If you are telling people that all they need to do is say a prayer and they will be saved, you have only put them on a fresh road to Hell. If you are a servant of God, your prayer didn’t save you either. It was the outward sign of a process that began in your heart. The “sinner’s prayer” ceases to be the prayer of a sinner at the moment it is uttered, becoming instead the first prayer of a saint. But if the heart never becomes involved, a sinner’s prayer it shall remain. If that reads like heresy to you, allow me to explain. Let us begin with a familiar passage that we often reference as we endeavor to bring someone to saving faith.

⁸ But what does it say? “The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart”—that is, the word of faith which we are preaching, ⁹ that if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved; ¹⁰ for with the heart a person believes, leading to righteousness, and with the mouth he confesses, leading to salvation. ¹¹ For the Scripture says, “Whoever believes upon Him will not be put to shame.” ¹² For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek, for the same Lord is Lord of all, abounding in riches for all who call on Him, ¹³ for “Whoever calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.”

Romans 10:8-13 LSB

Note that salvation here is composed of two elements, confession and belief. To confess in this context is simply to affirm what is true, though since we have all sinned and fallen short of God’s glory (Romans 3:23), confession in the modern sense it also appropriate. Before we can be saved, we must come to the realization that we need saving. Hence, we have the phrase in the traditional “sinner’s prayer,” “I know that I am a sinner.”

So, it is important to understand what it is that we are believing and therefore confessing. After “believe” comes “in your heart.” This is more than an Intellectual assent. It is more than simply knowing the truth. James tells us that even the demons know that and shake with fear. It is a certainty from deep within you that demands a response.

You are believing that God raised Jesus from the dead. There’s a lot wrapped up in that short phrase. First, it presupposes an acknowledgment that God exists. If He doesn’t this is all nonsense. It also assigns a significance to the fact of Jesus’ rising. Even the Old Testament contains instances where God raised someone from the dead. This one is different because of who Jesus is and why He died. His was the perfect sacrifice that cleanses us from our sins, only possible because He Himself was the Son of God. That leads us to the confession part, which further expounds what we are believing, Jesus as Lord. Paul, the writer of the letter to the Romans from which I am quoting, left no doubt in the minds of his readers about what he was saying. Jesus is not simply a lord, but The Lord!

So, if we say and believe that Jesus is our Lord, it follows that we will act accordingly. Works can never save us but works will result from true salvation. We will not immediately stop sinning, but we will stop pursuing a sinful lifestyle. We will stumble and fall, but we must reach up for the hand of our Heavenly father. He will faithfully pick us up, tend our wounds, and help us to keep walking with Him.

Far be it from me to say that we should not be urging people to pray to receive Jesus as lord. We should be doing that as often as we can. But that is not the same thing as telling them that if they will just say this prayer, they’ve got their ticket to Heaven. We need to be sharing the whole of the Gospel message, so that they may come to a place of true repentance and belief.