Center For Biblical Discipleship and Mission

The religion of Islam is built on five pillars that shape the expectations and practices of Muslim followers of Allah. These pillars include the Shahada, Salat, Zakat, Sawm, and Hajj. Each one contributes to the overall life and religious experience of Muslims all over the world.

The first pillar of Islam, the Shahada, is the Islamic confession of faith. In English, it is commonly translated, “There is no god but Allah, and Muhammad is the messenger of Allah.” This confession functions as the entry point into Islam. When said with sincerity in the mind and heart, a person publicly identifies as Muslim and affirms the central claims of Islam.

By reciting these words, a person affirms belief in Islam and publicly identifies with the Muslim faith. This simple confession is rooted in belief and submission, not necessarily full understanding, though many Muslims do seek to understand the Quran more deeply as they commit themselves to the five pillars.

This is one of many theological matters where Christians and Muslims disagree significantly. Islam and Christianity are not the same religion, and faithful adherents of either faith would not claim that they are. My concern is not to suggest that the two religions teach the same thing. They do not. My concern is that many churches have unintentionally embraced a similar mindset when it comes to the sinner’s prayer. Not willingly, and not knowingly, but functionally.

We have spent countless Sundays preaching the gospel from the stage or pulpit, giving altar calls, asking people to raise their hands, and then leading them to recite a prayer that often sounds something like this:

Lord Jesus,

I know that I am a sinner and that I have sinned against You. I cannot save myself. I believe that You are the Son of God, that You died on the cross for my sins, and that You rose again from the dead.

I turn from my sin and trust in You alone as my Savior and Lord. Forgive me, make me new, and help me follow You for the rest of my life.

Thank You for Your grace, Your mercy, and the gift of salvation.

In Jesus’ name, amen.

I want to start by saying this prayer is not bad. In fact, it is filled with theology and confessional language. By all measures, it is an excellent prayer. The problem is not the words. The issue is the mindset that can develop around them.

This prayer has led many people to believe that if they say the right words, they will not go to hell. If they repeat the prayer, then God will give them something, namely an escape from judgment.

In that sense, without realizing it, many Christians have functionally created their own kind of Shahada. Not because Christianity teaches the same thing as Islam, but because we have sometimes treated the sinner’s prayer as though salvation comes by sincerely reciting the right words.

We just do not call it the Shahada. We call it the sinner’s prayer.

Do not get me wrong. When people come to true saving faith, they must cry out to God. They must confess their sin, call upon the name of the Lord, and trust in Christ. Again, the issue is not the words or the act of praying. The issue is the mindset behind it, because the salvation Jesus offers was never about mere belief or verbal repetition. It is far grander than that.

After all, even the demons believe — and shudder.

James writes, “You believe that God is one; you do well. Even the demons believe—and shudder!” (James 2:19). The problem is not that demons lack awareness of God. The problem is that their knowledge is not saving faith. They do not love God, submit to God, repent before God, or trust in Christ as Savior and Lord.

A. W. Tozer once wrote, “But unless the weight of the burden is felt, the gospel can mean nothing to the man; and until he sees a vision of God high and lifted up, there will be no woe and no burden. Low views of God destroyed the gospel for all who hold them.”

To build on Tozer’s critique, we have often made our view of God too low, our view of sin too small, and the gift of salvation too common. We have reduced redemption to a simple prayer, modest belief, and little knowledge of the Holy One who saves.

But the gift God offers through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus was never ultimately about what mankind does. It has always been about what God has done for us in Christ. Therefore, salvation cannot be reduced to a prayer based on vague belief. True saving faith includes gospel understanding and a heart-level response of belief, confession, and repentance.

First, we must understand the gospel.

Not as biblical scholars or seminary professors, but we must know the good news we cling to for our own salvation and are called to proclaim to the world.

