Don’t we need him?

From Radical by David Platt:

So how do we respond to this gospel? Suddenly contemporary Christianity sales pitches don’t seem adequate anymore: Ask Jesus to come into your heart. Invite Jesus to come into your life. Pray this prayer, sign this card, walk down this aisle, and accept Jesus as your personal Savior. Our attempt to reduce this gospel to a shrink-wrapped presentation that persuades someone to say or pray the right things back to us no longer seems appropriate.

And that is why none of these man-made catch phrases are in the Bible. You will not find a verse in Scripture where people are told to “bow your heads, close your eyes and repeat after me.” You will not find a place where a superstitious sinners prayer is even mentioned. And you will not find an emphasis on accepting Jesus. We have taken the infinitely glorious Son of God, who endured the infinitely terrible wrath of God and who now reigns as the infinitely worthy Lord of all, and we have reduced him to a poor Savior who is just begging for us to accept him.

Accept him? Do we really think Jesus needs our acceptance? Don’t we need him?

I invite you to consider with me a proper response to this gospel. Surely more than praying a prayer is involved. Surely more than religious attendance is warranted. Surely this gospel evokes unconditional surrender of all that we are and all that we have to all that he is. (37)

When I first read this I thought, "Whoa, David. A little bit of an overstatement there." But the more I reflect on the excerpt and the more I reminisce about my church upbringing, the more I sense he is close to the truth.

We-as in my church and those other churches I had experiences with-cheapened the gospel in an effort to make it as easy as possible for people to "get saved". The motives, I'm convinced, were honourable; snatching souls from the hands of the devil. But the results indicate, at least in my feeble analysis, a cohort of Christians who really might not be comprised of as many regenerate souls as I once thought.