I squeezed my eyes shut, hands clasped together and focused on my pastor’s words.
“If you haven’t already, now’s your chance to invite Jesus into your heart,” he said.
I already had the previous week, but I worried I needed to do it again. So I repeated the prayer, just like I had last week, and waited.
“Amen,” everyone concluded.
I opened my eyes but didn’t feel any different. Did it work? Is Jesus in my heart now? What does it feel like? How do you know if He’s in there now?
I think I “asked Jesus into my heart” at least twenty times when I was a kid. I was scared I did it “wrong” or that it didn’t work. I also had no idea what those words even meant. What did it mean for Jesus to live in your heart, anyway?
I was thinking about this all last week and realized something: If it took me until last year to realize what salvation really is, how many other people are out there who don’t understand it either?
And here’s what gets me: BOTH sides of Christianity are actively hiding this simple truth from people who desperately need it. One side claims you have to follow a certain set of strict rules to have salvation. The other side removes the need for salvation entirely.
Salvation isn’t as complicated as people try to make it out to be. Being saved isn’t difficult at all. The heart change afterward is the hard part. But salvation in and of itself isn’t hard to get.
So why do Christians nowadays try to make it seem impossible?
Salvation is simply allowing Jesus to pay for your sins instead of paying for them yourself in Hell. Jesus died on the cross to pay the debt we owed. To have salvation, all we have to do is recognize Jesus covered the debt for us.
That’s it.
When I realized “asking Jesus into your heart” meant accepting He paid our debts for us, I was floored. That’s all? I thought. Why didn’t anyone just say it like that?
I realized a lot of people may feel “unworthy” or not “rule-abiding” enough to have salvation. But what if they really knew how simple it is? How many more would be saved?
How Fundamentalists Hide What Salvation Really Means
It seems the fundamentalists are the culprits who muddy the water of salvation. “You MUST do this, NEVER do that, ALWAYS do this.” They add requirements beyond faith in Christ. For those unfamiliar with Christianity, this would easily scare them away. I’ve heard people say, “I could never be a Christian. There’s too many rules.”
But salvation isn’t based on if we follow the rules or not. Salvation is based on letting Jesus pay for us.
Our salvation isn’t revoked if we don’t follow the “checklist”: stop drinking/smoking, clean up your life, go to church X times per week, dress this way, vote that way, have victory over sin, never doubt, have an amazing conversion story, etc.
The harm this can cause is catastrophic and can turn people off of Christianity altogether. People might think they’re not “good enough” for Jesus. They run themselves into the ground trying to earn what’s already free. The checklist goes with the mindset of “if I do enough good works then I’ll deserve salvation”. People might walk away from Christianity because of the impossible (and incorrect) standards. And those who are already saved may find themselves fighting anxiety about if they’re truly saved or not (like me when I was younger).
But this isn’t salvation at all.
What the Bible Actually Says
The Bible even speaks on this. Think of the thief on the cross next to Jesus. He asked Jesus to remember him when Jesus went into His Kingdom (Luke 23:42). Jesus immediately told him that He’d see him in paradise TODAY. There was no time for cleanup. No time for the thief to go to church every Sunday, wear modest clothing, or tithe. His salvation was immediate.
Romans 5:8 says, “…while we were sinners, Christ died for us.” Not “after we got our lives together”, “WHILE” we were sinners.
The Anxiety This Causes
I know the anxiety this can cause intimately. Twenty times. I asked Jesus into my heart at least TWENTY TIMES as a kid because I was convinced it hadn’t worked.
Why? Because I didn’t feel any different. I’d hear adults share their dramatic salvation testimonies—how their lives were completely transformed, how they felt this overwhelming peace, how everything changed in an instant. And I’d pray the prayer and…nothing. I felt exactly the same. So clearly, I must have done it wrong.
What if I didn’t mean it enough? What if I was distracted? What if God could tell I wasn’t sincere? I’d try again, squeezing my eyes tighter, focusing harder, WILLING myself to feel something different.
And then there was Revelation 3:16—the verse about lukewarm Christians that God would “spit out of His mouth.” That verse HAUNTED me. I was terrified of being lukewarm. I was terrified that my lack of dramatic transformation meant I wasn’t really saved at all. I studied Revelation obsessively, trying to figure out when the end times were coming so I could make sure I was ready, make sure I was “hot” enough for God.
I was a child. And I was lying awake at night, paralyzed with fear that I was going to hell despite desperately wanting to follow Jesus.
