Sinner's Prayer (rerun)

Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry coming to you from Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston. No Compromise Radio is a program dedicated to the ongoing proclamation of Jesus Christ. Based on the theme in Galatians 2, verse 5, where the Apostle Paul said, but we did not yield in subjection to them for even an hour, so that the truth of the gospel would remain with you.

In short, if you like smooth, watered down words to make you simply feel good, this show isn't for you. By purpose, we are first biblical, but we can also be controversial. Stay tuned for the next 25 minutes as we're called by the divine trumpet to summon the troops for the honor and glory of her King.

Here's our host, Pastor Mike Abendroth.

High Church, Evangelical Traditions, and the Sinner's Prayer

Welcome to No Compromise Radio ministry. My name is Mike Abendroth. Today is Tuesday. Sometimes I tape a show on Wednesday, but I say it's Tuesday. I don't know if that's a white lie or what that is. Maybe it's just a venial sin.

But today actually is Tuesday,.

And that means Pastor Steve is here. I'm going to expiate that venial sin for you. Propitiate, expiate.

There are differences, but we'll get to that in another show. Te absolvo. Tuesday, we have the theme, always biblical, always controversial, always hilarious. In that order. Always in that order. We like to talk about things that have to do with church issues.

High church, low church, ecclesiastical policy. Does anybody even know? Do you know what high church is? You're listening right now. Do you know what high church is? I mean, I want to joke around when you say that, Steve, but I don't know if I ought to.

I remember when I used to get home drunk on Saturday nights and still drunk on Sunday mornings for punishment, my mother would make me go to the Lutheran church. Ouch.

High church, just to be short about it, it just means very formal, you know, very staid, you know, everything in its place and a lot of pomp and circumstance. So we're all clear on that. That's right.

Smells, bells. I wonder if people who have to do those incense sensor things with their wrists back and forth, if they get carpal tunnel, would that be workers' comp?

I'm wearing my carpal tunnel braces right now. I'm absolutely certain it's covered under workman's comp here in the People's Republic.

All right, I have two questions for you today, Pastor Steve. Two questions. Question number one. Okay. Do you believe that there are sinners? I do. Do you believe that people pray? I do believe that, yes.

I'm going to lie again and ask you my third question.

Well, I'm pretty much out of yeses. Do you believe in sinner's prayers?

No. Wow, that's what we're going to talk about today. Sinners, the sinner's prayer. Steve, I got online and I got onto the sinnersprayer .org and it said, no longer activated. You think out of anything in the world that should still have some kind of resources, that would be the one.

I shut it down. But I did go to Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, and it actually has something called the sinner's prayer. Can you imagine it shows a person bowing down, 10 commandments to the left, cross to the right, and it says, the Augsburg Confession divides repentance into two parts.

One is contrition, that is, terrors smiting the conscience through the knowledge of sin. The other is faith, which is born of the gospel, are of absolution, and believes that for Christ's sake, sins are forgiven, comforts the conscience, and delivers it from terrors.

Now, I don't know why that's there in the sinner's prayer, but let's talk a little bit about what the sinner's prayer is. Is it biblical? Should we do the sinner's prayer? And should you ever lead anyone in the, or a, sinner's prayer?

I've done it, and I guess it's true then. It's something, you know, it really, early on, in fact, a good friend of mine, I won't mention his name, but he's also known as the law man, he and I found out that one of our coworkers, a fellow deputy, had a brain tumor.

And so we wanted to, you know, we were energetic young Christians, and we wanted to go minister to this guy. So we did, and we preached the gospel to him, and after we were done, and he agreed with everything we said, we led him in the sinner's prayer, and then we welcomed him into the family of God, and guess what?

He's no longer practicing the faith.

That would be accurate. And there was no change in his life, and we were bummed out.

Evangelical Traditions Versus Biblical Conversion

Well, don't you think, Steve, that in evangelicalism, some things are so common, we assume that they're true, but we've never analyzed them biblically. For instance, the sinner's prayer, the altar call, we just assume they're part of the fabric of evangelicalism, but we don't even know if they're biblical.

Well, they're traditions, you know. We sometimes talk about Catholic traditions and other traditions. Well, these are evangelical traditions, things that have crept into the church, and then, you know, just kind of, everybody assumes that the lights have to go down, the pastor has to stand up there, and, you know, the organist plays, just as I am, for the 432nd time, and, you know, we're waiting for somebody to raise their hand, lift their eyebrow, do something to let us know that they've accepted Jesus Christ.

