Christianity in America is plagued with multitudes of religious lost – people who are convinced they are saved, but they bear no spiritual fruit. Their lack of fruit demonstrates that they are indeed still lost. (Matt. 3:10, Matt. 7:19). This is a bitter truth that every Christian in America needs to acknowledge before they will even have a chance to help those around them. Just as important, we must identify the root cause that is filling churches with many false converts. This root cause is easy to see: churches have silently replaced the Biblical gospel with watered-down, easy-on-the-ears, but heretical messages. This problem is maintained by an anti-biblical church structure that perfectly houses the religious lost that it creates. This is no coincidence. It's a well-planned system that could only come from the mind of Satan. I've talked a bit about church structure in previous posts. Now, I want to take some time to expose the heresies that are all too common and then discuss how to minister to others in this type of environment.
We'll start with the basics. Among other places, the gospel is defined in 1 Corinth. 15:1-4. The message is that Christ died for our sins and rose from the dead. Great news! So far so good – practically everyone gets that part right, even cults. Now, our response to the gospel message, or how we receive it, is by repenting of our sins and putting our faith in Christ (Mark 1:15, Acts 3:19, Acts 26:20). Adding or removing anything anything from the gospel makes it different, makes it 'another gospel', which is condemned in the strongest language (Gal. 1:6-8). This is how heresies are born. You take the gospel and add the keeping of the OT law, good works, baptism, etc. Or, in the case of fundamentalists and evangelicals, you add a sinner's prayer or remove repentance.
The Sinner's prayer is a heresy which promises that you can be saved by asking God for forgiveness or “asking Jesus into your heart”, typically by praying a modeled prayer. Let's be clear. You will not find these ideas anywhere in the Bible. Sinners are always called to repentance and faith. There's nothing wrong with expressing repentance toward God in prayer (Luke 18:13), but the error comes when people are assured that they are saved when and if they recite the prayer. In other words, this modern heresy promises salvation as a result of reciting a ritual prayer, not by repentance and faith in Christ. To make my point, let's look at an example developed and used by Billy Graham published on the Billy Graham Library's website (from the section 'prayer' at the bottom of the page):
Dear Lord Jesus, I know that I am a sinner, and I ask for Your forgiveness. I believe You died for my sins and rose from the dead. I turn from my sins and invite You to come into my heart and life. I want to trust and follow You as my Lord and Savior.
A few lines after this it goes on to mis-apply Romans 10:13 to suggest that anyone who prayed this prayer is now saved. It all sounds good, doesn't it? But faith and repentance are about actually trusting in Jesus and turning from your sin, not just saying that you will. To suggest that this prayer is sufficient for salvation is to accept lip service where Christ demands the substance.
The sinner's prayer can also be used without suggesting that it saves, but why would you? The prayer does nothing to help bring them to salvation, they need to repent. If the repenting sinner wants to pray, let him, but don't push it. Putting undue emphasis on a prayer can make the issues unclear, and you can make someone believe the prayer is important for their salvation even without explicitly saying so. This is especially true today. Maybe you don't tell the sinner a prayer will save him, but he has probably already heard that from several other pastors throughout his life. So, when you try to witness to that false convert and place the same emphasis on the prayer, he'll assume you're in the same boat. In short, using a sinner's prayer does nothing good, and is almost guaranteed to do some harm. So, if you really don't believe that a sinner's prayer saves, then stop doing it.
The "Romans Road" and "four spiritual laws" methods of sharing the gospel exemplify another type of heresy popular in conservative churches. The main problem of this heresy is that the gospel is proclaimed with little/no discussion of sin, and the need for the sinner to repent is either downplayed or neglected entirely. Yet, in the Bible, God makes it clear that repentance is absolutely necessary for salvation (Matt. 7:21, Mark 1:15, Luke 13:3, Acts 3:19, Acts 26:20). Let's look at some specific examples of this heresy.
