Dissecting Our "Personal" Relationship With God - Part Two: The Sinner's Prayer/The Personal Savior

As stated in my last post on water baptism, the sinner's prayer eventually replaced the biblical role of the baptism. Though, it is touted as gospel today, the sinner's prayer developed only recently. DL Moody was the first to employ it. He used this "model" of prayer when training his evangelistic coworkers. But it did not reach popular usage until the 1950s with Billy Graham's "Peace with God" tract and later with Campus Crusade for Christ's "Four Spiritual Laws". There's nothing particularly wrong with it. I believe that God will respond to the heartfelt prayers of any individual who reaches out to Him in faith.        So, I want to be clear that the elements of the sinner's prayer are overall biblical. However, I want to also be very clear that a person is not saved because he prayed a prayer. Faith, assurance, and hope should never be placed in a prayer. Much like you should not place your hope and faith in the deliverance, the healing, or the salvation you seek. Faith placed in those things, you will find, is sadly misplaced. Instead, all of your hope and faith should be placed in Christ as the Deliverer, Christ as the Healer, or Christ as the Savior. People must repent of their sins, believe the gospel (which is Jesus Christ), and be baptized.        This is important.  Many Christians make the cataclysmic and unbiblical mistake of giving the other person a false sense of assurance of salvation, by asserting the person is saved because he prayed a prayer. Leonard Ravenhill once said, "The sinner's prayer has sent more people to Hell than all the taverns in America."        On a similar note, the term "personal Savior" is yet another recent innovation that grew out of the ethos of 19th century American revivalism. It originated in the mid-1800s to be exact. But it grew in popularity through Charles Fuller (1887-1968). Fuller literally use the phrase thousands of times in his incredibly popular "Old-Fashioned Revival Hour" radio program that aired from 1937 to 1968. His program reached from North America to every spot on the globe. At the time of his death, it was heard on more than 650 radio stations around the world.       Today, the phrase "personal Savior" is used so pervasively that it seems biblical. But consider the ludicrousness of using it. Have you ever introduced one of your friends by such a designation? "This is my 'personal friend', Billy Smith."        In Jesus Christ, you and I have received something far greater than a personal Savior. We have received Jesus Christ's very own relationship with His Father. According to New Testament teaching, what the Father was to Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ is to you and me. Because we are now "in Christ", the Father loves us and treats us just as He does His own Son. In other words, we share and participate in Christ's perfect relationship with His Father.        This relationship is corporate just as much as it is individual. All Christians share that relationship together. In this regard, the phrase "personal Savior" reinforces a highly individualistic Christianity. But the New Testament knows nothing of a "Just-me-and-Jesus" Christian faith.        Instead, Christianity is intensely corporate. Christianity is a life lived out among a body of believers who know Christ together as Lord and Savior.  So, chew on that for awhile until I cover the Lord's Supper in the last section of this three-part series.  

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