have you accepted Jesus Christ as your personal savior you may have heard this question before what exactly does accepting Christ mean and is this a Biblical idea is accepting Christ all it takes to be saved Dr David K Bernard turns to the Bible to find the answer welcome to Apostolic life in the 21st century a podc dedicated to helping modern-day Believers live out the teachings of the first century Church the this podcast is part of the Teaching Ministry of Dr David K Bernard Dr Bernard has dedicated his life to studying the Bible and helping Believers
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in North American Christianity we frequently hear the phrase accept Christ as your personal Savior and many churches in North America conclude their worship services with this invitation to accept Christ now students of the Bible know that that phrase is not found in scripture of course there's a lot of phrases though that we use even that one as Pentecostals use that are not found directly in the Bible at least the phrase is not how did this phrase accept Christ as your savior originate and is it a Biblical concept as as far as where it originated I
think it originated in the Revival movements of conservative protestantism where they were giving what's an appeal or an altar call to respond and it was their shorthand way of saying uh if you want to be saved you have to believe certain things and if you confess those certain things you're instantly saved so if you say yes I believe Jesus Is My Savior and yes uh I want him to be my savior and yes I will say that then you're saved um now I think that of course is not a very good explanation of the Plan
of Salvation this concept of accepting Jesus as your personal savior uh is it biblical I would say yes and no so in one sense obviously salvation is by grace through faith Ephesians 2: 8-9 so obviously you must believe on the Lord Jesus Christ to be saved acts 16:31 uh so accepting Jesus as your savior that is a valid concept but I want you to notice how it fits into the full picture so I'm going to read from John chapter 1 the new King James version John 1:12 but as many as received him to them he
gave the right to become children of God to those who believe in his name so receiving him believing him so you might say yeah that's biblical but what's the context who were born not of blood not of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man but of God so it immediately goes into you're going to be born of God and of course that reminds us just a couple of chapters later same book same author same inspiration of the Holy Spirit John chapter 3 Jesus told Nicodemus if you want to see the kingdom
of God you must be born again and when he didn't understand that Jesus explained you must be born of the water and of the spirit or you cannot enter into the kingdom of God so yes it is biblical to talk about receiving Christ believing on Christ but in the context of John believing in his name being born of the water being born of the spirit that leads us right to acts 238 where we need to be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ and we need to receive the gift of the Holy Ghost or Holy
Spirit now in this same Gospel of John I'll show you even more in John Chapter 2 when Jesus was preaching in Jerusalem people did start believing in him so let's read John 2: 23-2 now when he was in Jerusalem at the Passover during the feast many believed in his name when they saw the signs which he did so they believed if you just stop there you say well that's accepting Jesus as your personal savior but read verse 24 but Jesus did not commit himself to them because he knew all men and had no need that
anyone should testify of man for he knew what was in man so they seemingly accepted Jesus but Jesus didn't accept them because he knew their heart he knew they weren't ready to obey so the real question should not be will you accept Jesus but will Jesus accept you now that doesn't imply that Jesus would reject you but it reply what it reveals is you have to come on the Lord's terms it's not so it's not about you accepting Jesus it's about you obeying the gospel where Jesus will forgive you of your sins and will fill
you with his Spirit now I'd like to go to probably the most well-known passage that's used for this whole concept of accepting Jesus as your personal savior so when people uh say well accept Jesus you're saved you know and they will literally say repeat the sinner's prayer or come up to the front shake the pastor's hand or sign the statement and send it in um if you really did that you're saved well let's see where they get this from it's from Romans chapter 10 and to get the context let me go back to verse 5
for Moses writes about the righteousness which is of the law the man who does those things shall live by them but the righteousness of Faith speaks in this way do not say in your heart who will Ascend to Heaven that is bring Christ down from above or or who will descend to the abyss that is to bring Christ up from the dead 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 preach now I'll interrupt here Paul's original audience no doubt
understood the reference but Paul actually is quoting from Deuteronomy chapter 30 and he doesn't quote the last part in Deuteronomy 3014 but surely they had to to understand this the word is near you in your mouth in your heart Deuteronomy specifically says that you may obey it so the context is the word of faith is here for you why so you can obey it all right and then but but now he wants to make a new testament application so he says in verse n that if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe
