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The Empty Promise of the Sinner’s Prayer

Well, congratulations, you have just become part of the family of God.

You are forgiven forever, and I want to say to you, sir, to you, ma 'am, congratulations.

If you prayed that simple prayer, we believe you got born again. What we face is the sinner's prayer. And I'm here to tell you, if there's anything I've declared war on, it's that.

According to many pastors today, salvation involves merely praying a prayer, repeating a few words.

At our church, we have people repeat a prayer. It's just a means of allowing them to express their heart to God so that they can have a moment that they look back on and say, I placed my trust in Christ.

After a person repeats these words, that person is then immediately treated as someone who is certainly saved and who will never lose that salvation.

You are forgiven forever, and I want to say to you, sir, to you, ma 'am, congratulations.

They treat this prayer as an easy guarantee of going to heaven.

Why the Narrow Gate Matters

Many who preach the gospel today are out of step with Jesus in this matter. They may preach a gospel, but they make it sound easy to become a Christian and to be saved.

Go to hell. You have to do almost the impossible. You have to reject the love of God. Anybody ever heard anything like that? It's easy to become a Christian. It's easy. It's one, two, three. Here are the three steps.

It's easy as ABC.

A, acknowledge. B, believe. C, confess. Okay. It's easy to become a Christian. Just do this and repeat after me. Sometimes an invitation to pray the sinner's prayer to be saved is simply tacked on to the end of a sermon.

Even when the sermon didn't at all explain anything about sin, repentance, or what Jesus saves sinners from. And people end up praying the sinner's prayer and thinking they are saved simply because they were responding emotionally to the environment and the music.

Rather than because they truly understand the gospel.

See, here's the other problem with the way the gospel is presented in our current culture. The problem is, you know, you, you, you, you, you know, manipulate people, have time, don't even preach the gospel.

I'm at a church. This is not long ago. I'm at a church. There was a conference being held at the church. Um, it was actually a conference of our, our convention. I'll just go ahead and say that and put it out there.

It was a big, huge Southern Baptist meeting with a bunch of Southern Baptist pastors. We're going to get together. And I got there a little early. So I went to the host church, ginormous church, just big for no reason at all.

Big, huge, just giant, just big. Okay. Like 5 ,000 seats in the place or something like that. And I go in and that night the guy's preaching and he's actually preaching on tithing because the building was new, really needed to be paid for, you know?

And so he was preaching on tithing. I mean, just preaching hard. He's thundering away on tithing. All right. And after he finishes thundering away on tithing, they come to the end of the service and you're not a good Baptist unless at the end of the service.

You do a manipulative arm twisting altar call. So he's preached on tithing, hadn't mentioned Christ, not one time in his whole sermon, but he gets to the end of the message and they start to play the soft music and he looks out and he says, there are any of you out there and you've never come to God through faith in his son, Jesus Christ.

You just need to repeat this prayer after me. And it was something very similar to this. I almost got quitlash. Where did that come from? Where did we get that? And here's the other thing. People start walking to the front and I'm going, where are they going and why?

There's been no gospel preached. There's been nothing about Jesus, nothing about sin, nothing about repentance, nothing about what they feel guilty because they haven't been giving and now they want to come to the cross.

What are they coming to? They come to the front. They're led in the sinner's prayer that you will find nowhere in the Bible, nowhere in the Bible. And right afterwards, that statement is made, welcome to the family of God.

If you prayed that prayer and you meant it, you're saved.

The Sermon on the Mount and the Hard Road to Life

However, what these pastors teach about how easy it is to be saved is at odds with what Jesus himself taught about salvation. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus taught that the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life.

And those who find it are few.

They may preach a gospel, but they make it sound easy to become a Christian and be saved. Jesus did not. William Hendrickson had it right when he wrote, our Lord does not follow the method that is used by certain self-styled revivalists who speak as if getting saved is one of the easiest things in the world.

Jesus, on the contrary, pictures entrance into the kingdom as being on the one hand most desirable, yet on the other hand, not at all easy. The entrance gate is narrow.

It must be found. Countless people who have prayed the sinner's prayer and think they are saved demonstrate that they are not truly saved because they do not care at all about serving God or obeying what God has revealed in the Bible.

The majority of gospel presentations today focus only on God's love and salvation and skip over the prerequisite to understanding God's love and salvation, which is an understanding of our true sinfulness before God and the eternal hell we deserve because of our sin and rebellion against an infinitely holy God.

That's not the gospel that we hear in our culture today, is it? The gospel that we hear in our culture today sounds a little something like this. It's real easy. First, believe. Believe God loves you and made you for a purpose.

Believe God has chosen you to have a relationship with Jesus who died on the cross for you. Believe that no matter what you've done, God wants to forgive you. Second, receive, receive Jesus into your life as Lord and Savior, receive his forgiveness for your sins.

So I invite you to bow your head and quietly whisper the prayer that will change your eternity. What's that prayer? Jesus, I believe in you and I receive you. If you sincerely meant that prayer, Jesus, I believe in you and I receive you.

If you sincerely meant that prayer, congratulations, welcome to the family of God.

Well, congratulations, you have just become part of the family of God.

The Purpose Driven Life and a Gospel Without Repentance

One of the most popular Christian books ever written, The Purpose Driven Life by Rick Warren presents the gospel in this way.

That's the gospel presentation in The Purpose Driven Life or the excuse for a gospel presentation in The Purpose Driven Life. No repentance, no gospel, no sin, no wrath of God, no nothing. Just believe.

God loves you. He made you for a purpose.

Jesus died for you. That's it. Really? Just like that? In its attempt to not offend anyone with the gospel, it does not cover the depth of our sin, God's wrath upon sin, or the need for repentance. However, in order for us to be saved, we need to first understand both who we are and what we are saved from.

