Do we "accept Christ"? Or, do we Love Him?

If you've heard a sermon in just about any church in this day and age, you've probably heard something along the lines of:

• Accept Christ
• Accept Jesus
• Trust Christ
• Ask Jesus into your heart
• Accept Christ as your personal savior
• Repeat this prayer
• Or, something similar

These are terms given to people as a way to salvation.

Does that come from the Bible?

I challenge you to find it.

None of those terms exist in the Bible anywhere where it is insinuated as a means of salvation.

On the other hand, the words "Love", and "God" appear together 171 times in the King James version of the Bible!

The Bible tells us to Love the Lord Our God, with all our heart, all our mind, all our soul, and all our strength.

We don't "trust Christ" we LOVE HIM utterly and completely!

Think about the difference in attitude between the phrase "trust in Jesus" vs "love Jesus with all your heart".

Trusting in Jesus could mean you trust Him to rescue you from all the problems of life.

Trusting in Jesus could mean you simply expect Him to save you from Hell.

But, if we love Him, that means an entirely different thing.

• If we love Him, it means we'll strive to please Him.
• If we love Him, we are eager to study His word.
• We seek Him in every thing, not our own.
• We hate sin.
• We desire His gifts.
• We obey Him and study His word to find the things that He loves and the things that he hates.

If we "accept" Him, it could mean we just accept that we must believe in Him in order to get a ticket to heaven.

Where is the love in that?

It's easy to ask Jesus into your heart, but what about giving Him your heart?

We need to give God our heart, not take His salvation, selfishly, as a free gift without loving Him for what He did for you.

When we truly understand who Jesus is, and what He did for us, then we are grateful for that sacrifice and that causes us to humble ourselves before Him.

We fall in love with Him.

We are thankful to Him.

It's misleading and allows someone to get the entirely wrong idea of what salvation is, to say to them, "Accept Christ as your personal savior".

We need to love Him, obey Him, repent, and follow Him.

It's a much different message when you say that.

Which is why you don't hear that so much in churches, but you do hear the other all the time.

If we want to save someone's soul, we can't mislead them. We must tell them the truth, or we could just be giving them an excuse to continue in sin and giving them expectations that are not true.

We need to be very careful of taking people to "church" to save their soul. We should lead them to Christ personally, and be very clear on who He is, and what He did, and what's expected of those who turn to Him for salvation.

 

For more information, see the following page:

Love the Lord your God!!! - click here

What is salvation? - click here