"Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, (then) I will enter his house and dine with him, and he with me. Rev. 3:20
"Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, (then) I will enter his house and dine with him, and he with me. Rev. 3:20
“Well,” said the Catholic lady sweetly, “You Baptists like to ask Jesus into your heart right?”
“That’s right.”
“We like to ask Jesus to take us into his heart.”
SYNTAX ERROR
Revelation 3:20 is one of the most abused verses in all of the Bible and it does not mean what your post implied.
Jesus does not knock at the heart’s door of sinners. He never has, and He never will. When He wants to save a man, He calls him to eternal life by His life-giving voice (John 5:25). Sinners can no more resist than did Lazarus (John 11:43-44) or will all dead bodies in the last day (John 5:28-29). If He merely asked sinners to open their doors, no man would be saved (Ps 14:1-3; Rom 3:9- 18). He forcibly and sovereignly regenerates sinners by His own power (John 1:13; 3:8; 5:21). The great God does not ask or beg sinners to cooperate with Him: He raises them from spiritual death with the same resurrection power that raised Jesus from the dead (Eph 1:19-20; 2:1).
The words in this verse are for the church at Laodicea, not sinners in general (Rev 3:14-22). The words were for those with ears to hear, not those needing ears (John 8:43,47). This section of Revelation has the words of Jesus Christ to the pastors of seven churches of Asia. The church of the Laodiceans was self-confident and self-righteous. Jesus rebuked them for their lukewarm condition and haughty spirit, and He described them as being spiritually wretched, miserable, poor, blind, and naked! They needed a personal relationship with Him for true spiritual riches.
The benefit offered by Jesus in the verse is fellowship, not salvation from hell. The Lord Jesus Christ offered the members of this church His personal presence for spiritual communion and fellowship, not regeneration or justification. These saints were already saved from hell as much as they could be; but they were living a miserable existence without a personal relationship with Christ. This offer was the fellowship and joy that John described elsewhere (I John 1:1-10).
And for the record, not all Southern Baptists like to “invite Jesus into our hearts.”
Notice that there is no knob on the outside of the door where Jesus is standing.
We need to open the door to our hearts by turning the knob on the inside of the door and opening it for him.