Where do protestants get "Personal Lord and Savior?" What is the origin of this phrase?

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DavidFilmer

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Protestants often use the phrase, “Personal Lord and Savior.” Search engines report many millions of instances of this phrase.

Yet, the word “personal” does not occur in the New Testament, in any translation that I know of (surely not the protestant standards of the KJV and RSV, which I have checked).

So this is absolutely NOT a Biblical expression. Yet it is widely used across many protestant denominations (who cling to Sola Scriptura).

What is the origin of this phrase? It didn’t come from the Bible. How did it enter the broad protestant theological lexicon?

Does anybody know?
 
I think the phrase is something the evangelicals made up rather lately in Christian history (last 50 years?). It is more of a marketing ploy than anything else, because if we are to have any sort of relationship with Jesus, it would by definition, have to be “personal.” If it weren’t personal, there wouldn’t be a relationship. It’s rather redundant, then, to say “personal Lord and Savior.” IF He is our Lord and Savior, then by definition, He is our “personal” Lord and Savior. But, being the people we are in the culture we are, we buy into whatever we hear the most as if it’s original and meaningful.
 
The idea of a personal God not unknown to us is a very Catholic idea actually, what isn’t is over emphisising merely believing he’s your personal Lord and Saviour to the point of negating the need to do the will of the father.
 
As a former Evangelical (IFB), I can say that this is a question that very rarely, if ever, came up! I believe they hold that it is inferred in the Scriptures without being explicit. I don’t believe this is the thread for going into the problems with that stance and sola scriptura.
 
Don’t know. Hazzard a guess. With 33,000+ christian denominations and with the advent of mass-communications such as internet and the media in general no person or group is every anymore truly isolated as may have been the case historically.
So people, in a general sense, may have come to realize that their own local area version of christianity may not actually be the One True Religion as they used to think. Now they can see one another. Now there are millions of other flavours of christians out there with opposing beliefs, - fundamental belief differences. Perhaps there was then a general PC type trend to find a way of speaking, grouping all these different christian communities by using a phrase which would appeal as a type of lowest common denominator.
No longer is my very local and very small and very rural Baptist Church-of-The-Fourth-Fifth-of-Something-or-Other the One True Church, all that really matters now is that every single christian should have a personal relationship with Jesus, that is what unites christianity now and makes it true…

:slapfight:
:twocents:
 
It has to do with the Protestant definition of “church” as “all believers in every church”. What Protestants will not acknowledge is the fact the word “church” is singular. By means of their new definition, “the Church” is thousands of churches, each a place where “the Word” will be interpreted for you in keeping with Protestant oral tradition. The Protestant’s own references to “our church,” with the qualifier “our” signifying the one he attends at the moment as distinguished from other Protestant sects, betrays the uselessness of this definition in the real world. But for all of that, the Church is not important to salvation. You can confidently believe that you are saved sitting under a tree.

All the Reformer’s new definitions, first of each sacrament respectively, and then “church” proclaimed far and wide, led inexorably to the pronouncement that no church can save you. Catholics insist that the Church, with seven sacraments intact and apostolic doctrine unaltered, can save us, with our co-operation. This is what the Church is for; its whole business is to deliver the maximum number of us sinners to purgatory as has been remarked. A Catholic “hears the Church” (Matthew 18:17), he listens to the Church, because “He that heareth [listens to] you, heareth [is listening to] me; and he that despitheth you, despiseth me; and he that despiseth me, despiseth him that sent me” (Luke 10:16).

The Protestant imagines that to hear the Church is to replace Christ with the Church. The objection, based on Protestant experience of “church,” says everything about Protestantism and nothing about the Church. This invisible church of Luther, a concept which he denied and would not tolerate in practice, itself leads with relentless logic to the contention of Protestants and Fundamentalists that the Church cannot matter much. And if you could not find it, and lacked any objective means of recognizing it even if you could locate it, which is not the case, they would be right.
 
No, it is not expressly stated in Scripture, but do we really want to get into that argument?After all, there are many things that are not expressly stated in Scripture but both protestants and Catholics believe them. My guess is that it stems Romans 10:10 “For man believes with his heart and so is justified, and he confesses with his lips and so is saved.” If you confess with YOUR lips, then it is personal. There was probably a charismatic sort of pastor who originally used the expression in the last 50 years or so and it caught on. I tried to find the origin of it on the internet, but no luck as to who originally said it.

I concur with the previous poster that this is part of the emphasis in evangelicalism about belief in Jesus. But, as Catholics, I fear that because we often bristle at expressions like this one, we appear to be underemphasizing the need to believe in Jesus. As Catholics, we confess the Lord with our lips every time we go to Mass. But this is an area where we can easily have common ground with our evangelical brothers and sisters. When they ask if we have accepted Jesus as Lord, why would we ever say anything but YES!? It’s true, we must stand firm in our conviction that there is more to salvation than a profession of faith. Neither Romans 10:10 nor any other verse should be isolated from the rest of Scripture or the teaching of the apostolic Church. Still, if we are in conversation with an evangelical, I don’t see anything wrong with agreeing with the statement, though we don’t necessarily agree with them on its effects.
 
Hmmm…somebody must have coined the phrase.

Seems like I’ve seen an answer on this somewhere. On this forum even…

Chuck
 
I don’t recall seeing/hearing it before the 1970s, but that’s just my memory. Yours may vary.

DaveBj
 
Hmm I found one reference that said 1950s evangelical spin off from Methodists and another that claimed Martin Luther? Neither had a supporting document.

