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Search the King James Bible for the words “accept Jesus” and you get nothing. Zero verses. Search for “Lord and Saviour” and you get exactly four — all four of them in the same short letter near the back of the New Testament, and not one of them is telling anybody how to begin.
That is not a loophole and it is not bad news. If you have been circling this sentence for a few days now, half-convinced there is a correct version of it you have not located yet, the reason you cannot find it is that it was never a formula. The Bible does answer the question you are asking. It just uses a different verb — and that verb tells you whose hands are doing the work.
All Four “Lord and Saviour” Verses Are in One Letter
The phrase is real. It is in scripture. It just lives in one place: a three-chapter letter called 2 Peter, written to people who were already following Jesus.
- “For so an entrance shall be ministered unto you abundantly into the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ” (2 Peter 1:11)
- “through the knowledge of the Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ” (2 Peter 2:20)
- “the commandment of us the apostles of the Lord and Saviour” (2 Peter 3:2)
- “But grow in grace, and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ” (2 Peter 3:18)
Read those four lines in a row and notice what they are all about. An entrance. Knowledge. The apostles’ instruction. Growing. Peter is not handing out a password at the door. He is using “Lord and Saviour” the way you would use someone’s full name — and he is using it with people who had already walked in.
Which means the sentence you have been trying to get right was assembled later, out of true pieces, by people who meant well. It is a good summary of who Jesus is. It was never the wording of a transaction, and there is no record anywhere of Jesus asking anyone to repeat it.
The Verse That Actually Describes It Uses the Word “Received”
John opens his Gospel with a sentence about this exact moment, and he puts two verses side by side:
“He came unto his own, and his own received him not. But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name.” — John 1:11-12
Received. Twice. Not accepted, not achieved, not earned, not performed correctly. The Greek word behind it is the everyday verb for taking hold of something that is being handed to you — the word you would use for a parcel, a cup, a key. It describes what the hands on the receiving end do, which is almost nothing.
And look at the order in that verse, because it is the opposite of how most of us imagine this working. You do not become a child of God and then get received. People received him, and then they were given the standing. The gift comes first. The status is what the gift does to you.
“Accept” Puts the Weight on You. “Receive” Puts It on Jesus.
This is not word games. The two verbs feel completely different to carry, and the difference is probably why you are reading this at all.
Accept is what you do with a proposal. You weigh it, you decide, you render a verdict — and because it is your verdict, you can do it badly. You can accept half-heartedly. You can accept and then wonder whether your acceptance was sincere enough to count. That is the loop people get stuck in for years, and it is a loop built entirely out of a word the Bible never used here.
Receive is what you do with something already being held out to you. The whole weight of it is on the one doing the holding out. Your part is to stop refusing and take it. Scripture puts it that plainly at the very end of Revelation: “And let him that heareth say, Come. And let him that is athirst come. And whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely” (Revelation 22:17). Freely. No tab, no qualification, no audition.
So if you are waiting to feel certain enough, or clean enough, or articulate enough to accept Jesus properly — you are waiting on a requirement nobody put there.
What Scripture Does Ask For: Four Plain Verbs
Here is the practical answer, gathered from the places the Bible actually speaks about this. Four verbs, and not a script among them:
- Receive. “But as many as received him…” (John 1:12). Open hands.
- Believe. “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved” (Acts 16:31) — the answer Paul and Silas gave a jailer who asked this same question in the middle of the night.
- Confess. “That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved” (Romans 10:9). Say it out loud to somebody, eventually. Not because the words are magic, but because a thing said out loud is a thing you have admitted you mean.
- Call. “For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved” (Romans 10:13). Calling is what you do when you are not in a position to negotiate.
Put them together and the “how” stops being mysterious. Tell Jesus the honest truth about where you are. Say what you now believe about him — that he is who he said he was, and that God raised him. Then take what is being held out instead of standing there deciding whether you qualify. In your own words, tonight, out loud if you can and silently if you cannot.
