What is the Sinner’s Prayer and What does it mean?
When a person wants to accept Jesus Christ they pray the Sinner’s Prayer. It fulfills the Biblical description (call on the name of Christ, Believe in My name, Accept Me as their Savior, Those who believe in Me, and many similar calls) to recognize and accept Jesus as God, that He died for your sins and is the Only Way to your salvation and eternal life.
This prayer is that acknowledgment. There is no special way of saying this prayer, God knows your heart. It must truly contain only that you believe you are a sinner needing salvation and that you accept Jesus as God and accept His gift of salvation for you.
Essentially:
· Do you believe in Jesus and what He did for you?
· Do you know why He did it for you?
· Do you know your fate if Jesus didn’t do this and what your fate is if you don’t accept Jesus’ gift?
It could possibly take just one church service, one chapter of the Bible, or one song for a person to believe this and accept Jesus as their Lord and Savior. Or it could take one decade or one lifetime. This is not the post for an in depth look at the act of salvation, but is an explanation of the key phrase of the Sinner’s Prayer:
We pray, “Lord, I accept you as my Lord and Savior.” These two terms, these names are very important and with them come much clarity of who Jesus needs to be to us and what our commitment to Him entails. Names matter!
Lord means to be “master of.” When we call God our Lord, we are committing our lives under His will and authority. We are essentially submitting our will and lives to Him. He is our master. We will always serve a master, whether it be to sin or righteousness. When we submit to Jesus as our Lord, we make ourselves slaves to righteousness, to a master who wants us to do good and receive good indefinitely.
Since there is no middle ground, but only good things (things of God) or bad things (things opposite to the things of God) this is why we can only do good or bad; slave to sin or righteousness.
Savior literally means, “one who saved.”
We are quite literally screwed. We have no good within us without God. We would burn, like paper or moth to a flame, if we encountered God. Stop thinking emotionally for a moment! It’s not mean, it’s logical. The moth cannot withstand the flame, we are drawn to its light, power, and beauty, but we literally cannot withstand the weight and fierceness of its heat and power. God saves us from the death we deserve. The wages of sin are death, as in our payment for our work. We have worked evil in our lives, our payment is death. God, if He is righteous, must demand justice. Going even further, He is justice. He cannot have entities, human or otherwise, doing injustice without punishment/consequence. Do you want to live in a world with no justice? No one to avenge the wrongs against you or those you love? Of course not! There must be a consequence for sin. When we proclaim Jesus as our Savior, we are admitting we are sinners, that our wages are death, and Jesus, as God, died for those sins. We accept He gave His life, so we need not die. His death covers, recompenses, pays the debt of our sin and most of all, His righteousness, His renewal after death, will be imparted to us. To those who call Him Savior, His glory, His life after the grave and His righteousness are OURS as well.
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