When I was a teenager, I worked with a small domestic missions group. We evangelized in our community to children – by invitation and under supervision, since we weren’t much more than children ourselves. It was an interesting experience, and one of the things that stuck with me was a method they trained us to use to share the gospel. It was called the “Wordless Book.” The “Wordless Book” was nothing more than a series of five blank, colored pages. We would flip through the pages and explain a bit what each color represented. It was simple and concise, and even small children could understand the message. When we were done with the presentation, we would ask the children if they wanted to pray the “sinner’s prayer” with us. In its way, it was effective, and many children prayed with us. But to this day, over 45 years later, I have to wonder just how many of those so-called conversions were real.
Another commonly used method of evangelism is the altar call – where the gospel is presented, sometimes with a strong fire-and-brimstone component, and people are then asked to come forward to pray. It need not be with a sermon. It can be a puppet show, or a drama, or even a concert. But in the end it all boils down to a simplified hand-held guidance to repeat a prayer. It’s easy. And, I’ve concluded decades later, sometimes horribly misleading. A friend once told me his mother responded to an altar call and considered it as a transaction that she completed and didn’t have to concern herself with ever again. She checked off the box, prayed the prayer, and she was done. Her life didn’t change, her heart didn’t change, but as a result she was “innoculated” (her son’s word for it) against hearing the Gospel. If he tried to share his faith with her, she essentially told him, “no thanks, I’m good,” and would hear no more on the subject.
That’s not saving faith, and that’s not salvation. The God of the Bible does not respond to you as if your acts can twist His arm into doing something. In fact, He considers your “righteous” acts to be abhorrent. In Isaiah 64:6 it says the acts we consider righteous, God looks on like they were menstrual rags (in Hebrew, עִדָּה). If you bring your own works to Him as if they are worth something, He is going to reject them, and you, outright. And empty ritual is nothing more than self-righteous acts couched in religious terms.
One of the biggest issues people have with these ways of sharing the faith is what has become known as “easy believe-ism.” What that means is turning to Christ for salvation is reduced to a simple ritual with no depth to it, and no true faith behind it. It’s a “get out of jail free” card. It’s a cosmic vending machine; you put in your dollar, and you get a snack – but the “dollar” is a ritual prayer, and the “snack” is the salvation of your soul.
I would like to emphasize, however, that I do not think these methods of sharing the faith that I’ve mentioned are inherently wrong. Many, many people profess that they came to Christ through the Wordless Book, or the Four Spiritual Laws, or some manner of altar call. But what I am saying is that it cannot be taken for granted that they are always adequate, and if they are carried out in the wrong frame of mind, they can actually be damning.
The real problem, as I see it, is not “easy believe-ism,” but instead “easy evangelism.” The actual Gospel is easy. “Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved” is what Paul and Silas shared with their jailer in Acts 16:31, and he and his entire household turned to Christ. The thief on the cross only said to Jesus, “remember me when you come into your kingdom,” and Christ responded, “this day you will be with me in Paradise” (Luke 23:39–43). It does not get much easier than that, nor simpler. Neither Paul nor Jesus put any constraints or obligations on it; they were not required to be baptized first, they were not required to “make Jesus their Lord” first. Though more than enough reason exists to believe those things came later in the case of the jailer and his family, there was no “after” for the thief on the cross. He was dead the same day. In other words, they weren’t a condition of salvation. But neither does either example prove that getting them to the point of saving faith was as easy as actually crossing over that point. Paul and Silas spent time with the jailer and his family explaining the gospel to them. The thief on the cross knew of Jesus, knew who he claimed to be, and knew what he had done in the course of His ministry. In both these stories, we see a very simple culmination of turning to Christ, but we do not see the details of what led up to it. We have, at best, an incomplete indication of what they were thinking or feeling at the time, and a nonexistent idea of what they already knew.
The actual acceptance of Christ is the easy part. What’s not easy is getting to the point where you can accept Him. And the other thing that’s not always easy is helping someone else get to that point.
There are a few important concepts that I believe are necessary to know to come to a saving faith:
- You know you need to be saved.
- You believe Christ can save you.
- You trust He will save you.
You don’t need to have a full and complete understanding of those things to receive salvation, but you do have to at least be aware of them and what they mean. If you do not think you are in need of salvation, why turn to anyone for it? If you don’t think Jesus is the One who can save you, why turn to Him specifically? If you cannot trust that He will save you, how can you expect Him to do so?
Let’s expand on these concepts just a little.
The first is our need for salvation, and there are two aspects to this: the first is judicial, and the second pertains to damage and healing.
