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There is a more traditional view of "easy believism" - "accept Christ into your life" - but not include the repentance. Jesus becomes another path to feeling better about yourself...the means of overcoming all those bad feelings you are carrying around with you.

I saw this at a Youth Group musical Thursday night. Two troubled kids were told to just ask Jesus into their lives, and everything would be better. He becomes the panacea for a troubled-filled life.

Repentance is a necessary component of salvation - an indispensible one, in fact.

I would agree that repentance is an essential element, but it is not a necessary element to what christ did, it is a necessary element to our belief. Christ called us to repent. So if we are to be saved we must repent as we cannot believe unless we repent. But what is repentance? It is a turning away from our old lives and turning our focus on Jesus. To make him our Lord.

What bothers me about many people is that they assume that everyone who isn't as sinless as them is not walking with the Lord or is not saved. That in order to be saved a person must be as hard a worker and as sinless a person as they are.

Hey if works and sinless living are essential to maintaining your salvation then we might as well have the law back. Nobody was righteous under the law before Jesus and certainly nobody is righteous under the law after Jesus. Only Jesus met that standard.

Repent yes. Do good works in order that you can assist Jesus in saving yourself... Blasphemy. You do good works because you love Jesus and the Holy Spirit leads you in that direction. You don't do them because you have to in order to be saved.