Should Sinners Pray For Salvation?

    Should Sinners Pray For Salvation?

   Many people today are conscious of sin in their lives and the inevitability of the grave.  They have an innate sense of existence beyond this life and of the future judgment of God.  They cry out. "What must we do to be saved?" 
 
    Oftentimes the answer given is "Pray the sinner's prayer, asking Jesus to come into your heart."   Indeed, this response is heard all the time.  Thus many are surprised to find out that not once did any apostle of Christ tell any non-Christian sinner to pray the "sinner's prayer" to be saved?  Never!
 
    When the apostle Peter was asked this question,  he responded: "Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins" (Acts 2:37-38).  When Saul of Tarsus asked, "What must I do?" even Jesus didn't teach him the sinner's prayer.  Jesus told Saul to go to the city and there he would be told what to do (Acts 22:10).  When Saul arrived in the city, what was he told?  "And now why tarriest thou?  arise, and be baptized, and wash away thy sins, calling on the name of the Lord" (Acts 22:16).
 
    "The sinner's prayer" is a tradition of men (Matthew 15:9), and "another gospel" (Galatians 1:6-9).  Jesus said: "Not everyone that saith unto me Lord, Lord, shall enter the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father" (Matthew 7:21).
 
                                                                                              --Stephen D.  Rook, preacher
  


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