This means we need to know that there is a holy God who is eternal, with no beginning and no end. He created all things by His power and for His glory. Humanity alone was made in His image, designed to know Him, worship Him, reflect His character, and live in fellowship with Him. In the beginning, everything lived in perfect harmony with Him.

But that changed when Eve, tempted by Satan, disobeyed God, and Adam followed her into rebellion. Because of their disobedience and desire to be like God, sin entered the world. Sin is not an equal opposite to a good God. Sin is the corruption, rebellion, and brokenness that exists wherever creation turns away from Him.

Yet even in God’s righteous judgment, there was hope. Before God spoke a word of consequence, He gave a promise. One day, the Seed of the woman would crush the head of the serpent, even though the serpent would bruise His heel. From the beginning, God promised a solution to the problem humanity caused.

Then, after thousands of years of God’s faithfulness and humanity’s rebellion, Jesus came.

He was born of a virgin, fully God and fully man. This God-man lived a perfect life, never sinning and fulfilling the law of God completely. On the cross, He took our sin, punishment, and judgment upon Himself. The judgment we deserved was absorbed by Him.

Then, after dying on the cross, He rose from the grave three days later, conquering sin and death and offering salvation to all who believe, confess, and repent.

But it gets even better.

Before ascending to the Father, Jesus promised to return one day. When He does, He will judge all creation, restore all things, and bring those who belong to Him into the new heavens and new earth, where we will once again experience perfect fellowship with God.

It is important that we understand this truth. We live in a pagan culture once more, so we must clearly proclaim that there is a God, that we are inherently broken, and that we are in need of a Savior. That Savior is Jesus, who did what we could not do in order to give us what we do not deserve. His promise is better than anything we can imagine.

So how do we move from the Christian Shahada to true faith?

It begins with a clear understanding and proclamation of the gospel.

Then comes belief.

Belief is the necessary response to the gospel. The most famous verse in the Bible makes it clear that belief is essential for salvation:

“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16).

But believing in anything is not enough. We must believe Jesus is who He said He is and did what Scripture says He did. That means we believe His claims about being God, living a perfect life, taking our sin upon Himself, rising from the dead, and offering salvation as the only way to God.

Saving faith is not mere agreement with facts. It is trust in Christ.

Now that we believe, we must confess Jesus as Lord and Savior.

Paul writes, “Because, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved” (Romans 10:9–10).

Biblical confession is more than saying religious words. To confess Jesus as Lord is to acknowledge Him as King. It is to bow before His rule, authority, and power. It is to acknowledge His position as the one true Lord and our position as those who belong to Him.

While belief and confession are essential, there is one more component that Scripture clearly teaches: repentance.

Peter preached, “Repent therefore, and turn back, that your sins may be blotted out” (Acts 3:19).

Paul declared, “The times of ignorance God overlooked, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent” (Acts 17:30).

Repentance means to turn. We turn from our sin, rebellion, brokenness, and idols, and we turn toward God. We cannot claim to belong to Christ while gladly remaining in bondage to the sin from which He came to save us.

This does not mean we will follow Jesus perfectly. We are still sinners in need of grace. But there should be a growing consistency between the faith we proclaim and the life we live.

Salvation is a one-time work of God. Once we are truly saved, if we truly belong to God, we cannot lose what Christ has secured. But the Christian life is marked by ongoing belief, confession, and repentance. Not for salvation, but to remind us of who God is, who we are, and how gracious He has been to save us from death.

It is here, where understanding meets belief, confession, and repentance, that the Christian Shahada dies and true faith is born.

It is here that we are no longer merely people attending church, but the body of Christ serving as His witnesses and messengers, heirs of the ministry of reconciliation.

Paul writes, “All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation” (2 Corinthians 5:18).

After all, we were not called merely to fill buildings. We were called to make disciples. And to make disciples, the gospel must be known and proclaimed so that people may respond in belief, confess Jesus as Lord and Savior, repent from the brokenness of this life, and run into the arms of the Savior who has given us more than we could ever dream of earning on our own.