Friday, April 4, 2025

Asking Jesus into our heart. . .

I read intently a defense of the idea that we ask Jesus into our hearts.  As you may know, Lutherans are not big on this language.  Sure, we know that Scripture references the heart as the seat of the will and faith reposes in the heart.  The problem is that there is nothing in Scripture about asking Jesus into anyone's heart nor is there anything that would give support to the idea that we make a decision for the Lord.  The Scriptures record abundant calls to repent and believe but also with the clarification that no one can say Jesus is Lord except by the Holy Spirit.  In other words, conversion is not a matter of our will and decision but of God's work in us by the Spirit working through His Word.  Period. The danger of making Jesus captive to an emotive feeling or choice made in a moment is that faith becomes a feeling and a choice which can be unfelt and unwilled as quickly and even more easily than any decision for the Lord.

The danger is also that we remove faith from the concrete of the means of grace and the work of the Spirit from those means of grace so that even God becomes an idea to inhabit the imagination rather than the God who fills the present so that He might fill eternity with us.  The more we distance God from the means of grace the more we distance Him from anything we would call real and unchangeable.  God is not an idea.  He is a personal being who is known to us in a personal way through the concrete of the Word and Sacraments.  Faith is not an idea or even an idea of this God.  Faith is the trust in the God who has revealed Himself to us and made Himself known to us precisely because without His aid and Spirit, we would be left to a mere idea of Him and not the reality of Him and what He has accomplished for us.

Of all the things that are dangerous to Christianity, one of them is surely the idea that we turn God on and off like a feeling, that we decide for Him or against Him at will and whim, and that He lives in us as an idea in our imagination.  No God like this has any power to save us eternally nor has He the power to change us in the present moment.  Such a God does not need to be worshiped, is hardly with the time to pray, and will countenance our surrender to whatever desire we have -- including the one to disown Him when He no longer is needed or fulfills any purpose in our eyes.  This God is not the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, not the God of the prophets, and not the God who was made flesh in Jesus Christ.  While I can only hope that evangelicals will tire of this view of God, I can warn the Lutherans who want to be like the evangelicals that this is not the God of our confession, not the God of our liturgy, and not the God of our prayers.

6 comments:

gamarquart said...

The fundamental problem, and we do this in many ways, is that we ignore what God has already richly done for us. Asking God into our hearts denies that, in Baptism, He has come into our hearts, in the Person of the Holy Spirit, and made us new creatures with all the benefits of membership in the Kingdom of God, including eternal life with Him in Paradise. Not enough?
I shudder when I hear a choir, in a Lutheran church, sing, “I want Jesus to walk with me!” What arrogance, what ignorance!
Peace and Joy!
George A. Marquart

ravenedparticles said...

I am not a koine Greek student, let alone a scholar, but unless I have been misinformed by several generations of men during my lifetime who are, the koine Greek word, "pistis," which is translated "believe" in the relevant verses, means not "believe" in the sense that I believe there is a nation called India, that the Earth rotates around the sun, and so on, but "trust," "rely upon," "give allegiance to." In fact, unless a thousand generations of villains have been lying to us all, a "decision" on behalf of Jesus Christ is therefore very much what we are commanded to make.

John Flanagan said...

What is so wrong about a penitent and troubled person asking our dear Lord to come into their heart? Are we such legalists and theological bullies that we forget about the mercy of the Lord, and how each of us, imperfect and lost in sin, must come to Him earnestly and He loves us? Soli Deo Gloria

ravenedparticles said...

I agree with this. It isn't precisely Biblical, but it's very much a Calvinistic/Lutheran inclination to become hysterical about it. The pettiest people in the world.

gamarquart said...

Those who have been saying that ARE lying to us. The good news of the Gosper is that GOD has made a decision for US.
God made that clear at the very beginning of our faith, when He made the covenant with Abraham, the father of our faith. A one-sided covenant. Genesis 15. A deep sleep came upon Abraham, and only God walked through the smoke of the covenant offering.
If our faith depended on a decision we make, then our fate would be the same as that of God's chosen people, who had a two-sided covenant with God. The covenant, which they broke. But God, in His unfathomable mercy made a New Covenant with them, a one-sided one, Jeremiah 31, "...for I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sins no more."
And I know just a little Hebrew.
Shalom and Joy!
George A. Marquart



Portwenn59 said...

When one invites Jesus into one’s heart or opens the door of one’s heart or any other phrase similar to the above, a person is really denying the work of the Holy Spirit. Luther’s explanation to the Third Article of the Apostles’ Creed says, ‘ I believe that I cannot by my own reason or strength, believe in the Lord Jesus Christ or come to Him. But the Holy Spirit has called me by the Gospel, enlightened me with His gifts, sanctified, and kept me in the true faith. In the same way He calls, gathers, enlightens, and sanctifies the whole Christian church on earth, and keeps it with Jesus Christ in the one true faith. In this Christian church He daily and richly forgives all my sins and the sins of all believers. On the Last Day He will raise me and all the dead, and give eternal life to me and all believers in Christ. This is most certainly true.’
I have repeated this paragraph more than any other from Luther’s Small Catechism. We are surrounded by Evangelicals who have listened to bad theology from their pastors.