Yeah, accept him in your heart,.

Make a decision for Christ. We use terms like that all the time. I did find one illustration of the sinner's prayer on the internet. I think this is still under the Wikipedia. Heavenly Father. Now, here's basically what's gonna happen.

Let me just back up for a second. Someone expresses a desire. They'd like to not go to hell. They'd like to acknowledge their sin, and Jesus is a Savior, and so what you're supposed to do if you believe in the sinner's prayer theology, you lead them.

So, Steve, I'm gonna pretend like I'm leading, and you're gonna be following, okay? So. We've done that a time or two. Repeat, repeat. That's the way it should be. Repeat after me, and you've gotta mean this with your heart.

And so, Heavenly Father. Heavenly Father. I know that I have sinned against you. I know that I have sinned against you.

From this day forth. From this day forth. For better or for worse. For better or for worse. For better or for worse. In riches and in poverty. In sickness and in health.

We could go all the way through. It talks about being sorry. It talks about, please forgive me. I believe that Jesus died for my sins. Lots of stuff in the sinner's prayer is actually good. So why is the sinner's prayer, leading someone in the sinner's prayer, wrong if the sinner's prayer actually has mostly truth in it?

Well, ultimately, because it doesn't indicate anything. I mean, I am getting somebody to do something. It's like, you know, you can get your child to memorize just about anything. It doesn't mean that they actually believe it.

And in this case, I'm getting somebody to repeat what I say, but it's not necessarily indicative of any kind of changed life, transformed heart. Let me give you another example. Several years ago, I had another friend.

I was a little bit smarter and wiser. And I preached the gospel to him every way I knew how. I just kept trying to find some way that he would object because we'd been going at this for years and he'd never gotten saved.

He'd never bowed the knee to Christ. So why would tonight be any different? And I was determined that I was just going to keep going at it until he finally said, I don't believe that. Well, he kept agreeing with me and this was perplexing.

So finally, I'm just exhausted. And he says, he says, well, one more thing, Steve. And I said, sure. And he goes, would you pray for me? And I said, sure. So I prayed for him. And then without any prompting from me, he prayed.

And when I listened to his prayer, I thought, man, if he really believes what he just said, he's saved. And you know what? For the next five years, he lived faithfully out of the gospel and I've seen great growth in his life.

Prayer, Faith, and the Thief on the Cross

So five years in present tense believing. Right, yeah, still believing. We are for prayer at No Compromise Radio Ministry. We are for people getting converted. What we don't want to do though with a sinner's prayer is somehow communicating to people that this prayer saves.

We don't believe in baptismal regeneration where people get baptized and then get saved. We don't believe in decisional regeneration, make a decision, therefore God has to save you. And we don't believe in,.

What kind of word can we make up for this? Prayer regeneration, the regenerative power of prayer. Yes, we don't believe that.

The act of prayer does not save. Let me ask you a question, Pastor Steve. Did the thief on the cross pray to become saved or did he become saved without even a prayer?

Well, I think it's clear from the scripture that he got saved without even a prayer. He went from mocking to worshiping Christ in the span of a short period of time. We don't know exactly how many minutes,.

But pretty short period of time. That's exactly right. Now let's ask the flip side question. Matthew chapter seven, many will say to me on that day, they've done all kinds of things and they're talking to God, they're talking to Jesus.

It could be prayer as it were. And they're praying, they're telling Jesus all these things that they've done in his name, in his name, in his name. They've prayed and yet.

No salvation, no change. No salvation. And he's gonna say, depart from me.

Would you say true or false? The sinner's prayer is an invention of man. I would absolutely agree with that. Yes. What should we do when we meet someone and they seem to be afraid of hell? They seem to hate their sin.

They want to have their consciences assuaged and they have the guilt of their sin forgiven. What should you do if you're listening and you've got a friend like that, Pastor Steve, what do you tell somebody?

I tell them to go over the gospel with them. I mean, here's the thing. If somebody is saved and you tell them, if you give them a gospel, if you go through and you say, this is who God is. And then you say, this is who man is.