in your heart that God has raised him from the dead you will be saved for with the heart One Believes unto righteousness with the mouth confessions made into salvation for the scripture says whoever believes on him will not be put to shame for there is no distinction between Jew and Greek for the same Lord overall is Rich to all who call on him for whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved and that's a quote from Joel 232 also Peter used it on the day of Pentecost in Acts 221 now is that
meant to be a simplistic formula your question as your question indicates a lot of Protestants yes if you just say I confess Jesus as Lord okay you're saved I accept Jesus as my personal savior okay you're saved I actually remember there was a prominent Pastor in Korea where I grew up he would read he would preach then he would read for whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved then he' say how many want to be saved raise your hands and he'd say cry out after me Lord and that the crowd would
say Lord he said okay you're saved is it really is that really what that means now that example I would say obviously not because whoever calls the name of the Lord shall be saved but if you look at the rest of scripture in Acts two Peter applied that to the day of Pentecost and what was the Supreme way they would call on Jesus as Lord in water baptism they would repent and they would be baptized also in 1 Corinthians 12 Paul explains nobody can truly called Jesus as Lord except by the spirit so whoever calls
the name of the Lord is not meant to be just a little formula it is meant to be the way of Salvation when you recognize that Jesus is your lord when you confess him as your Lord that's how you're going to be Sav but when you confess him as Lord what are you going to do Luke 6:46 Jesus asked why do you call me Lord Lord and you don't do the things that I say so obviously it's not just yelling Lord but you have to believe on Jesus and you have to do what he says
so in the context of scripture if you really call in the name of the Lord you're going to call on him in baptism Acts 22:16 anonas told Saul of Tarsus the Apostle Paul and why do you tar arise and be baptized wash away your sins calling on the name of the Lord so clearly repentance and water baptism were included and clearly receiving the holy spirit and you might argue when you receive the Holy Spirit and You Begin speaking in tongues you are very literally by the power of the spirit not just your wish but your
calling on the name of the Lord if you go back to Romans and look at that larger context in the Book of Romans of course Paul is establishing the way of Salvation is through faith in Jesus Christ and in Romans chapters 9- 11 he deals with this objection well Paul if your gospel is right how come the Jews who are God's historic people how come they don't believe that and so he has to explain why the Jewish people as a whole are not saved of course he explains some Jews are saved he gives himself as
example but he says the problem is they're not following after faith and so then he explains how they could be saved he said you know it the way for the Jewish people to be saved they can't just follow the law of Moses anymore they've got to follow Jesus they need to confess that he is the Lord that's how they're going to be saved they need to believe that Jesus died for their sins and not only that that God raised him from the dead to bring Victory to validate that sacrifice so here Paul is not giving
a simplistic formula after all he's writing to the church at Rome they're already saved they've already been baptized in jesus' name as we see in Romans chapter 6 they've already received the gift of the Holy Ghost as we see in Romans chapter 8 so he in Romans chapter 10 he's not telling sin how to be saved he's explaining to the church well the reason why the Jewish people as a whole that you encounter are not saved is because they're not following after Jesus but if they would learn that Jesus is Lord and confess him as
the Lord if they would acknowledge that he died for their sins he rose again then they would be saved so he's giving the basis of Salvation he's pointing the way to change from unbelief to belief and the way to experience God's Plan of Salvation but if you want to know the experience as I've already said in Romans 6 he talks about dying to sin being buried with Christ in water baptism in chapter 8 he talks about being filled with the spirit and your spirit confessing um you know the the the spirit in you confesses with
your spirit that you are the child of God and the spirit prays with groanings that cannot be uttered and so here you have a very definite relationship with God and so in the cont text of Romans chapter 10 it's presuming that your faith will lead you to obey the Plan of Salvation to summarize then uh just a simple call accept Jesus your personal savior make that statement and then go home no that's not scriptural obviously from start to finish salvation is by grace through faith so yes we must believe on the Lord Jesus Christ that's
the whole basis but when we believe on the Lord Jes Jesus Christ we will be born again and that will involve being repenting of our sins being baptized in the name of Jesus Christ receiving the gift of the Holy Spirit as we see in Acts chapter 2 and verse 38 so the The Full Experience is not just encompassed by a verbal statement if we thought it was just a verbal statement well demon possessed people in Christ uh Ministry would cry out and say Jesus you're the son of God they actually believed that and they confessed
it but they weren't saved because they had not submitted to Jesus as their lord and so for us yes we want to accept Jesus as our savior but we want to follow his plan we want him to truly be Lord Of Our Lives which that will lead us to an experience of the new birth thank you for listening to this episode of apostolic life in the 21st century if you enjoy this podcast please take a moment to give us a review on Apple podcasts Spotify or your favorite podcast app we also appreciate it when you
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