Here’s what makes this even more tragic: my church wasn’t even toxic. No one was TELLING me to feel this anxious. But I absorbed it anyway—from testimonies that emphasized feelings over faith, from sermons about lukewarm Christians, from the implicit message that salvation should FEEL dramatic. I was an overthinking, sensitive kid who internalized all these messages and terrorized myself with them.
And if the general culture of Christianity can make even a well-meaning kid in a decent church feel this kind of terror, we have a massive problem. We’ve made salvation—which Jesus said was simple enough for children—so confusing that even sincere children can’t grasp it. We’ve added invisible requirements that aren’t in the gospel: the right feelings, the dramatic story, the instant transformation, the constant temperature check to make sure you’re not lukewarm.
But none of that is in the gospel. None of it.
Why Do They Do This?
Why do so many toxic Christians try to enforce a salvation checklist then?
Some might want control or to gatekeep Heaven, reserve it for those “truly” worthy. Maybe they think that easy salvation leads to sin. Or they could be confusing salvation (which is free) with discipleship (which is costly). Some people want to make sure people are “really” saved. Maybe they feel special because they’ve been Christians their whole lives compared to new Christians. But salvation is salvation. Yes, there is a lifestyle change that comes after, but salvation is easy and free. And the lifestyle change comes after salvation alters your own desires.
How Progressive Christianity Obscures Salvation
On the other side, we have those who remove the need for salvation entirely. We turn sins into “mistakes” and say, “You’re fine just as you are.” Hell either doesn’t exist or everyone goes to Heaven if they’re a “good person”. Repentance becomes “self-acceptance”, and we downplay atonement or remove it completely. Instead of our Savior, Jesus becomes a placating, inspiring teacher. We use the argument, “Well, Jesus ate with sinners and prostitutes!” But He dined with them to bring the Truth in love, not to enable their sin. Sin gets so downplayed by this approach that we don’t see the need to be saved from anything at all.
The problem with this approach is people don’t understand why they need Jesus at all. Christianity morphs into “just be a good person”. There’s no urgency. No transformation. No power. We think we’re fine without Jesus and miss the entire point of the gospel. The Jesus we create in progressive theology can’t actually save us because there’s nothing to save us from in that version of the gospel. We embrace certain flaws so tightly that we enable sin and think being a good person is enough.
I get the appeal. I really do. After being beaten with Bible verses about how you’re not good enough, “You’re fine just as you are” sounds like RELIEF. After hearing about hell and judgment from people who seemed to enjoy threatening you with it, “A loving God wouldn’t send anyone to hell” sounds like sanity.
But Here’s What We Lose
But here’s the problem: when we strip away the reality of sin and judgment, we strip away the reason Jesus came at all. If we’re all basically fine, if there’s no real separation from God that needs fixing, then why did Jesus need to die? What was the cross for?
When we soften the gospel to make it more comfortable, we end up with a version of Jesus that looks nothing like the Jesus in Scripture. The real Jesus talked about hell more than anyone else in the Bible. He called people to repentance, not just self-acceptance. He came to save us from SOMETHING—from the very real consequence of our sin.
A gospel without sin, judgment, or the need for salvation isn’t the good news Jesus preached. It might be more comfortable, but it’s not Christianity. And more importantly, it can’t actually save anyone because it’s not addressing the real problem.
Jesus speaks on this directly in John 14:6, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” The only way to Heaven is through Jesus, not through good works or being nice. Romans 3:23 tells us, “All have sinned and fall short.” ALL. Paul goes on in Romans 6:23 to say, “The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life.”
So what IS the actual gospel? Let’s break it down.
What Salvation Actually Is
The Problem: We have sin. Sin means we’re separated from God. When Adam and Eve ate the Fruit of the Knowledge of Good and Evil and disobeyed God, sin entered the world.
The Consequence: Sin has a penalty: spiritual death or eternal separation from God. God physically can’t be in the presence of sin, so we were separated from Him, which was not the plan for creation.
The Impossibility: We can’t pay the debt of sin ourselves. Even in the Old Testament, with all the rituals and traditions, believers were saved by FAITH that the Messiah would come in the future. Hebrews 10:4 even says, “It is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins.” The Pharisees, or religious leaders, in Jesus’ time made the same mistake of trying to make salvation a checklist to complete.
The Substitution: Jesus paid the debt FOR you. Dying on the cross meant that He paid the price for all our sins so that we can live eternally in the presence of God.