And you explain to them the chasm between the holiness of God and the sinfulness of man and their need for a savior. And then you present to them the finished work of Christ. And then you say to them, you must believe in Christ alone.

And they say, I believe all of that. Then rejoice. And it wasn't whether you led them to the Lord. I think that maybe that was the genesis of this whole sinner's prayer thing. This need to quote, unquote, lead people to Christ as if we could take them by the hand and somehow shepherd them spiritually through the minefield and get them to a saved place.

And it's good to say, it's good to win souls as the Proverbs would say, that is preach the gospel so people get saved. But I think you're right, Steve. We don't really lead people to the Lord. In one sense, it's much more difficult than in Andrew's day when Andrew would actually take a person and walk him over.

Hey, I'd like to introduce you to Jesus. Well, how do we introduce people to who Jesus is now? We introduce them by preaching the gospel, telling them the claims of the gospel, and then urging them to believe.

And if they respond by saying, yes, I believe, part of me, Steve, rejoices, but the other part of me says, time will tell. Is that a pessimistic attitude or is that just realistic or is it biblical?

No, I think we always want to hope, you know? I mean, there's kind of the, that's good. Now let's see. I mean, it's like, what would you do with a child who said, who lied to you over and over again and came to you and said, you know what, dad, I'm never going to lie to you again.

What would you say? Well, I don't believe that. No, you'd say, good. But you'd also say, okay, we've got a track record. I'm going to see what happens from now on. So it's similar, not exactly the same, but you want somebody to say, yes, I believe that.

And then you want to encourage them. You want to disciple them. You want to see them grow in their relationship to Christ, in their love for the truth, but you can't affect it. You can't cause it yourself.

There's nothing you can get them to say that somehow transports them into the kingdom of heaven.

Encouraging Faith Without Treating the Prayer as Saving

Well, you hit the nail right on the head. So what we do is we encourage faith. If you have a kid, a young child in your family, and they're five, eight, 12, and they say, I believe in Jesus, then what you ought not to do is backhand them and say, how silly, don't do that.

You should encourage the faith. And in your heart though, you should be saying, time will tell, trials will tell. The Bible clearly teaches that time and trials will show if a person's profession is really possession, if it's a real conversion.

And people can receive the word with joy, Jesus said in Luke 8, and yet walk away when the trials come. Sinner's prayers don't save. I would say, Pastor Steve, that sinner's prayers are not the cause of salvation, they're the result of salvation.

If you really prayed that in your heart and meant it, you're already saved because you don't pray that way if you don't really mean it.

That's right. And so many times, I think the sinner's prayer, the other side of it is, I think not only do we wanna have some sense that we've actually led someone to salvation, but we also wanna be able to welcome them into the family of God.

As soon as they pray it, then we say, you know what, if you meant that from the heart, welcome to the family, give them a great big hug, and they're in. We just have this need to know, and the truth of it is, what we do is we preach the gospel.

I mean, think about what Paul said. He said, he didn't say in 1 Corinthians, I have determined to know nothing among you, but the sinner's prayer. It's Jesus Christ and him crucified. We need to present the truth to the people and allow, get out of the way, allow the Holy Spirit to work.

Don't try to force things.

Lordship, Repentance, and the Gospel Call

How about this, Steve? Would you agree with this? Although much of the sinner's prayer, let me rephrase that. And people have different sinner prayers. You know, it's ABC, admit, believe, confess. There are different ways to go about it.

But what I see lacking in the majority of sinner's prayers would be lordship, the demand for complete following. It seems to me that most sinner's prayers are so easy believism that it helps people affirm, oh, I believe that, but it never gets to hating mother, brother, sister, denying self, sick of self, pick up the cross, follow you, your life is over.

Why aren't those things in the sinner's prayers?

I don't know, because they're chock full or the gospels are chock full of them. Jesus made it very, very difficult to be one of his disciples. He didn't make it easy. He didn't say, you know what? If you're sitting there and you heard this message, just repeat these little words here.

I mean, why don't we have that anywhere in the gospel?

Steve, I think we've got something new. Maybe we could market this and become really rich. How about this? When people really have the guilt of their sin and they don't want to go to hell and they want to pray the sinner's prayer, we interrupt them and say, we want to pray for you.