The four spiritual laws can be found on the campus crusade website. In short, the four spiritual laws neglect the Biblical focus of sin/justice/hell/repentance/new birth and focus instead on “God has a wonderful plan for your life...you need Jesus so you can experience God's plan.” Sin is presented as a mere inconvenience that prevents the flow of blessings and is never properly defined. Repentance is almost completely neglected. Sure, there's a little cartoon at the end about Christ-directed vs. self-directed life, but their description of sin and repentance is so vague that it is practically useless to any sinner. Contrast this with the preaching of John the baptist, who called out specific sins and told men exactly what they needed to do (Luke 3:8-18). It wasn't just John, Jesus and the apostles did the same thing throughout the NT. So, instead of using the four spiritual laws, use God's laws (the 10 commandments are a great place to start) and show sinners their guilt, that they deserve judgement and hell, and that they need to repent and trust in the savior that died for them.
The Romans road is a very similar approach. Though older and more traditional, it's no better than the four spiritual laws. This approach relies on quoting several verses from Romans without their context. There are some variations, but let's look at the Sword of the Lord's website – a popular fundie resource. The shallow presentation of sin is similar to the four spiritual laws, but the Romans road is even worse because it mischaracterizes the nature of sin. At least the evangelicals talk about sin as a personal choice. In the Romans road, the fundies just talk about how you inherited Adam's sin nature. Too bad. How exactly are you supposed to repent of a sin nature? This description misleads sinners from gaining any concrete understanding of their personal, willful sins. The reality is that they must repent of their personal sins, not just the concept of sin, nor a supposed sin nature. Of course, they wouldn't know that anyway, because the Romans road doesn't even mention repentance at all. Therefore, the preacher robs the sinner of information they need to be saved. This road is just a spiritual dead end.
Now, given the nature and pervasiveness of these major errors, how can you minister to those around you? Realize that the number of religious lost is astounding, more than anyone would like to admit. From years of experience in preaching the gospel one-on-one, I estimate that less than 2% of Americans can give even passable responses to basic questions about the gospel, salvation, and the new birth – things that are necessary for salvation. If you don't believe me, approach some strangers or those lazy people at your church and ask them the following questions:
1) “Can you tell me how to get to heaven?” Probably the best response you'll get on this one is “believe in Jesus”. While not necessarily wrong, this answer is awfully incomplete. They should show some understanding of repentance in their answer to the rest of these questions. If not, they fail the test. Anyone who claims to have been saved for longer than a month certainly should be able to use the word “repent” without prompting.
2) “How is it that Jesus is able to save you?” they should have at least a basic understanding of substitutionary atonement – You are guilty of breaking God's law, but Jesus died in your place.
3) “What changed when you were saved?” Honestly, they should light up at this point. Every real Christian will have at least one story to tell that is very dear to them: loss of desire for formerly loved sins, a new hunger for the Bible, unexplained love for Christians, etc. They should be able to mention something like this which would demonstrate that they had a very real transition from darkness to light. If they have to think about it, you're looking at a lost religious person.
4) “So what are you doing for the Lord these days?” Maybe they're not making the best use of their time, but they should be doing something. Going to church, staying away from sin, reading the Bible, etc. doesn't count. That's no-brainer stuff that we do for ourselves. A person who does nothing for Christ is demonstrating that they do not really know Him (Matt. 3:10, Matt. 7:19-23, Matt. 25:23-30). Can someone recognize their sin and guilt, be saved from death and hell, then move on and not sacrifice and serve their Lord out of love? I don't buy it. There should be a desire to help and reach out to others that manifests itself somehow, ideally by sharing the gospel with others. Expect others to put up strong resistance to this one, as it cuts to the core of what is important.
As mentioned before, familiarity with the major errors that infect churches today is critical in order to minister to others. If you aren't willing to recognize the problems with a sinner's prayer or Romans road, you'll never ask the hard questions that are necessary to get through to the religious lost. This is not just theory. I seriously challenge you to ask the above questions to people around you. If they can't answer these simple questions about the gospel and the new birth, then it is evidence that they do not know Biblical repentance and faith. Treat them like a lost person until they prove otherwise. Specifically, share the Biblical gospel with them. Take away their hope in their superficial religious rituals, declare their need for repentance, and demand that they show the fruits of repentance. Be warned though, this simple Biblical practice will likely cause your friends and your church to turn away from you. But more importantly, you will have a chance to make a difference in their lives, and you will be following in the footsteps of Christ.
