Southern Bread

Christians use the phrase “ask Jesus into your heart” a lot. It’s used as a synonymn for the act of salvation. A lot of times it’s combined with something else like “repent of your sins and ask Jesus into your heart”. I think it’s ufortunate that, that has become such a widely used phrase. It doesn’t really tell you anything about what salvation is. It leaves you with the impression that salvation is achieved by feeling really warm and fuzzy about Jesus. That couldn’t be further from the truth, though. The other problem is that it comes from a misinterperetation of scripture. I can only suppose that the phrase has it’s origin in Revelation 3:20:

This is the only place this saying could have come from. If you read the rest of Revelation 3 though, it’s clear that this passage has nothing to do with salvation. This passage is part of Christ’s letters to the seven churches. If the audience in question are churches then why would he be telling them to get saved? I’m really not sure what that passage means but I know it doesn’t mean salvation. That’s an important point to remember when reading scripture. Sometimes it’s perfectly legitimate to know what a passage doesn’t mean even though you aren’t sure what it does mean.