If you were to die tonight and stand before God and He were to ask you, "Why should I let you into My Heaven?", what would be your answer? Perhaps you've been asked that question by a preacher during the umpteenth verse of an invitation hymn at your church. Perhaps someone asked you that question while trying to witness to you.
Perhaps - you've asked that question of someone with whom you've been sharing the gospel.
If you were to die tonight and stand before God and He were to ask you, "Why should I let you into My Heaven?", what would be your answer?
Here are my questions to you:
Is this a good question?
Is this a good "evangelistic tool?"
Do you use this when you witness to people?
Why or why not?
I'll share my answer in a few days. Oh, and don't put your answers in the comments section just yet...I'll let you agree or disagree with me after I post my thoughts. :o)
3 comments:
Tami left this comment on another post - so I'm transplanting it here. I'll also put two other comments here, and my response to this post is coming - I hope!
Aaron,
Where is your follow up post on the previous If You Were To Die Tonight... post?
I'm curious.
- Tami
PS...I have strong "icky" feelings to that question. Perhaps because I associate it with not-very-Biblical-[Baptist]-churches-that-don't-have-Biblical-leadership-or-sound-doctrine/teaching. Yeah, that question makes me cringe inside. To me, it seems to go with the arminian paradigm. I mean, if you heard that question growing up as a kid, you were inevitably (perhaps unintentionally) lead to focus on SELF - not God's grace... in Sunday School, the answer would have been "because IIIIII believe in Jesus and IIIIII invited Him into my heart!" It all just doesn't gel with the doctrines of grace. If ppl understood that a more appropriate answer of, "Holy & Just God, You SHOULDN'T let me into Your Heaven! I am unworthy. BUT, you have imputed Jesus' Righteousness to me, and beacuse of that I stand before you blameless and spotless - not because of what I have done [or not done], but only because of your grace!" .. then that question might not make me cringe so badly.
Automatically, when someone is asked that, the person (in they're already sinful disposition) is sitting there thinking of what they've done to be worthy to get into heaven - it's just not a good approach to evangelism when you are trying to help the person see that salvation is completely apart from anything they could do or not do to deserve God's grace.
Now I'm just talking in circles I think...I don't know.. just some of my thoughts.
Will you post your follow-up now? I want to read what you have to say.
Aaron said...
Tami-
Wow! Someone actually reads this thing? Thanks for the reminder...I'll try to do that soon. And, by the way, thanks for ruining my follow up. You said in just a few words what I would have taken two pages to say!
Hong & Tami Kim said...
ps... the abuse of that poor hymn makes me cringe too! The link made me laugh out loud! Only ppl that have seen the abuse, can appriciate the humor. I have aweful visualizations of ppl muttering the words to that song and while pretending to pray, they're eagerly peeking to see who walks down the isle.
- TK
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