Judicially, the Bible makes it clear that any failure of obedience to God carries a death sentence, and that absolutely no one is obedient enough in their own right to be exempt. The passage in Isaiah 64:6 mentioned before speaks to this. Psalm 14:2-3 says, “The LORD looks down from heaven upon the children of men, To see if there are any who understand, who seek God. They have all turned aside, They have together become corrupt; There is none who does good, No, not one.” Romans 2:5-11 adds that it is only right that God judge everyone according to their deeds … and we already know what He thinks of our deeds. This type of judgment is exactly the kind of thing we would think of in a court of law. A judge might be sympathetic with a person who has broken the law, but their sworn responsibility is to levy the punishment that law requires. The difficulty with God’s law is the punishments are severe, and there is no latitude for leniency like a secular judge might have. Romans 6:23 says, “For the wages of sin is death,” and James 1:15 says, “… sin when it is fully grown brings forth death.” It’s not a fine for a speeding ticket we are discussing here, it’s eternal destruction. You might ask, “If God is both the maker of the laws and the judge, why can’t He just let it slide?” One part of the answer to that is He wants it gone. He cannot tolerate sin in any form. It’s a blight on everything He meant His creation to be.
But sin also causes actual damage, and it is hereditary. Romans 5:12 says, “Therefore, just as through one man sin entered the world, and death through sin, and thus death spread to all men …”, and goes on to say in Romans 5:19 that “… by one man’s disobedience many were made sinners.” Several Christian traditions call this “original sin.” It’s not that a newborn baby has already sinned from the womb, it’s that spiritually, they are corrupt from the very start. The implication is that something crucial was broken in mankind when Adam first sinned, and that brokenness has been passed on to every human being since. So not only do we have the burden of the Law against us, we also have a situation where we cannot escape it. We cannot escape the sin, we cannot escape the legal consequences … and it’s also very clear we caannot even escape the second hand consequences of living in a broken world.
In short, there are two meanings to what is called sin: acts of sin, and the inner corruption that leads to those acts. If you define sin as “wrongdoing,” there are the things people do that are wrong, and there is the natural inclination to do wrong. Thus the need for salvation; human beings are condemned from the very start and there is nothing we can do on our own to change it. We are trapped in a cycle of being so broken that we can only do things that break us more. And that brokenness leads to condemnation because God will not tolerate it.
Jesus took care of both of those problems, and that is how He can save you.
The legal aspect is addressed by what is referred to as propitiation. Propitiation is defined as appeasing someone or gaining their goodwill. Propitiation is when a husband buys his wife flowers after an argument and is forgiven. Propitiation is when a police officer writes you a speeding ticket, and you pay the fine rather than lose your driving privileges. In the Biblical use, it’s turning away God’s wrath. His wrath is a direct result of sinful behavior: God is angry that we do not live as He has prescribed (Romans 1:18). As a species we are arrogant; we not only hurt each other, we maim and kill each other; we reject God; we abuse not only ourselves but the rest of Creation. There is not a culture on Earth that will tell you everything is right and good in our world, and this is obvious to the most blatant unbeliever. And this makes God angry because it’s not how He meant the world to be. He’s angry with the situation, He’s angry with the ones who created the situation, and He’s angry with everyone who perpetuates it. But for His own reasons and purposes, He decided not to wipe the slate clean and start over. He provided a way to break the cycle. He doesn’t actually want to turn His anger towards His creation, He wants to fix it without destroying it (2 Peter 3:9).
When Christ died on the cross, he paid the legal penalty for sin. It’s very much like a father paying for his child’s traffic ticket. The law is satisfied, because the fine was paid, even though the person that committed the crimes didn’t actually pay the fine. The scope is immeasurably larger, but that’s the end result. The wages of sin is death (Romans 6:23), but the sinner need not die because Jesus died instead. And God’s wrath is turned away from all of humanity because he turned it on Jesus. It works because Jesus Himself did not contribute to the burden of sin that the rest of us were born with, since He wasn’t born with it Himself, and it works because Jesus is God. No one else could possibly make such a payment for so many. Only God has the pockets deep enough to pay such an enormous fine, and He paid it with His own life.
This leaves the essential sinful nature, our tendency to do wrong. This too was answered by Christ’s death on the cross. 1 Peter 2:24 says, “He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree [cross], that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed.” Paul, in Romans 6:1-12 writes of a profound dynamic that equates Christ’s death on the cross to our own death to our sinful selves, and a corresponding equivalence between Christ being raised from the dead with our own elevation to newness of life. Isaiah 53:3, in one of the clearest prophesies about Christ, says “…he was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed.” Looking again to the second part of Romans 5:19 it says, “… by one Man’s obedience many will be made righteous. ” Paul goes to considerable lengths to explain this in that whole passage from Romans 5:12-21 — sin has become part of the world because of Adam’s wrongdoing, but Christ has provided the way out. This negates the judicial verdict of “guilty” we all have carried from birth, and at the same time creates in us the ability to be able to be good as well as do good. 2 Corinthians 5:17 says, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new.”