And then we try to pray them out of it because if they really do believe and it's the spirit of God convicting them, they'll be faithful to the end and they will believe. And so don't you think, and I'm joking, but shouldn't we try to talk people out of believing and say, this will cost you everything.

You don't know what you're signing up for. Well, I'm trying to figure out where the money comes in. I'm confused. Maybe the lawsuits. I mean, the train went off the track there. I don't know what happened.

Well, this is live radio, practically live. It is Tuesday, but we don't know how live it is. I think if a sinner cries out, Lord have mercy upon me, the sinner, like the tax gatherer did in Luke 18, that is a wonderful prayer.

I don't think we need to argue, Pastor Steve, does God hear any prayers of the unbeliever except for salvation? Well, we know he hears every prayer, whether he wants to answer them or not, that's up to his own sovereign will.

But I think if someone says, I hate my life, I want to abandon my life, I'm a sinner, I hate myself, I hate my thoughts, I hate that I reject the creator, and God, you've got to have mercy. I know you're called Jesus because you're a savior.

Save me.

That's good. Well, and you know what, in all candor, it really doesn't change much after that. Your life as a Christian is one of what? Of recognizing that you still sin, hating it, and asking for forgiveness, confessing it to God, asking for forgiveness, and working on that relationship with Christ, being in the word, and it's a matter of what we call sanctification.

But it doesn't, the sinner's prayer, in essence, I mean, if we were to, maybe we should write our own biblically accurate sinner's prayer. I don't know what that would even do. Is that where the money comes in?

Yeah, that must be it, because then we could copyright it, and everybody, you know, in order to say it, they would have to, nah, that's a bad idea. That kind of like Christian music.

That we sing on Sunday morning, Christian music licenses and all that? Yeah, it's not strange.

That is a peculiar thing, but what I was driving at is it doesn't really change. Every day, it is a new acknowledgement that we are saved by grace alone. It's from that moment when you fully comprehend who Jesus Christ is, it doesn't change.

It's that wonder that he would love you in spite of all that you do, and your desire to be pleasing to him, not out of any sense of, okay, I'm just gonna do the right thing. I'm giving up my drink. I'm giving up my gambling.

I'm giving up this, giving up that, giving up. No, it's a love for Christ and wanting to be more pleasing to him.

False Assurance, Self-Examination, and the Need for Biblical Knowledge

What if someone were to say, Steve, you know, I don't really follow God anymore, Jesus. I got my own thing going on, and my own loves and my own interests, but I'm a Christian. Well, how do you know you're a Christian?

Because I prayed the sinner's prayer. I went up to the front. I prayed the sinner's prayer. This, no matter what anyone says, getting someone to pray the sinner's prayer and then telling them they're saved, you should never do that.

That's the spirit of God's ministry and privilege and prerogative. This kind of thing causes a false sense of security. It has to. I don't wanna do that.

Well, that's exactly right, because what winds up happening is that becomes the anchor, as it were, of their faith. It's not about how their walk is. I mean, when Paul wrote 2 Corinthians 13, 5, I think, that we should examine ourselves.

I mean, it's amazing what the Bible never says. Paul doesn't say, remember the day you prayed that sinner's prayer. That's the day that will encourage you forever. You need to just focus on that day. No, he says, examine yourself and see if you are, in fact, in the faith.

It is a matter of looking at our life and going, how could a Christian do those things? And it's only by that sort of self-examination, not by saying what, you know, like the hypothetical person you're talking about who just says, well, I know I'm a Christian because I did that.

And, you know, now I'm just kind of free to do my own thing. That is a violation of the scriptures. You know, may we continue in sin that grace may abound all the more. May it never be. Well, that person says, may it be, may it be wrong.

Seems to me a lot of people.

That like these sinner's prayers, they like signing the card. Actually, I was on one of the internet sites just a few minutes ago, and it said, if you've read the sinner's prayer and you want to kind of pray it in your heart and you did, click on this link.

And, you know, it strikes of a non-lordship gospel. It strikes of not waiting like Jesus would wait for the fruits of conversion. And it also strikes me, Steve, of a very Arminian man-centered gospel.

I believe there are three wills involved when it comes to salvation. That is to say, man's will, Satan's will, and God's will. Now, I don't mean they're all equal, but they're all working. Man's will is fallen and corrupt and depraved.

