The Sinner’s Prayer:
Evangelical Surrogate-Imposter for Baptism
And all the people when they heard, and the publicans, justified
God,
being baptized with the baptism of John.
rejected for themselves the counsel of God,
being not baptized of him.
Luke 7:29-30 (ASV)
________________________________
Well,
who can deny it? Evangelicals, swept-up in
the thought-stream descending from the Protestant Reformation, have a strong
aversion against baptism. They refuse
for baptism a salvific role, as the culminating event in Christian
conversion. But that rejection of the
“counsel of God” has left a void that could not remain empty. People need a “finish line” to tell them when
they have arrived at the place of salvation and full entrance into the kingdom
of God. Otherwise, the “right comforting
doctrine” of Calvin leaves them in discomforting anguish: one minute full of assurance, and the next,
worried that maybe they are still coming short.
Baptism would happily meet this need.
But baptism has been rejected, and evangelicals generally accept baptism
only in modified form—once it has been stripped of its function as “salvific
finish line.” In its place, they offer
an imposter as a substitute. That
imposter, most commonly, is the Sinner’s Prayer.
David
Platt recently (April 11, 2012, Verge 2012 Conference) made a strong statement
on the danger of the Sinner’s Prayer. He
spoke the truth, and was nearly brought to tears as he spoke. I believe David was shaken because he felt
the full weight of the fraud being perpetrated, realizing that a significant
number of modern believers accept the Sinner’s Prayer as Gospel—literally! His message, then, was not only a warning,
but a rebuke. And the people under his rebuke
were his people, his church. Here is
what he said:
And I’m convinced many people in our churches are just simply
missing the life of Christ, and a lot of it has to do with what we’ve sold them
as the Gospel—i.e. pray this prayer, accept Jesus into your heart, invite
Christ into your life. Should it not
concern us that there is no such superstitious prayer in the New
Testament? Should it not concern us that
the Bible never uses the phrases, “accept Jesus into your heart,” or “invite
Christ into your life”? It’s not the
Gospel we see being preached; it’s modern evangelism built on sinking sand and
it runs the risk of disillusioning millions of souls. It’s a very dangerous thing to lead people to
think that they are a Christian, when they have not Biblically responded to the
Gospel. If we’re not careful, we will
take the Gospel—the lifeblood—out of Christianity and we’ll put Kool-Aid in its
place, so that it will taste better to the crowds. It’s not just dangerous; it’s just damning!
Unfortunately,
David Platt backed down from this statement when he was later called to address
the concerns of the Southern Baptist Convention. They had made a resolution to actually defend
the use of the Sinner’s Prayer, and Platt himself buckled under the pressure
and voted in favor of it. I can hardly
contain my disappointment. It is said
that a “middle-of-the-roader” is someone who gets dirt kicked on him from both
sides. David cannot be right when he
speaks so equivocally, first against and then in advocacy of the Sinner’s
Prayer. I understand the urge to keep
unity, but to unify on false doctrine that carries the weight of millions of
souls who stand, if David’s early criticism is right, to be defrauded of
salvation when Gospel is replaced by superstition. He had an audience of people who had probably
done the Sinner’s Prayer thing themselves, and will be responsible for
continuing the horrible tradition. David
could have made a stand like the one Martin Luther made at Worms almost 500
years ago:
Since your majesty and your lordships desire a simple reply, I will
answer without horns and without teeth. Unless
I am convicted by scripture and plain reason--I do not accept the authority of
popes and councils for they have contradicted each other--my conscience is
captive to the Word of God. I cannot and
I will not recant anything, for to go against conscience is neither right nor
safe. Here I stand, I cannot do
otherwise, God help me. Amen.
And
why have evangelicals rejected God’s Word on this matter? It is because they are still mired in the
“old perspective on Paul.” Martin
Luther’s experience in conflict with Catholicism dominates Evangelicalism. It has long been (wrongly) assumed that
Martin Luther’s battle was the spiritual equivalent of Paul’s battle with
“Judaizers.” As the medieval Catholics
were employing “works” as a way of attaining “self-righteousness” though
“legalism”, it was assumed that Paul battled the same dark counterpart as the
antithesis to the Gospel of Christ. That
was not the same battle that Paul faced, and Bible scholars should have been
made aware of this from the late 1970’s.
The
confusion, in part, is understandable.
Luther was troubled by the way “works” were used to corrupt
spirituality; and Paul was also troubled by “works” also. The trouble is, Paul and Luther were not
talking about the same thing when they used the identical terminology of
“works.”
For
Luther, “works” were attempts to earn salvation by human effort. A person confident of good moral living might
even think their efforts/works to be so successful that a Savior is not even
needed! Such “works” might bring
“self-righteousness”. Additionally, in
Reformation perspective, this concern insisted that the credit for the “work of
salvation” be clearly assigned. God had
to be given full credit, and by corollary this necessitated that the human
convert must claim no credit and could be offered no credit. God’s sovereignty over such matters was seen
to be so thorough that human self-initiative could play no role in either
salvation or damnation. The sovereign
God determined which individuals (the “chosen few”) would be saved and which
would be sent to Hell. In this
perspective, salvation becomes a “tug-o-war” between the efforts of God and the
efforts of humans. If humans were
thought to exert any effort, this implied “legalism” and
“works-salvation”—attempts to meet the demands of God’s Law by one’s own
effort. What Reformation perspective
demanded was a totally passive convert, who made no contribution to God’s work
in salvation.
The
obvious problem that derives from Protestant perspective is that the central
concern of Christian salvation and conversion is “relational”! And relationships require two active partners
if they are to find success, not just One.