The Choice: All we have to do is accept His payment instead of trying to pay it ourselves.
And that’s it. It’s that simple.
Romans 10:9 tells us to “confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.” And Ephesians 2:8-9 says, “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast.”
But there is an important distinction to make. I’m not promoting easy believism. Yes, salvation is easy to receive, but what comes after is the difficult part.
Salvation vs Discipleship
Salvation IS simple. Genuine faith produces fruit. We don’t earn salvation BY the fruit, but the fruit proves we have roots in Christ.
Salvation is the root. It’s a free gift given to us by faith. It can’t be earned, and it’s received in a moment.
Discipleship is the fruit. Once we have the root of salvation, our hearts are changed to desire what God desires. If we’ve truly encountered the One who died for us, we’ll naturally want to follow Him. In Luke 14:27 Jesus tells us to “take up your cross and follow Me.” Carrying a hundred pound cross and following Jesus isn’t easy, but real faith produces good works.
“Follow Jesus” isn’t a REQUIREMENT for salvation. “Follow Jesus” is the NATURAL RESPONSE to salvation.
A changed life doesn’t earn salvation, but salvation changes your life.
Why Understanding Salvation Matters for Your Eternity
Listen to me: If you walked away from Christianity because some Pharisee told you that you weren’t holy enough, they LIED to you. If you think you can’t come to Jesus until you get your life together, that’s NOT the gospel. That’s the exact OPPOSITE of the gospel.
And if you’ve swung the other direction—if you’ve decided that since the fundamentalists were wrong about everything, maybe there’s no such thing as sin at all—you’ve traded one lie for another.
The response to toxic legalism isn’t to remove accountability entirely. It’s to discover what Jesus actually taught.
If we all just KNEW how simple it actually is, maybe we’d give Christianity another shot.
Christianity isn’t condemning others. It isn’t a rule book that we all have to follow. It isn’t a pedestal to sit on and judge others.
Christianity is believing Jesus paid the debt of our sins for us so we can live with God in Heaven for eternity.
Whatever salvation urges your heart to do after is between you and God.
This isn’t just theology. This is people’s ETERNITY we’re talking about. How many people are in hell right now because some legalist convinced them they weren’t good enough for Jesus? How many people are headed there because some progressive convinced them they were fine without Him?
Both lies kill. One through despair, one through false security. And I’m done pretending both are equally valid “perspectives”. They’re both obscuring the gospel, and people are dying because of it.
For Those Hurt by Toxic Christianity
If someone told you that you need to clean up your life before Jesus will accept you, they’re not just wrong—they’re preaching a different gospel. Paul said it plainly in Galatians: if anyone preaches a gospel other than what he preached, “let them be under God’s curse” (Galatians 1:8-9). That’s not me being harsh. That’s PAUL.
These people aren’t just making Christianity “a little too strict”. They’re fundamentally misrepresenting who Jesus is and what He came to do. They’re the Pharisees Jesus spent His ministry confronting.
And you were right to be hurt by them—just don’t let their lies keep you from the real Jesus.
Christianity isn’t about the checklist they gave you. Jesus offers rest for the weary, not more burdens and obligations (Matthew 11:28-30). You don’t have to be “good enough” to follow Jesus, that’s the entire point of salvation. We were saved by grace—getting what we don’t deserve.
That’s not what Christianity is about.
It’s understandable that the natural response to encountering these toxic people would be running away from religion altogether. But the response here shouldn’t be to remove the gospel completely. We can reject toxic Christianity without rejecting Jesus.
I hope this shows you how Christianity is supposed to be and that what you experienced wasn’t an accurate picture of Jesus. The real gospel is better than what they showed you. It’s filled with grace and love. And it’s better than the diluted version that asks nothing of you. It’s full of righteous conviction, opportunities to grow. It’s simpler and more beautiful than both extremes. It’s more freeing AND more transformative.
The Simple Truth
I wish someone had told 8-year-old me, squeezing my eyes shut for the twentieth time: “Em, you’re not asking Jesus to move into a physical space in your chest. You’re accepting that He already paid your debt. That’s it. Stop torturing yourself.”
How many people—kids and adults—need to hear that today? How many are lying awake wondering if they “did it right”? How many are exhausted trying to earn what’s already been given?
The gospel is simpler than you think. It’s not a checklist. It’s not self-affirmation. It’s Jesus saying, “I paid it. Do you want what I bought for you?”
And the answer can just be yes.
