the sinner's prayer

Most of you who are reading this blog are familiar with the phrase "the sinner's prayer." For those of you who aren't, the phrase is used by many evangelical pastors and evangelists; it refers to what a sinner should pray to God in order to have his sins forgiven and be able to go to heaven one day. When I was a child, I was led to pray the sinner's prayer and I did. Therefore, you could say I'm pretty familiar with the prayer. However, I'm determining where the concept originated and how biblical it is.

This past week I read through book of "Acts" (in the Bible) exploring what the apostles said to people in order to be forgiven of sin and reconciled to God. The only phrases I found that came from an apostle's mouth instructing people to "be saved" were things such as, "repent and be baptized" (2:38), "repent and turn again" (3:19), "repent of your wickedness and pray to the Lord that, if possible, the intent of your heart may be forgiven" (8:22), "everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins" (10:43), "everyone who believes is freed" (13:38), "believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved" (16:31), "repent because God will judge the world through Christ" (17:30), and "believe in Jesus" (19:4). I could not find the "sinner's prayer." The only time prayer is mentioned for salvation is chapter eight verse twenty-two, but even there the apostle is not asking someone to recite something after him. (I realize that I'm only covering one New Testament book of several that would be helpful to the conversation)

Am I completely against the sinner's prayer?? No. However, I believe we should be cautioned because it has done much harm to the church and the world. This prayer many times is used as a magical formula that if said in the right manner will get you a "go to Heaven free" ticket. Many times I believe children and teenagers have been deceived and lured into thinking they have become regenerated believers when in all actuality, they just recited some words while they were emotionally scared of going to Hell.

So, what should we do? We need to be biblical and develop our understanding of salvation and the gospel from the Bible. Do I have it all figured out? Do I completely understand how salvation works? No. My hope is that you and I will become more glorifying to God by becoming more biblical. In the meantime, lets show people they need to repent of their deep, unsatisfying wickedness, and believe in the gospel, and turn to Jesus in order to be clean, reconciled to God, and fulfilled through knowing and pleasing Him. (Let me know if you think I'm right on or if I'm missing a few steps in my thinking.)