Waging War on the Salvation Incantation

Christians everywhere would rise up in anger were someone to teach the little children that the way to be saved was to sink into a trance and recite a spell.

“Come on now, children,” says the teacher, “Let’s say: hocus pocus, Jesus focus! Of sin I repent, my guilt is all spent, take me now to heaven, for now I’m forgiven!” The children chant along, and the teacher says, “Praise the Lord, you’re all saved!” The kids run around with their coloring papers and the teacher rushes to the parent and says, “Johnny got saved in Sunday School today!” Parent later asks Johnny about it, who has no idea what is going on. “Did you say the Salvation Incantation?” Johnny nods. Sure did.

Sadly, later, when Johnny is a teenager, involved in who-knows-what, he announces he isn’t even a Christian anymore, but Mother has “assurance,” because “once saved, always saved.” Johnny’s backslidden. Johnny’s carnal.

Johnny’s going to hell. He didn’t repent, seek forgiveness, come to Jesus. He said a Saving Spell.

We would never stand for that, you say. So you say.

Instead of that, we have the children bow their heads. We have the children close their eyes. No looking around! Now, remember, you have to “really mean it.” The children bow and fold. They don’t look around. “Now, repeat after me,” and once again the teacher has the children recite the words to the Salvation Incantation: “Dear Jesus, I know I am a sinner. Forgive me of my sins and come into my heart. Save me, for Jesus’ sake, Amen.”

Same song, second verse. Even more pious. Much worse.

We can be sure that in a vast percentage of cases, the children reciting this spell are not saved. We know this because when they grow up and join our churches, they testify that they “said the Sinner’s Prayer” when they were young, but didn’t truly become children of God until they were older.

In fact, many of them had the experience that Johnny had. In their teenage years, when they were actually experiencing conviction of sin and need of a Savior, they were pooh-poohed by those well-meaning adults into believing they were simply “struggling with assurance,” and that they had been saved back in first grade when they Chanted the Charm, aka the Sinner’s Prayer.

I recently heard a preacher say that these “words have power.” No, actually they don’t. They have no more power to save you than would reading aloud the headlines of the newspaper.

Words don’t save anyone. Words said in response to a request by a preacher to “give your heart to Jesus” mean nothing. There is no power in words.

The mother who begs her little child to “ask Jesus into your heart” is fooling herself that her child’s soul is safe if in fact the child has no idea what the woman is speaking about. Even if the child can answer the doctrinal questions (“Honey, you know Jesus died for you, right?”), it is often the case that the child is simply answering with memorized answers. This may be true even if the child has memorized the entire shorter catechism.

If the child is not seeking his soul’s salvation from hell by trusting simply and trusting only the blood of Jesus Christ given for him on Calvary, the child is not saved. The child who is trusting in the fact that he has prayed the Salvation Incantation is not saved. The child who is trusting his mother’s reminder that he has prayed the Salvation Incantation is not saved.

How many messages have you heard that do not even touch on Christ, and yet at the end of the service, sinners are prompted to “come forward” to “trust in Christ”? Too many to count, if you’ve sat in the pews I’ve sat in.

Degrees in systematic theology are not required, but some understanding of essential Gospel facts is required for a person to be saved. An understanding that one has offended God and that God has made a way through Jesus Christ is not enough. The God-ness of Jesus Christ must be confronted, understood, believed, and embraced.

The understanding that one is a sinner—“You’ve stolen a cookie, haven’t you?” is the perennial favorite of well-meaning Sunday School teachers—is not sufficient repentance. Modern-day “repentance” is no repentance. It’s a “turning from” sin. (Nor is there any hell, but a “separation from God.”) It’s a recognition that one has at one time or another veered from The Path of Righteousness.

This is all nonsense.

The sinfullness of which we must repent is not a stolen cookies, or even a stolen lover. It is the systematic badness of our hearts. The full-orbed evil that pervades our selves. The fact that you stole a cookie has nothing to do with it. The fact that you beat your wife has nothing to do with it. Friend, you are not a sinner because you hate your brother. You hate your brother because you are a sinner. Your sinner-ness is who you are.

Repentance is that horror at the realization, at the undeniability, that your entire being is fully sinful. That every motivation of your heart is selfish, every act—even those that are good—is motivated by unrighteousness. You could no more turn away from sin than a drunk can turn away from the proffered glass. Repentance is that fear and dread that comes upon you when you realize you can’t wash off the sin. There is nothing you can do with the guilt.

