Is the Sinner's Prayer Biblical?

IS THE SINNER'S PRAYER BIBLICAL?

By Ezekiel Kimosop

The sinners prayer is a prayer that is commonly identified with Evangelical Christian traditions. It is used in guiding a person who makes a personal decision for Christ to publicly or privately confess sin and declare their faith in Christ.

Some Christian traditions reject this prayer saying that it is manipulative and that those who are led through the prayer may not be born again. They argue that since the words do not originate from the sinner, they have no effect at all.

OBJECTIONS

I wish to outline three key objections to the sinner's prayer as follows:

1) The sinner's prayer does not come from the sinner. It is therefore not his or her confession but the preacher's. 

2) The sinner's prayer gives a false assurance to an ignorant sinner, who may be led to imagine that having repeated the prayer, they are automatically saved.

3) There is no example of the sinner's prayer in the Bible. So why should we use it?

MY RESPONSES

Here are my responses to each of the objections above:

1) There's no evidence to suggest that a sinner, having been convicted of sin and is led to Christ through the sinners prayer, does not mean the words he confesses. The preacher usually seeks the affirmation from the sinner before leading them in prayer. It is therefore unfair to argue that the prayer is not based on the sinner's confession.

2) Theres no evidence that the sinner's prayer gives false assurance or that a person who comes to Christ is ignorant of Bible truth. This is a person who responded to the preaching of the word of God. No one has the spiritual barometer with which to measure the genuineness of the sinner's conviction.  God alone knows our hearts (Jeremiah 17:9-10).

When we roundedly condemn a practice without objective Biblical evidence, we act judgmentally. If a person publicly proclaims his faith in Christ, we cannot question his sincerity. Of course time will tell if the repentance was genuine. The Bible says that the Lord knows those who are His (2 Timothy 2:19).

I was personally led to Christ by a dear brother who took me through the sinner's prayer. Of course I had received the conviction of my sin and the desired for the Savior at this point. I had absolutely no reason to doubt my conviction neither did the brother.

3) The argument that there's no example of the sinner's prayer in the Bible is misplaced. Not every Christian  practice is expressly defined or prescribed in Scripture. My view is that if a practice or procedure does not contradict the truths of God's word and, as with the case of the sinner's prayer, advances God's purposes for the gospel, there's nothing ungodly about it.

The Bible does not have to prescribe a specific procedure for a practice to be considered admissible. For instance, the the Lord's prayer recorded in Matthew 6:9-14 is a guide rather than a prescription. Not every Christian tradition regularly recite it.

My view is that those who roundedly criticize the sinner's prayer are perhaps being presumptuous rather than objective.



© Ezekiel Kimosop 2020