Tuesday, March 6, 2007

"Nothing but the blood"

At Christianity Today, David Gushee asks how the Baptist tradition of salvation holds up against what Jesus actually taught:
...[O]n the two occasions in Luke when Jesus was asked about the criteria for admission to eternity, he offered a fourfold answer: love God with all that you are, love your neighbor (like the Samaritan loved his neighbor), do God's will by obeying his moral commands, and be willing, if he asks, to drop everything and leave it behind in order to follow him. ....

In my Baptist tradition, especially, we direct people to "invite Jesus into your heart as your personal Savior," an act undertaken using a formula called the "sinner's prayer." Or we simply say, "Believe in Jesus, and you will be saved."

But Jesus never taught easy believism. .... [H]e called people to abandon their own agenda and trust him radically. Radical trust calls for both belief and action.

I suggest that we tend to confuse the beginning of the faith journey with its entirety.... [more]
Source: Christianity Today - Jesus and the Sinner's Prayer

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