Has Jesus Accepted You? Steven Long 10/18/2012

It is a common phenomena in our culture when sharing the gospel with people to ask, "Have you accepted Jesus as your personal Savior?"

While the Bible does place emphasis on personal faith and relationship with Jesus, the question is not actually relevant to Scripture. The proper question would be, "Has Jesus accepted you?"

Now, most people would immediately point to John 1:12 and John's usage of "receiving" Christ and affirm the first questioned mentioned. However, the context of John's usage in the first chapter of John has more to do with Jesus' own people, the Jews' acceptance of Him.

Many may accuse me of being over-the-top on this issue but with so much false teaching abounding and with focus on self rather than Christ's finished work I think it is a crucial issue that people realize that nothing, not even their faith (which is a gift according to Scripture: Acts 11:18, 2Tim 2:25) had anything to do with their salvation. A "decision" or "acceptance" does not affect your standing before God.



Rather, what affects our standing before God is that we have been accepted by the Father based upon Christ's finished work on the cross!. Everything from our faith, to our repentance, to our sanctification has already been purchased. Even the works that Christ has for us to do as believers are already chosen (Eph 2:10).

Therefore, it is important when evangelizing to make sure that people understand that God doesn't care about whether or not they "accept" His Son as Messiah, Lord, God, or whatever; what is the most crucial thing is for them to be aware of whether God has accepted them based on Christ's perfect work. The understanding must be that God's standard is absolute perfection (Ex 20:1-17), that we will all be judged by that standard (Heb 9:27), and that if we have violated any of those standards God will separate us from His presence for all eternity (Re 20:15).

Praise God that He sent His Son to live the Law and meet God's standards for us (John 3:16, Mt 5:17), and give His life a ransom for all those who would ever believe (John 10:11). God now only requires us to repent of our sins (again, stressing that even this is a gift from God) and trust Christ's work and His work only for salvation that He might clothe us in Christ's righteousness and cause us to stand before the Father and have judgment pass over us as it was in Christ (1Thess 3:13, Jude 24-25).

Thank God for His mercy and gifts of faith and repentance!