The last thing then to consider is will Christ save you?
This particular aspect of eternal salvation is probably the one that has been the most muddied over the ages. It’s fairly obvious that if Christ was willing to die for humanity, He wouldn’t have gone as far as to die if a lesser act would have accomplished it. But human nature being what it is, as a race we keep trying to earn it ourselves as if our own acts can do the same. We think rituals might buy favor with God. We think if we live a certain way, that will buy favor with God. We think if we give things up, or give them to others, that might buy favor with God. We think we can buy God’s favor with actual money, or gifts to the church or to a temple. None of that works, though many of those things are actually good to do. Remember the menstrual rags of Isaiah 64:6? The only thing that buys God’s favor is the work of Christ on the cross. So it’s an enormous mistake to come to Him looking for salvation thinking He will save you because you have somehow proven yourself worthy of it, or because you are a “good person.”
In Matthew 22:1-14, Jesus tells a story about a man who invited a select group of people to his son’s wedding feast. But, to put it in modern terms, they ghosted him. He still wanted a nice crowd there, so he sent out invitations to anyone and everyone. Yet someone showed up without wearing the appropriate clothing. In those days, the host provided wedding clothing. The idea was everyone would be properly dressed for the wedding, and it would be no burden on the guests. But this person showed up with his street clothes on … in other words, he refused the provided garments because he thought his own were adequate. The result? He was thrown out. And not only thrown out, but tied up and thrown out. This is what it’s like when we bring our own works and actions to Christ. It’s not only inadequate, it shows a profound lack of respect. Christ provides all we need and nothing we bring to God of our own is of any value to Him. We insult Him to imply our own offerings measure up.
So why should you believe He will save you if you can’t do anything about it? Simply enough, He wants to. As I mentioned, 2 Peter 3:9 tells us He is, “… not willing that any should perish …” The implication is that if anyone does in fact perish, it’s because they either rejected His gift of propitiation outright, or they tried to help out with works of their own. And though salvation itself is very easy (come to Christ, and He will save you), this is the part that is not … setting aside everything else you think is worthy. Because, in the end, it is not. In Mark 10:17-27, Jesus tells another story about a rich man who came to Him asking how he could be saved. When Jesus told him he had to give up everything he owned, the man walked away. He wanted to earn his own salvation and Jesus refused him that option. The moral of that story isn’t that everyone has to give up everything, it’s that everyone has to give up thinking that what they have or what they can do has any value to God.
I’ve covered the things a person has to know and accept, but there is one more thing that’s needed: you have to want to be saved. And that means you need to repent and turn to Christ. The word in the Bible translated “repent” means to turn away from sin. Literally, the most common word translated as “repent” in the Old Testament (the Jewish Bible) means to “turn in the opposite direction.” In the New Testament, the most common word means “to change your mind,” with the implication that it is a profound change, like deciding on a new career, not just deciding on a different color of socks. Less common words translated as “repent” imply regret, shame and sorrow. That’s mostly how we think of the word today, that we feel bad about something. But true repentance comes down to this: you don’t like how you are and know you will be condemned for it, and you want to be different and reconciled to God. This applies to both types of sin, the brokenness and the deeds that rise from the brokenness.
If you recognize you are in need of Christ’s salvation, you can’t just say, “OK God, just save me and I’ll keep going on like I always have.” That’s not why He provides salvation. The entire point is to find forgiveness from God and get you out of the vicious cycle of sin and brokenness. But you are never going to escape that cycle of you don’t in fact want to be free of it. For some, that’s a simple step to make because they have seen that their broken nature and misguided decisions have caused them all manner of pain and misfortune. They have no issue repenting because they desperately want that change. Others have a pretty good life. They have done well for themselves, they have no major regrets. The rich man of Mark 10 was like that. He wanted heaven, but he had no conviction that anything in his life required him to change. He walked away condemned because he never acknowledged that as good as his life was, it wasn’t good enough, so he could not find it in himself to repent enough to give up his wealth. Perhaps if he honestly thought his life and eternity dependened on it, he would have acted differently. Or perhaps he just couldn’t give up earthly prosperity for a heavenly future he wasn’t convinced was worth the price. He was not willing to repent; he was not willing to change.
So repent and come to Him. Acknowledge what Christ did for you and depend on Him alone for the result. Like the thief on the cross, you only need ask, knowing what Christ did was needed and adequate, and that He wants to save you. That part of believing is easy; getting yourself to do it may not be.