People whom God is pursuing don’t have to be convinced of their guilt. They know they are guilty before God because when they lie awake at night and ponder eternity, they tremble in fear of death and of what follows. They know. They need a Savior.

His name is Jesus.

There is no incantation here. There is a running to God for forgiveness. There is a clinging to Jesus.

That’s still not enough information. The sinner coming to Jesus Christ must know that Jesus Christ lived sinlessly, and took our guilt upon Himself. The Bible teaches us that the consequence of sin is death. That is, because we are sinners, we owe our lives. We will give them up in death. We sin—we die, end of story.

God has made a way of Salvation from the eternal death of Hell. Jesus Christ gave His Own Life in place of ours. Then, in a Greatest Moment of All Time, Jesus Christ was resurrected—in one moment of stunning God-Power, death was defeated. A way was made to reconcile man to God. Jesus is that way. He said, “I am the way, the truth, the life. No man comes to the Father, except through Me.”

We need to hang onto that substitution with everything we have. We need to reject our sinful lives, throw ourselves on Jesus, beg Him for forgiveness, for grace, for eternal life, and then—according to the promise of God—God Himself will give us the “earnest,” that is, the downpayment, the engagement ring of that Eternal Life. He gives us the Holy Spirit. (The Holy Spirit is another post I am going to write in a day or two, be patient, please.) It is the Holy Spirit’s presence in our lives that convinces us that we have indeed been saved.

And by the way, this probably isn’t done too often with your heads bowed and your eyes closed and no one looking around. Why is no one to look around? Are people really that embarrassed of choosing Jesus? Is it really that shameful? Lots of effort goes into not embarrassing people who have “just gotten saved.” Why?

One reason may be that no one else is talking. What if the Pastor asked for anyone who had made any decision whatever to stand and testify. What would happen if someone stood up and said, “God convicted me of disrespecting my wife and right here I want to beg her forgiveness and promise all of you that it will never happen again. Sally, will you forgive me?” What if someone said, “God has shown me I should look into missions. Pray for me.” What if someone said, “I have sinned by putting into my retirement account what should have gone for my daughter’s braces, and I want to tell her we are going to the orthodontist tomorrow, and I’ll trust God for my later years.” Perhaps in an atmosphere of open spiritual growth, one would dare to say, “I need to be saved. Help me come to Jesus.”

I think we should be more like Adoniram Judson. For six or seven years, he sat in the preaching house in Burma every day. Some days no one would come, but some days someone would come. Judson didn’t pressure people to chant little mantras and prayers. He engaged them in heart-to-heart discussions of the Scripture. He heard their questions. He spoke clearly to their need. He was dogmatic about Jesus, no holds barred. No making it easy. It’s all or nothing. You have to give up your entire life and live entirely for Jesus. Jesus has a right to you. You owe Him everything.

When one wanted to become a Christian, Judson would ask whether the seeker would now be baptized. If the person was afraid to be baptized—because he might lose his job or be killed—Judson would say, “You are not ready for Jesus if you are not willing to die for Him.” This is in sharp contrast to our idea that Sinner’s Prayers are repeated silently in one’s mind while everyone around is ignorant of it, that people “come to Christ” without telling anyone, and that someone “slips out to the back” and prays with a man he’s never met before, who simply prays with him and doesn’t seek first to instruct him in the full-blown Gospel of Jesus Christ.

All of this of course begs all those questions about how much faith is necessary, how much grief must be expressed upon turning from sin, how much theology must be grasped, and so on, for a Sinner to come from darkness to light. And those are intense, necessary discussion. So much hangs on them. Life and death hang on them.

But I believe we can at least agree on this: a person who simply agrees that he is a sinner and chants a little prayer (even if he “really means it”) is no more saved that the chair he is sitting on when he prays it. Prayers don’t save. Words have no power. Jesus saves. Jesus alone. Come to Him—but you must know who He is, what He has done, why it matters, who you are, what you’ve done, why that matters, what eternity is, and that without the sacrifice, death, and blood of Christ being precious to you in your abject guilt and lostness, you are yet lost. You are not His.

Parents, you must have faith that your faithful teaching will bear fruit. Rushing into the Sinner’s Prayer “just in case he dies” when he doesn’t understand the Gospel will only muddy the waters. You give yourself a softer pillow to sleep on, but your child is no nearer to being reconciled to God than he was before. Faithfully, consistently, give your child the Gospel. Lead him surely, carefully, and really to Jesus for the saving of his soul. “Unless a man is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.”