Quote:
Originally Posted by Amanah
Siinner's prayer:
"Dear God, I know I’m a sinner, and I ask for your forgiveness. I believe Jesus Christ is Your Son. I believe that He died for my sin and that you raised Him to life. I want to trust Him as my Savior and follow Him as Lord, from this day forward. Guide my life and help me to do your will. I pray this in the name of Jesus. Amen."
https://peacewithgod.net/ |
The sinners prayer is a prayer of repentance. However, you'll notice that they didn't have altar calls for the "sinners prayer" in Acts. Instead, the repentant were called to the water. And it was while standing in the water that the sinner called upon the name of the Lord (
Acts 22:16), and it was this act that remitted sin... not some mystic "formula" spoken by some initiated cleric.
In establishing "formulas" both the Trinitarian and Oneness camps have drifted a step away from Scripture. Baptism was the time to call upon the name of the Lord, it wasn't a time for liturgical formulas. Baptism was their altar call.
With that being said... regardless of what words are muttered over a person in water baptism... the big question is... Was the repentant soul calling upon the name of Jesus when baptized??? If not, the baptism was ineffectual regardless of the man made "formula" spoken over them.
To deny this is to essentially agree to the notion that one's salvation is predicated upon the strict set of words pronounced over them by another. It becomes no less beholden to human priestly intercession than needing a priest to forgive sins before one can be saved. In such an understanding, one's salvation is entirely dependent upon, even predicated upon, the words spoken by... a stranger. That is lunacy and flies in the face of the repentant individual needing only to call on the Lord, relying on Christ's finished work alone. Water baptism becomes a sacrament delivering salvation based on the words used by a cleric... not the sincere seeking of the lost and pleading soul for the remission of sin.
In our house church, when we baptize a person everyone calls upon the name of the Lord in prayer. The saints are calling on the name and praying for the salvation of the convert in the water. And the one in the water is calling upon the name of the Lord for their salvation. And in this... their sins are remitted as they obey and are buried with Christ in the waters of baptism. Their salvation is not on account of some "formula". THIS understanding is far more "Apostolic", and agrees more with the multiple references in Acts, than our imitating the Trinitarians and trying to establish a "formula"... that doesn't exist.
As I read the SCRIPTURES water baptism appears to be more primitive than most realize. There isn't a "formula". It is a time of prayer and repentance, not a time for ritual and the prescribed mutterings of priests.