Without a proper understanding of our sinfulness before a holy God and the hell that Jesus saves his people from, praying to receive salvation really means nothing.

No, not just like that. You are a wretched, miserable, sinful creature who deserves to die and go to hell. And unless you repent of your sin, unless you are aware of the fact that you deserve to die and be crushed under the weight of the holiness and majesty of God, you don't get it.

And there's none of that there. Instead of telling people that their salvation is guaranteed because they repeated a few words, we would instead point them towards the signs of a true conversion and true saving faith, which is a life of service and obedience to God because this is the fruit of being born again by God.

A person who is truly born again by God will both have faith and desire God.

False Assurance and the Need to Test Yourself

Our men today are trusting in the fact that at least one time in their life, they prayed a prayer and someone told them they were saved because they were sincere enough. And so in their salvation, if you ask them, are you saved?

They do not say, yes, I am because I'm looking unto Jesus and there is mighty evidence giving me assurance of being born again. No, they say one time in my life, I prayed a prayer and they live like devils.

One of the things that you're not going to find here, one of the things that we're not going to do here is ever tell you that because you did this, you're a member of the kingdom of God. Oh, the Bible says, test yourselves to see if you be in the faith, test yourself.

There's not just an entrance. There's also a way there is a road.

There is a life to be lived. When people profess faith in Jesus without a proper understanding of sin, repentance and hell, it is likely that the Jesus they have professed faith in is a false Jesus of their own creation and imagination rather than the true Jesus of the Bible.

Believe in Jesus.

Which Jesus? He said nothing about Jesus. He hasn't defined Jesus. What if I believe in the Jesus of the new age movement? What if I believe in the Jesus who's lowly, Jesus, meek and mild, who would never hurt a flea?

What if I believe in lowly Jesus, meek and mild, who wouldn't dare send anybody to hell, let alone believe or teach that there is such a place?

Dear eight pound, six ounce newborn infant Jesus, don't even know a word yet.

If we believe in a Jesus who is not the Jesus of the Bible, then we are not believing in a Jesus who can save us from sin and hell. However, perhaps in an attempt to maximize numbers at their churches, many pastors simply assume that everyone who professes faith in any Jesus is saved and do not ever question whether a person has professed faith in the true Jesus of the Bible.

If I believe in that Jesus, can I be saved? The answer? No. But is that what you get in the modern proclamation of the gospel? No. You get, it's really, really easy. No, it's not.

It's not. The reason why the sinner's prayer is so dangerous and devastating is that it makes countless professing Christians so confident in their salvation, regardless of what they believe or how they are living their lives, that they will now no longer listen to anyone who points them towards the truth of what scripture actually teaches.

Now we just walk in and talk to them, give them three exploratory questions and ask them if they want to pray a prayer and ask Jesus to come into their heart. And we make a two-fold son of hell who will never again be open to the gospel because of the religious lie that we as evangelicals have spewed out of our mouth.

The Call to Repentance, Faith, and Endurance

I'll say something that... Here's one of the big problems with the way the gospel is polluted in our culture. People proclaim the quasi-gospel, come down to the sinner's prayer that you will never, ever, ever find in the Bible, have somebody repeat this flimsy prayer, tell them that based on the words that just came out of their mouth, they're saved and they belong to God, they're sealed in the Lamb's book of life, and if a person is unconverted, they've just been sealed in their unbelief.

And here's what's so terrible about that. Years later, when they ought to be on their faces, remember, test yourself to see if you be in the faith. Years later when they ought to be on their faces, basically saying, you know what, yeah I prayed that but I was manipulated.

Yeah I meant that but I was scared. There was no repentance. There was no conversion. There was nothing. God, I need to cry out to you and confess that I'm not yours. I've been going to church, I've been going through the motions, I've been doing all sorts of things.

And this hasn't been hard because I'm on the hard road, no, it's hard because I'm on the broad road trying to convince myself that I'm a Christian. But that never happens. Why doesn't it happen? Because here's what you do.

You remember this for the rest of your days. You go back to your Bible. You open it up to that page. You point to that date. And you remember that on that date, because of what you said with your mouth, your name was written in the Lamb's Book of Life.

So there's no need for you to fall on your face in repentance before a holy God crushed under the weight of your sin. Because your salvation is not about your endurance. Your salvation is not about fruit.

Your salvation is just about the words that you say in the magic part of the room. Do you see how destructive that is? How heinous that is? And that's what passes for the gospel in our day.

The truth is that salvation involves much more than just a simple one-time decision or prayer. It involves a supernatural transformation from God in which a person is born again and now desires God and submission to all God has revealed through His Word.

Apart from this supernatural work from God, nobody would desire God over sin. We would all choose sin and hell over submission to God. This is why Jesus says that few people find life in contrast to pastors who treat salvation as the easiest thing in the world.

It is incredibly difficult.

And the difficulty comes because of your sin and mine. The difficulty comes because you are bent toward your own will. Because I am bent toward my own will. The difficulty comes because you believe that you deserve the death of Jesus on the cross and that you are actually worthy of it.

The difficulty comes because you want to follow your own life and your own path and ask God to bless it. You want Jesus to be an appendage on your self-centered life, not an eradication of it. That's why it's hard.

It is not easy. But thankfully, salvation comes from God, not us. And God will give His people all the power they need to believe in Jesus Christ, repent of their sin, and joyfully obey His Word.

But thanks be to God for Jesus Christ, our Lord, who has come to redeem a people for Himself, a people marked by repentance and faith, a people who enter the narrow gate and walk the hard road with few companions, and therein find life.