The Sinner's Prayer and Conversion

 I am an admin on a Facebook group, and a question was posed (edited for brevity):

Here's a question that's been rolling around in my mind lately and I wonder if former Protestants feel the sane way?

I really do feel like I was saved at 12 years old when I "accepted the Jesus as my Savior". It wasn't just a one time prayer for me. I was changed, my conscience was sensitive. I was aware of my sin and had a sincere desire to live for God and please him. I have definitely had my share of sin in life, but I also can look back and see where God planted seeds into my heart and fruit was produced, works followed out of love for Him.

Do other long time practicing Protestant Christians believe you were saved prior to entering the Catholic church?

 

To that, I would answer both yes and no. I do believe there is some power in the sinner's prayer that God can use to His purposes. I do believe some people do have an honest experience of Christ in such a conversion. Some people do honestly repent and ask Christ to become a part of their life. If God is truly gracious and merciful, He would not ignore a heartfelt repentance nor fail to use it to begin a relationship with a sinner.

 

Having said that, I do also think the whole altar call/sinner's prayer thing can be very badly misused by some Protestant clergy. It can be very emotionally manipulative, particularly in the "altar call" kind of worship experience where people are getting brow beat to come forward and convert by fear of hellfire or whatever. If you are being forced to do something solely out of fear, one could legitimately question how full or meaningful a conversion is if one if being manipulated emotionally to do such. But, even in that instance, as odious as that can be, God can still move in a person's life. It may take God a while to clean up that spiritual mess created by manipulative altar calls and sinner's prayers, but God can still use it to His purposes in some way, if only for healing and future conversion to something deeper and greater.

 

I would also add that I think there is a degree of nuance here that needs to be thought through. I think for a lot of sinner's prayer type Christians, that moment of the sinner's prayer is the moment you "are saved," as if that is sort of a one-and-done kind of thing. It's like a microwave oven hot pocket: you pop it in, press the right buttons, the microwave beeps, and out pops a fully done, ready to eat meal, and that's all there is to it.

 

Well...no, not really. Even in the best of circumstances with true repentance and Jesus being at work in the sinner's prayer process, that is just one step in the salvation journey. The sinner's prayer is a beginning step into a larger Kingdom of God; it is not the final step.

 

The sinner's prayer can be like stepping through the wardrobe. You suddenly find yourself in a brave new Narnia, but there are many adventures and trials you must go through before you get enthroned in Cair Paravel as a King or Queen of Narnia. There is still the never ending winter and the White Witch that must be contended with. You must still go to meet Aslan to know him better. You must still go encounter Aslan on the stone table. I can go on with that analogy, but you get my point: stepping into the kingdom is only the first step. There are many more thereafter.

 

To take the Narnia analogy a step further, look to the 3rd book in the series. The Voyage of the Dawn Treader is actually the greatest of the spiritual allegories in Narnia. Lewis, himself, said this a number of times. That voyage is an allegory of the whole Christian life. The three children go through the picture into the waters (baptism) and are pulled up onto the Dawn Treader to begin their voyage.

 

The go from island to island in search of Aslan's own country across the sea. They start with the island that's still part of Narnia, the safe edges of Christendom, and then journey to other islands. They encounter Monopods who can't see themselves because of their own folly but come to see themselves as Aslan sees them. They travel to a dark night of the soul island. They travel and find one of the lost lords who turned to gold by swimming in a magical pool (a type of false baptism that led to ruin).

Eustace, who I would argue is the type of Christian who got sucked into the Kingdom kicking and screaming, but ultimately gets turned into a dragon, and it takes Aslan's own clawing again and again at his scaly armor of sin that finally exposes the true Eustace. Eustace does finally at that point come to truly believe in Aslan.

 

Again, I can go on and on about that allegory of the Christian life as well, but when they reach the end of their voyage, there is a type of Christian holy death of a sort. Reepicheep has enough faith to dive overboard and swim to Aslan's country. Lucy and Edmund are told their time in Narnia is over and they must go back to real world and find Aslan by another name. Eustace gets to return in a future novel because his conversion is not totally complete. He still has work to do to bring in yet another future disciple. In the end, it is an allegory of the Christian life, from beginning to end, from birth in baptism to a holy death for those who persevere to the end.

 

So, to come back around to the "being saved" by the sinner's prayer thing, again I answer your question with a solid "yes and no." Being saved is a nuanced term. We were saved when we first encountered Christ, we are being saved now by the continuing redemptive work of Christ in our lives, we will be saved in the end of time when we reach Aslan's country across the sea, if we persevere with and through Christ to the end.

 

Yes, the sinner's prayer can save you in the sense of first encountering Christ. Any encounter with Christ is life giving.

 

No, it cannot save you if that's all you do. If you step through the wardrobe and see the snow and turn back, never to return to Narnia, the wardrobe itself does you no good.