What Should I Do? Answer

I’m now being asked this question by people who are reading The King Jesus Gospel: The Original Good News Revisited:

Do people have to pray a prayer when to respond to the gospel?

This question emerges from the soterian gospel which has for years invited people to pray a prayer to “receive Christ” or to “ask God’s forgiveness in Jesus Christ” etc.. So, I know why people ask this question after they’ve read my book. Why? Because if one shifts out of the soterian gospel paradigm into the Story of Jesus gospel (and it saves), one is then asked how best to respond to the Story gospel.

Before I give my answer, which I will do at 3pm Central Time today, I want to ask you this: What do you think people are to do as the proper response to the gospel?

My answer has two components:

First, I ask this: What does the New Testament gospeling passages actually ask people to do? I find many people either don’t pause to ask this, or what concerns me more, are troubled by what those passages do say because it is either not formulaic enough or it is not simple enough or — how else to say thish — those passages don’t have the prayer, they want the prayer, and so they opt for the prayer.

The answer to the question is this: The New Testament gospeling passages, in summary, call people to repent, to believe and to be baptized. (One can surely add confess.) So, my first answer is to say “We should invite them or summon them to repent, to believe and to be baptized (in water).

Second, I get the prayer response. But let’s push this: repenting, believing and being baptized are actually the disposition or the posture of a prayerful orientation toward God in Christ. That is, if you repent, you are turning from sin etc toward God; if you believe you are trusting in God’s word and what God has done in Christ; and if you get baptized you are plunging yourself (or getting plunged) into the Story about Jesus (life, death, burial and resurrection unto exaltation).

Which is a way of saying this: if the prayer is that sort of disposition, and expresses that turning from sin and self, and expresses trust in Christ, and if it is an orientation to surrender to (the whole Story about) Jesus, then the prayer naturally arises as the way to respond.

But, if we think some formulaic prayer gets the job done we need to pause. The NT doesn’t gospel someone and then say, “Now pray the prayer.” It says, “repent, believe, be baptized.” The point is not praying but surrendering to God in Christ.