So… the entire concept of the sinner’s prayer is really making me crazy right now.

I get the value of a marker in a persons’ faith journey- that’s not what I’m talking about. I’m mostly just annoyed with semantics at this point. So, humor me, if you will…

The church has taught that the angels in heaven rejoice when a person accepts Christ. I don’t think that is accurate. I mean- honestly, me accepting Christ? How big of me. The miracle isn’t in my accepting Christ, the miracle is in Christ accepting me. The miracle is that Christ holds the keys of death and the grave and that he allows me to walk in his righteousness, not my own. Do the angels rejoice? You bet they do… but they are rejoicing because I’ve been restored into relationship with my loving father. They aren’t rejoicing like a crowd of spectators watching the last minute, game-winning field goal sail through the uprights; celebrating the efforts of the player. They are rejoicing like a loving family watching a child finally acknowledge the love that has been there for them all along; celebrating the efforts of the Father.’

The angel’s rejoicing piece comes from Luke 15:7- in the parable of the lost coin; which is immediately followed by the parable of the prodigal son.

The KJV reads:

“I say unto you, that likewise joy shall be in heaven over one sinner that repenteth, more than over ninety and nine just persons, which need no repentance.”

A better translation might be The Message:

“Count on it—there’s more joy in heaven over one sinner’s rescued life than over ninety-nine good people in no need of rescue.”

There is a really big difference there!! One is about the person’s efforts, the other is about what Christ did on our behalf. Repentance and Rescue are world’s apart. The word being translated as “repentance” here is: metanoounti. From the word metanoia (derived from the greek words μετά and νόος). “Meta” (μετά) means beyond, or after (think metaphysics or metamorphosis) and “noia” (νόος) means perception, understanding or mind. Putting on the mind of Christ, anyone? I’m no theologian or language expert… I just want to challenge how we read the scripture. When we read it with a mind that believes He is a good God rather than the perception that He is out to get us… it changes everything.

This makes me wonder, how did we get here? My thoughts? Well… this is my blog, so here goes. I think at some point the church became so much about building itself, about adding people and feeling a sense of accomplishment- that we decided to make people believe that they could negotiate their standing with Father. If we could lay down a finite marker of “winning a soul,” then we could gauge our success…

But none of this has really ever been about our successes. It has never been about what we could do or have done. That’s the lie! That’s the misconception. It is entirely about what was done for us. That’s the whole, “our righteousness is like filthy rags” deal. I’m not good enough. I never will be good enough. And no choice, no negotiation that I execute “saves” me. My salvation was accomplished completely void of me, 2,000 years ago. While we were dead in our trespasses, Christ died for us… Not, when we finally came around and decided to do him some favor by accepting him…

It would be my vote that we have a ceremony and burial for the sinner’s prayer. It was created as a tactic… and tactics only work with fear based theology… and as far as I can tell, fear based theology isn’t accomplishing God’s will that none should perish. He created us for relationship- that was the entire point.

It’s not about me… and to be honest- I’m quite glad.