Satan's will is he's blinding the people's will. And so it's kind of a double deal. You're sinful and then you're blind at the same time. And then you have the one who's got the omnipotent will, and that's God.

And so why do I want to put all the pressure or all the focus upon man's will when man's will doesn't save at all? Man's will only contributes to fallenness and more fallenness. So can't we pray to God to save the sinner?

Wouldn't that be better? If we met someone, they say, I want to get saved. We preach the gospel to them. And then we say, since God controls your salvation, I'm going to pray to God for you that he would save you.

Would that be a good sinner's prayer?

It would be a great sinner's prayer. And I, you know, again, don't get me wrong. I love the United States. I love America. I just think it's one of these kind of American inventions where we're so determined to preserve, protect, defend individual liberty that we're not willing to stand up for the liberty of God.

He goes first in salvation. He determines who he will regenerate and who he won't. And sinner's prayer or no sinner's prayer, I mean, you mentioned, you kind of referred to Matthew 7, Lord, Lord, did we not, did we not, did we not?

And then he says, depart from me, you workers of iniquity, for I never knew you. And he goes on and he says, you will know these false professors by their fruits. You'll be able to look at what they do and see that they're not of him.

They're not of Christ. If we look at what the Bible says over and over again about the fruits of the spirits, all these kind of issues involve lordship, involve following him, taking him not just as savior and not in some kind of two minute Lord's prayer thing, but it's a daily commitment to Christ.

The Need to Preach Christ and Pray for Salvation

Steve, I'll amplify that a little bit too. And I think you'll agree. Most people today don't even understand who God is. We're leading in them some prayer and they don't even understand God. I don't think you need to understand the hypostatic union, all the many details of the virgin conception.

I don't think you need to know every one of those things in order to be saved. If you are saved, you'll believe them all. But people don't even know who God is. Shouldn't we spend a lot more time talking to people about who God is, his nature, his character, his attributes, who Jesus is?

Oh, and there's a real dearth of knowledge. That means a lack of knowledge. Dearth of knowledge when it comes to God in our society. You know, you talk all the time about George Burns, as if anybody remembers the movie.

That came out 35 years ago. But 35, a day is like a thousand years.

But people forget, or people have this image of God that he's just this big, giant care bearer. You know, he's a giant marshmallow and he's too nice to kind of judge anyone. That's not Care bearer.

How old is a care bearer? It's 20 years, but it's closer than George.

Next thing you know, he's kind of like a purple Teletubby. Well, see, now we're getting closer.

We're getting closer. But it's this big, mushy, nice God who would just never think ill of anyone. And that's just not the God of the Bible. He hates sin and he hates those who practice sin, who are in the constant habit of sinning.

Since God alone saves, we like prayers and we want you to pray for your loved ones if they're not saved. We want you to pray that God would open their hearts, that God would turn his anger into peace and security based on Christ's work.

We want prayers. We just don't want you to somehow think that salvation is in the hand of your unbelieving friend or you know exactly what to say, repeat after me. It's just not in the Bible. That's what we're after.

We just want to go back to what the Bible teaches. So preach Christ, focus on Christ.

Well, and right on what you were saying, think about it this way. Why would you pray for someone's salvation if you didn't really believe that God could change their heart? And at the same time, then you're going to go to them and try to give them some low view of God in some sinner's prayer like that where it's not really God, it's somehow the prayer or some other device that's getting them into clicking on the sinner's prayer on the internet, something like that.

Yeah, I have it right there for you, Steve. I have accepted Jesus Christ today.

Just a little click. Well, you know, and then they've got a counter there. So over 100 ,000 saved today. Then your ministry is validated.

That's another problem we don't have time for. We don't validate your ministry by what the numbers are, but your faithfulness. God, help us to be faithful. This is Mike Abendroth. And Steve Cooley. And we're here for No Compromise Radio Ministry.

God bless you.

No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Abendroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston. Bethlehem Bible Church is a Bible teaching church firmly committed to unleashing the life-transforming power of God's word through verse-by-verse exposition of the sacred text.

Please come and join us. Our service times are Sunday morning at 1015 and in the evening at six. We're right on route 110 in West Boylston. You can check us out online at bbchurch .org or by phone at 508 -835 -3400.

The thoughts and opinions expressed on No Compromise Radio do not necessarily reflect those of WVNE, its staff or management.