If there is one thing that I have learned in my life, and had reinforced by the experience of being a Christian blogger and interacting with lots of other Christians from lots of different backgrounds, (in life and online) it is that there are a lot of traditions and catch-phrases that get tossed around, and that we “take for granted” that never originated in the Holy Bible.  “Traveling mercies”.  “Handclap of praise”.   I always thought backsliding was one of those kinds of words, but turns out backsliding is in the Old Testament 12 times (always referring to faithless Israel) and backslider once (Proverbs)  And the one that really makes me roark:……”glory bumps”.  Ugh!  That is one of those words that makes me absolutely cringe, that helps perpetuate the impression that Christians are mindless lemmings no different than any other “clique” or “cult following”.

Those are some of the phrases, how about some of the “rituals” or rather, traditions?  How about, and this is both a phrase and a manmade tradition, “every head bowed, every eye closed, no one looking around”.  Why?  Because we’re all about making the fact that you are a depraved sinner in need of salvation, a little less uncomfortable for you?  I mean, isn’t that just a tiny bit counter to the actual gospel message we are trying to get through to people?  If you can’t raise your hand for prayer or walk down the aisle in front of people as an admission that you are a sinner in need of grace, then perhaps you don’t actually “get” the fact that you are facing something a whole lot worse if you don’t get over that pride, but then, even in making that statement, I must point out, “coming forward” at the “invitation” is a symbolic and manmade tradition not demonstrated in the Bible.  Sure priests went to the altar to offer sacrifices, but in the New Testament the “altar” is that cross on Golgotha, and Jesus is the sacrifice. (God will provide himself a lamb.  That’s what Abraham said to Isaac.  We often have one way of reading that sentence, but have you ever read it this way:  God will provide Himself. (like/as a lamb.)

These “traditional” things are not necessarily bad, certainly they are well-intentioned, but then again, so was the action of Uzzah when the oxen stumbled and he reached out and touched, as if to steady the Ark of the Covenant, and God struck him dead on the spot.  God has His own design for worship and I hear a lot of harping (rightly so) upon the worldliness of contemporary Christian music, and lack of modesty among professing Christians, but God is generally pretty stringent about our getting the logs out of our own eyes, so lets look at one of the areas where we are “doing our own thing” and probably very unaware there is anything even objectionable about it, much less counter-productive.  The following is from the FBIS News Service of Way of Life Literature.

Giving My Life to Jesus and Asking Jesus Into My Heart

By David Cloud

Jul/16/14 21:19 Filed in: Doctrine

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Oftentimes an individual tells me, “I have given my life to Jesus,” or “I have invited Jesus into my heart.”

I have no doubt that some 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 matter. 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” (Rom. 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 Cor. 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 invitation to 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 sinners, but we know that one verse cannot contradict everything else the New Testament says about salvation.

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 he rose again the third day according to the scriptures” (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 is 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 descriptions 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 this 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 instructive 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 evidence of regeneration describe their salvation in the aforementioned terms.