eyes are too pure to approve evil, And You can not look on wickedness with favor. Habakkuk 1:13

• But your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God, And your sins have hidden His face from you so that He does not hear.
  Isaiah 59:2

God is just

• For the LORD is righteous, He loves righteousness; The upright will behold His face.
  Psalm 11:7

• But the LORD of hosts will be exalted in judgment, And the holy God will show Himself holy in righteousness.
  Isaiah 5:16

• God is a righteous judge, And a God who has indignation every day. If a man does not repent, He will sharpen His sword; He has bent His bow and made it ready.
  Psalm 7:11-12

Now our lost friend has a starting point. He knows now the characteristics of God and who will be measuring Him and that there will be standards and consequences.

So first it’s, “Did you know that God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life?” and quickly the lost person is hustled to the next one, “Do you know you’re a sinner?” Often, to make the person feel less convicted, the pastor or evangelist will say it jokingly with a smile. Brothers and sisters, if you are smiling when you say or answer that, then you know not the dangerous state of your soul. We are all sinners and are condemned.

The Depravity and Condemnation of Man

• For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.
  Romans 3:23

• For all of us have become like one who is unclean, And all our righteous deeds are like a filthy garment…
  Isaiah 64:6

• For as many as are of the works of the Law are under a curse; for it is written, ‘CURSED IS EVERYONE WHO DOES NOT ABIDE BY ALL THINGS WRITTEN IN THE BOOK OF THE LAW, TO PERFORM THEM.’
  Galatians 3:10

We are all sinners, pastors and elders and deacons and on and on. Not only are we sinners, all we have ever done is sin from our mother’s womb. You can see this in a child. The way they act, they lie, scream, kick, fight, etc. No one had to teach them that!

So you see, from birth, we’re sinners (Psalm 51:5). And usually when this question is asked, without pausing too long, the evangelist skips right on to the next one, “Do you want to go to heaven?” Well duh?! I believe the devil himself would want to go to heaven if he did not have to kneel to God. And it overlooks a great dilemma, and perhaps the greatest problem in the Bible.

The Great Dilemma

• He who justifies the wicked and he who condemns the righteous, Both of them alike are an abomination to the LORD.
  Proverbs 17:15

• Far be it from You to do such a thing, to slay the righteous with the wicked, so that the righteous and the wicked are treated alike. Far be it from You! Shall not the Judge of all the earth deal justly?
  Genesis 18:25

So the question becomes, “How can a holy and just God rightfully execute His justice which is perfect and righteous and give me what I deserve which is His wrath and still allow me into heaven?” That is the question and the greatest problem in scripture.

You see, we deserve nothing but God’s wrath and to be condemned to hell. But because He is also a God of love He sacrificed His only Son Jesus Christ.

God’s Action
While maintaining His holiness and justice, the Bible also affirms that God is love, and that in love He has responded to the plight of man.

Motivated By Love

• God is love. By this the love of God was manifested in us, that God has sent His only begotten Son into the world so that we might live through Him. In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.
  1 John 4:8-10

The Cross of Christ

• For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, being justified as a gift by His grace through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus; whom God displayed publicly as a propitiation in His blood through faith This was to demonstrate His righteousness, because in the forbearance of God He passed over the sins previously committed; for the demonstration, I say, of His righteousness at the present time, so that He would be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.
  Romans 3:23-26

The Resurrection

• He who was delivered over because of our transgressions, and was raised because of our justification.
  Romans 4:25

You see, many read the story of Abraham taking his only son up to slay him on that altar. As his hand was raised with the knife before he struck, God sent a substitute for the sacrifice. Many believe that is the end of that story, but my friends it’s only the intermission. God picks back up years later on that hill with His son on a cross knife in hand. And with pleasure, the Bible tells us it pleased Him to crush His son (Isaiah 53:10). Someone had to pay the price, someone had to satisfy His wrath with blood and it was His Son Jesus Christ. So with knife in hand He finished it and brought down the knife and slayed His Son on that tree.

That is love my brothers and sisters. That is undeserving love to the highest degree. And this is where the “shotgun wedding to Jesus” comes to a head and we disgrace our Savior and His supernatural gift of salvation and regeneration. It goes something like this… “Well all you have to do is repeat this prayer after me…” I will tell you again, THERE IS NO SUCH CALL ANYWHERE IN THE BIBLE! Now I’m sure there are some of you that may be feeling the “gotcha” feeling. Romans 10:9 says, “because, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” Now, this is perhaps another one of the most twisted scriptures. Paul was not giving us some magical incantation to lead people through.

Do you really think that coaching someone into repeating a prayer has the same power as the supernatural movement of the Holy Spirit? The so-called sinner’s prayer and this approach is as dangerous and unbiblical as the Roman Catholic belief and result in infant baptism. Likewise, it has sent countless souls to Hell. The great evangelist Billy Graham was even quoted saying that he would be surprised if 75% of those making professions of faith at his revivals were truly regenerate.

This man-centered approach to evangelism is also driven by selfishness. A selfishness to want to take credit for leading someone to Christ and to see immediate results as opposed to faith and patience in the Holy Spirit to move an unconverted soul to repentance. Evidence of this false conversion can be seen as an individual seems to fall away from the faith. My friends He who started a good work in you will finish it (Philippians 1:6). When genuine conversion takes place, God replaces your heart of stone with a new heart (Ezekiel 36:26). He creates a new creature (2 Corinthians 5:17). You will hate the sin you once loved, and love what God loves. Will you sin? Yes. Will you be tempted? Yes. However, when that temptation comes and it becomes so overbearing and you start into your old sin that God delivered you from, you will get sick the moment you taste it and realize how vile it is and seek repentance from a holy and loving father.

You see, we have it backwards today. No one comes to Christ. It is impossible to come to Christ. Why? Because before Christ has saved you, you were dead in your sin (Ephesians 2:1) and dead men do not walk nor talk. As illustrated in John chapter 11 in the story of Lazarus, he was dead. Was he able to get up and come to Christ for help? No. But when Christ intervened everything changed. When Christ shows up nothing stays the same everything changes. Lazarus has new life.

Man’s Response

REPENTANCE begins with a recognition and confession that what God says about us is true – we have sinned.

• For I know my transgressions, And my sin is ever before me. Against You, You only, I have sinned And done what is evil in Your sight, so that You are justified when You speak And blameless when You judge. (Isaiah 51:3-4)

A genuine recognition of our sinfulness and guilt will also lead to genuine sorrow, shame and even hatred for what we have done.

• For what I am doing, I do not understand; for I am not practicing what I would like to do, but I am doing the very thing I hate. (Romans 7:15)
• Wretched man that I am! Who will set me free from the body of this death? (Romans 7:24)

Apparent sincerity of confession alone is never definite evidence of genuine repentance. It must be accompanied by a turning away from sin.

• Wash yourselves, make yourselves clean; Remove the evil of your deeds from My sight Cease to do evil. (Isaiah 1:16)
• …every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. (Matthew 3:10)

Back to our well-intended, misinformed, evangelist, first it was, “do you know God loves you?” Then, “do you know you’re a sinner?” then, “do you want to go to heaven?” then repeat this prayer. And the worst part of all,our lost person is turned around, introduced to the family and pronounced saved. They walk out of that service still lost in their sin with a false assurance of eternity. This has been the measuring stick of how successful evangelism of a ministry is.

To be saved, the book of Matthew and the rest of the NT tells us repent and believe. That’s how a lost soul “comes to Christ,” by hearing the gospel of Jesus Christ and beginning to feel a grievance for their sins brought on by the Holy Spirit.

JS