I can’t seem to find it, but I sure thought I’ve seen this answered here before…
 
In Wikipedia’s Christianity article it says " Because Methodists, Pentecostals, and other evangelicals stress “accepting Jesus as your personal Lord and Savior”,[204] which comes from John Wesley’s emphasis of the New Birth,[205] …"

Neither source 204 (Cambridge Christ United Methodist Church statement of beliefs) nor source 205 (The New Birth by John Wesley) contain the phrase, or anything close to “accept Jesus as your personal lord and savior” (Oh the accuracy of wiki ;))

So I have no idea. I would love to know (history buff, its why I’m Catholic). My guess would be that it either came around in the 1950s + later or in one of America’s “great awakenings”.
 
the_hazel_nut said:
In Wikipedia’s Christianity article it says " Because Methodists, Pentecostals, and other evangelicals stress “accepting Jesus as your personal Lord and Savior”,[204] which comes from John Wesley’s emphasis of the New Birth,[205] …"
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Yeah, I had looked at that as well. My father’s family were Methodists, and I have spent many Sundays in a Methodist Church, but I never heard this phrase used there. But, of course, the Holiness movement (and the Pentecostal movement that spawned from it) were based on some of Wesley’s earlier teaching (which he later disavowed).

It seems pretty clear that neither Wesley nor Calvin actually coined this phrase. But somebody did - and it was a real hum-dinger, gathering traction across many different denominations and becoming so common that many protestants assume it comes directly from the Bible.

It would be interesting to know who that was.
 
I think it ties in with the question, “Are you saved?”
Their answer would be at the moment they accepted Jesus into their life – the “personal Lord & Savior” getting tacked on.

Esp. for evangelicals it seems to me they always have to have a specific, emotional moment when they were “saved”.
Once I hears a televangelist talking about us saying if you ask a Catholic, “Are you saved and he’ll go, ‘Uh, um . . .I think I’m saved, I’ve always considered myself a Christian.’ Well, if you ask a man if he’s married does he say, ‘I’ve always considered myself married’?”
 
the_hazel_nut said:
In Wikipedia’s Christianity article it says " Because Methodists, Pentecostals, and other evangelicals stress “accepting Jesus as your personal Lord and Savior”,[204] which comes from John Wesley’s emphasis of the New Birth,[205] …"

Neither source 204 (Cambridge Christ United Methodist Church statement of beliefs) nor source 205 (The New Birth by John Wesley) contain the phrase, or anything close to “accept Jesus as your personal lord and savior” (Oh the accuracy of wiki ;))

So I have no idea. I would love to know (history buff, its why I’m Catholic). My guess would be that it either came around in the 1950s + later or in one of America’s “great awakenings”.
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In the interests of accuracy of understanding, the Wiki article doesn’t say that the phrase came from John Wesley, but that the stress on accepting Jesus, etc., came from Wesley’s emphasis on the New Birth.

DaveBj
 
Prayer_Warrior said:
No, it is not expressly stated in Scripture, but do we really want to get into that argument?After all, there are many things that are not expressly stated in Scripture but both protestants and Catholics believe them.
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The difference is that as Catholics we can trace of each of these things not expressly stated in Scripture to Sacred Tradition. Protestants by definition cannot do this because it violates “sola scriptura”. Hence, one of the many fallacies of Protestants.
 
psychiatrist said:
The difference is that as Catholics we can trace of each of these things not expressly stated in Scripture to Sacred Tradition. Protestants by definition cannot do this because it violates “sola scriptura”. Hence, one of the many fallacies of Protestants.
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No, it doesn’t, if one understands what the practice of sola scriptura really involves.

Growing up Lutheran I never heard in Lutheran-speak the term “accept Jesus as personal Lord and savior”, not that He isn’t per se. First, the term “accept” has far less usage than “receive” when it comes to Lutheranism. We also recognize the vital importance of the Church in Christian sanctification. We are justified by grace alone through faith in Christ, which comes from Baptism and the hearing of the word. We continue to grow in grace when we receive the sacraments of Confession/Absolution and the Eucharist. These sanctifying graces come from God specifically through the Church, established by Christ Himself for this very purpose.

So, if one is using the term “personal Lord and savior” as implying that one can come to and remain in faith without the Church and all it offers, it seems to me that it would be quite difficult a task.

Jon
 
JonNC said:
(sig) Even a theology oriented to the concept of succession, such as that which holds in the Catholic and in the Orthodox church, need not in any way deny the salvation-granting presence of the Lord in a Lutheran Lord’s Supper.
Cr. Ratzinger
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Sorry to be OT (in my own thread, even), but may I ask where the quote in your signature comes from? I Googled it various ways but found only other articles which you have posted here.
 
DavidFilmer said:
Sorry to be OT (in my own thread, even), but may I ask where the quote in your signature comes from? I Googled it various ways but found only other articles which you have posted here.
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Never mind, I found it:

Briefwechsel von Landesbischof, Johannes Hanselmann, und Joseph Kardinal Ratzinger über das Communio-Schreiben der Römischen Glaubenskongregation," Una Sancta, 48 (1993): 348.
 
Behold I stand at the door and knock, if you open that door, I will come in and fellowship with you. Somewhere in the book of Revelation.
 
Big_Dummy said:
Behold I stand at the door and knock, if you open that door, I will come in and fellowship with you. Somewhere in the book of Revelation.
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That is an (awful) paraphrase of Rev. 3:20, which is not simply “make Jesus your personal Lord and savior” but is an invitation to dine with him at the Eucharist.
 
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