GIVING MY LIFE TO JESUS
AND ASKING JESUS INTO MY HEART
By. David Cloud, Fundamental Baptist Information Service
Oftentimes an individual tells me, “I
have given my life to Jesus,” or “1 have invited Jesus into my heart.”
I have no doubt that same people who
describe their salvation in these terms are genuinely saved, but these
are not biblical descriptions of salvation and I am convinced that to
use such terminology is not a harmless mistake. To “give my life to
Christ” or to merely “invite Jesus into my heart” gives the wrong idea,
in fact.
TO “GIVE MY LIFE TO CHRIST’ implies
that I have something good or worthwhile to offer to Him and that there
is something good in me that God would accept, which is definitely not
true. “As it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one” (Ram.
3:10). The Bible says that even our supposed righteousness is
unacceptable before a thrice holy God: “... we are all as an unclean
thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags” (Isaiah 64:6).
TO “INVITE JESUS INTO MY HEART” is not
the same as acknowledging my wicked sin and my frightful unsaved
condition and putting my trust in what Jesus Christ has done on the
cross for me as the only means of salvation. To “invite Jesus into my
heart”, implies that my heart is not the filthy thing that the Bible
says that it is. “The heart is deceitful above all things, and
desperately wicked: who can know it?” (Jer. 17:9). It is true that the
Bible says Jesus Christ comes into the life of the believer. In 2 Car.
6:16 God says, “I will dwell in them, and walk in them,” but this is
only after the individual is redeemed and cleansed and sanctified by
faith in Christ’s atonement.
The term “invite Jesus into my heart”
is usually based on Revelation 3:20: “Behold, I stand at the door, and
knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to
him, and will sup with him, and he with me.” First of all, this is not
an individual but to a church. See verse 19. “As many as I love, I
rebuke and chasten: be zealous therefore, and repent.” Jesus is
graciously knocking on the door of the wayward church and inviting
individuals to respond to His rebuke by repenting of their apostate
condition. I do not doubt that there is an application of this verse
that extends to Christ’s blessed invitation to individual sin-ners, but
we know that one verse cannot contradict everything else the New
Testament says about sal-vation.
To tell the sinner merely to receive
Jesus into his or her heart gives the wrong idea UNLESS we carefully
explain about his sinful condition and God’s judgment of sin (Rom. 1:18
- 3:18) and Jesus’ sacrifice for sin (Rom. 3:19-24). This is the true
Roman’s Road plan of salvation.
The Gospel is not inviting Jesus into
my heart; it is summarized as follows by the Lord’s apostle: “For I
delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that
Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures; and that he was
buried, and that be rose again the third day according to the
scrip-tures” (1 Cor. 15:3-4).
Biblical salvation is described in
Acts 20 as repenting of my sin and self-will, which means to surrender
to God, and putting my faith in Jesus Christ as my sin bearer. This is
the message that Paul preached. ‘Testifying both to the Jews, and also
to the Greeks, repentance toward God, and faith toward our Lord Jesus
Christ” (Acts 20:21).
Biblical salvation in described in
Romans 10 in terms of believing in the heart that God has raised Jesus
from the dead (Rom. 10:9).
Biblical salvation is described in
John 3 in terms of being born again by putting my faith in what Jesus
did when He was lifted up on the cross (John 3:3, 14-16).
Biblical salvation is described in
Acts 4 in terms of believing in Jesus Christ as the only Lord and
Saviour
(Acts 4:10-12).
Biblical salvation is described in
Acts 8 in terms of believing with all one’s heart that Jesus Christ is
the Son of God and that He paid the sacrifice that was demanded by
God’s law and that is described in Isaiah 53 (Acts 8:26-27).
There are many other descrip-tions of
salvation in the New Testament; but nowhere is salvation described as
“giving my life to Jesus” or merely “inviting Jesus into my heart.”
We need to be very careful about
salvation, because nothing in thin life is more important than finding
the right way of salvation and the Bible warns that there are false
gospels and false christs and false spirits (2 Cor. 11:1-4).
We are saved by believing from the
heart “that form of doctrine which was delivered’ to us, which refers
to the doctrinal content of the biblical Gospel. “But God be thanked,
that ye were the servants of sin, but ye have obeyed from the heart
that form of doctrine which was delivered you” (Rom. 6:17).
Shallow presentations of the gospel
can become “another gospel” if the individual is left with a wrong
concept of what it means to be saved.
It is instinctive that many of those
who are victims of the “Quick Prayerism” method of evangelism and who
have merely prayed a sinner’s prayer but do not show any evi-dence of
regeneration describe their salvation in the aforementioned terms.