It is jarringly disruptive, once a relational understanding is realized,
to place the two relationship partners into conflict by demanding that only one
of them be active. And the first clue
that the Reformation is off-track should be that the NT Scriptures everywhere
expect an “active convert.” For whatever
depravity and wickedness grips them, unbelieving sinners are still assumed to
have the capability to either accept or reject the Gospel for themselves. They are given commands to accomplish certain
requirements of salvation:
·
Hear
and believe the Gospel
·
Repent
of sins
·
Confess
(declare) the Lordship of Jesus
·
Call
upon the name of the Lord
·
Be baptized
Indeed,
the writers of the NT were not embarrassed to insist that those coming to
Christ Jesus for salvation must “obey the Gospel” (2 Thess. 1:8; 1 Peter 4:17)
pursuant to salvation! Clearly, these
writers understood salvation in relational terms and so expected active,
“working” converts. When the converts
obeyed such commands, they were not earning anything for themselves. They were attending to the relational concerns
that were prerequisites to reconciliation with God. And as they obeyed, neither were they already
saved.
As
baptism itself was forced to convert from its Biblical meaning to one that fit
with Reformational sensibilities, a similar conversion was forced upon the Holy
Spirit. Since God had to get all the
credit, He had to have the active role throughout the conversion process—start to
finish. It was not enough to be the
provider and initiator of salvation by sending His sin-bearing Son to the
Cross. God also had to work the
responses for actionless converts: He
created the response of faith/belief (for some, but not for others), God made
people repent, made them confess the Lordship, made them call upon the
Name. And the person of the Trinity
thought to be active here was the Holy Spirit.
This
brings a second clash with the Bible description of salvation. In Biblical conversion the Spirit is
given/received as a gift only at the finish or culmination of conversion. In fact, that gift is given in the
culminating event of baptism (Acts 2:38), in the “new birth” of “water and
Spirit” (John 3:3-5). Paul did not say
the Spirit was given to make us sons/daughters/children of God; he said the Spirit
was given because (hence after we had become) God’s children: “And
because ye are sons, God sent forth the Spirit of his Son into our hearts,
crying, Abba, Father” (Gal. 4:6, ASV).
In
my recent book, Filling the Temple:
Finding A Place For The Holy Spirit, I set forth four avenues of
Scripture that offer baptism as the insertion-point for the Holy Spirit in a
Christian:
--the
development from the baptism in the ministry of John the Baptist to the baptism
in the ministry of Jesus prior to Pentecost (both were immersions for the
remission of sins, but did not convey the Spirit, for the Spirit had not yet
been given). Then after Pentecostal
outpouring of the Spirit upon “all flesh”, the Spirit is received in
baptism. This final stage of development
makes the Christian’s baptismal-reception of the Spirit parallel to that experienced
by Jesus, accompanied by Heavenly Voice and descending Dove. This baptism, which remits sin and imparts
Spirit, is the “one baptism” of Ephesians 4:5.
--the
Johannine baptism “of water and Spirit” (John 3:3-5).
--the
twice-told telling of Israel’s historical experience, from bondage under the
Law to redemption in Jesus. In the first
telling (Gal. 3:22ff.), the culminating experience that brings Israel
liberation is BAPTISM. In the second
telling of the same historical sequence (Gal. 4:1ff.), the culminating experience is the reception
of the HOLY SPIRIT. This “co-incidence”
would suggest another avenue leading to the same place as the other Scriptural
avenues: baptismal reception of Spirit.
--The
shared experience of “anointing” between Jesus and Christians. In Luke’s Gospel and Acts, Jesus was clearly
anointed with the Holy Spirit at His baptism by John. You can’t miss this after reading the baptism
episode followed by Luke’s commentary in 4:1; 14, the incredible
self-declaration made by Jesus in His “first sermon” at Nazareth (4:16ff.), and
finally by the reporting of Peter’s sermon by Luke: “that saying ye yourselves know, which was
published throughout all Judaea, beginning from Galilee, after the baptism which
John preached; even Jesus of Nazareth, how God anointed him with the Holy
Spirit and with power: who went about doing good, and healing all that were
oppressed of the devil; for God was with him” (Acts 10:37-38, ASV). With this as background, consider Paul’s
statement regarding the “anointing” experienced by Christians: “Now he that establisheth us with you in
Christ, and anointed us, is God; who also sealed us, and gave us the earnest
of the Spirit in our hearts” (2 Cor. 1:21-22, ASV). Is it hard to see that “anointing”
essentially describes baptismal reception of the Holy Spirit? The connection must have been
well-established in the early church, for it is also witnessed in several
passages of 1 John.
In
conclusion, then, let me raise a question to which only David Platt knows the answer: did David perhaps back-off from an easy
annihilation of the Sinner’s Prayer because he was unaware that the only fit
replacement is baptism, in which sins are remitted and in which the Spirit is received?? Or, was he aware of this, yet conscious of
the theological collision this would have rammed him into with the “old
perspective” members of the Southern Baptism Convention?
I so
desperately crave the unity, concern for which apparently drove David, after speaking
one way, to then speak another. I would
like to call him my brother in Christ. I
would like to call the Baptists my brothers/sisters in Christ. You see, as long as I hold on to the Scriptural
role for baptism as the place of salvation’s birth and the place of the Spirit’s
reception, I have to carry the discomfort that David avoided. I have to endure false slurs such as
legalist, works-theology, water-salvation, etc.
I will remain theologically isolated, with the only Biblical ground for
unity rejected through the “old perspective” which has been demonstrated to be
in error. And it is plain, at least to
me, that if this unity is to be achieved, it will be when baptism—not the
Sinner’s Prayer—is commonly recognized, and no longer rejected, for its place
in the counsel of God.
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