If you want to see it done by somebody with no advantages at all, read what happened to the man who did it with empty hands on a cross — no time, no record, no ability to kneel. And if the word order in “Lord and Savior” has ever snagged on you, here is why scripture keeps putting Lord first.
Jesus Promised Not to Check Your Technique
One more line, because it answers the fear that outlives the prayer. Jesus said: “All that the Father giveth me shall come to me; and him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out” (John 6:37).
“In no wise” is strong language. Not unless you worded it badly. Not unless you cried at the right moment. The one person in this story with the authority to turn you away has gone on record saying he will not. Nothing in that sentence depends on your delivery. (Jesus said something similar to several different people in Luke, in almost identical words — here is the one sentence he repeated.)
Which Leaves You Something Better Than a Formula: Tomorrow Morning
Here is what changes once the word is “receive.” You stop auditing the moment. You stop re-praying the prayer every few weeks to see whether this time it took. The question quietly moves from did I do it right? to who is this person I just called Lord? — and that second question has an answer you can actually go looking for.
Which is where most people stall. They open the Bible at page one with real intent, run out of road somewhere in the middle of Leviticus, and read the stall as evidence that nothing happened in the first place. It was not evidence of anything. It only meant nobody showed them where to start.
That is exactly the gap 30 Days Walking with Jesus was built for. It walks you through the life of Jesus one day at a time, straight through the Gospels, written for somebody starting from zero. There are 30 short devotional videos, each under a minute, and 30 full-chapter audio readings for the mornings when reading is more than you have in you. A complete PDF study guide with journal prompts gives what you read somewhere to land, and five quick-reference scripture guides mean you are never hunting for anything. Under ten minutes a day.
And it is free — no payment, no card, no upsell, no expiration — because the words of Jesus should not sit behind a paywall. Instant access on any device, and it is yours to keep. You received him with open hands. You can start this the same way.
Questions People Are Asking
Q: What is the Bible verse for accepting Jesus as your Lord and Savior?
A: The closest verse to a direct description is John 1:12: “But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name.” Two others are quoted constantly for the same purpose: Romans 10:9 (“if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved”) and Romans 10:13 (“For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved”). The exact sentence “accept Jesus as your Lord and Savior” does not appear in the Bible — it is a later summary of what those verses describe.
Q: Does the Bible say “Lord and Savior” anywhere?
A: Yes, four times, and all four are in the same letter: 2 Peter 1:11, 2 Peter 2:20, 2 Peter 3:2 and 2 Peter 3:18. In the King James wording it is spelled “Lord and Saviour.” In every one of those four places Peter is writing to people who already believed, about growing and knowing Jesus — he never uses the phrase as an instruction for how to begin.
Q: What is the difference between accepting Jesus and receiving Jesus?
A: In practice, where the weight sits. “Accept” describes a decision you render, which means you can worry about whether you rendered it well enough. “Receive” — the word John 1:12 uses — describes taking something that is already being held out to you, which puts the weight on the giver. They point at the same event. The second wording is the one scripture uses, and it is the one that stops the endless self-checking.
Q: Do I have to say a specific prayer to accept Jesus as my Lord and Savior?
A: No. There is no required script anywhere in the Bible, and no verse where Jesus asks anyone to repeat set words. What scripture describes is receiving, believing, confessing and calling — telling God the honest truth about where you are, saying what you now believe about Jesus, and asking. Your own plain words in that shape are enough.
Q: What should I do the day after I accept Jesus as my Lord and Savior?
A: Start getting to know him, rather than re-checking the moment. The most natural place to begin is the Gospels — the four accounts of Jesus’s own life — read in small daily pieces instead of opening the Bible at page one and trying to read straight through. 30 Days Walking with Jesus is a free, beginner-friendly plan that walks through the Gospels one day at a time in under ten minutes a day, with no payment or card required.
