Every discipline and specialization has its own particular language. Back when I was cutting meat we would break beef. That was slang for taking a half of a carcass that had been delivered to the locker area, placing it on a cutting block, and transforming it into steaks, roasts, and ground beef. Soccer coaches have a specialized vocabulary, as do plumbers, finish carpenters, software developers, flooring salesmen, and nurses.

When you find yourself in the middle of a conversation with two people talking about their specialty, it can be difficult to understand what they are saying. Some of the special terms, slang, and abbreviations, can be like Swahili to the uninitiated. Unfortunately, Christians sometimes slip into code language when talking with other people. Without thinking, Christ followers can use terms that they hear constantly, but mean little to others.

If our goal is to communicate clearly, we must consider what we are saying. This is not a call to politically correct language, which is an attempt to filter out ideas that others may find offensive. It is not self-censorship. It is a call to think about how we can communicate the key messages of scripture without dropping into the language of an evangelical subculture that is not tied to scripture nor to the world around us.

For example, there are common evangelical terms that we use in presenting the invitation in the gospel to embrace Jesus’ claim to be our Lord and savior. Modern Christianese often uses the metaphor of “asking Jesus into our heart.” It’s difficult to know where this particular phrase came from, but it’s relatively new. The phrase doesn’t occur in scripture. Some would link it to Jesus’ words to the church in Laodicea in Revelation chapter 3. But the metaphor there is a door, not a heart. In 2 Corinthians 6:22 and 13, Paul uses the metaphor of an open heart to describe a welcome attitude, a transparency, a sense of favor that he feels toward the Corinthians and wishes them to reciprocate. In Colossians 1:27 Paul describes the mystery of redemption as “Christ in you, the hope of glory.” In Romans 8:9 Paul reminds the believers that one of the consequences of their relationship is the indwelling presence of the Spirit. He speaks of the “Spirit of God” in the first part of the verse, and equates that with the “Spirit of Christ” in the second half of the verse.

None of these realities demand that we describe the process of salvation as “asking Jesus into your heart.” In the right context—with the proper explanation of the metaphor—it may be useful. But it some cases it has become a modern shibboleth—a sign of authentic evangelical belief rather than an effective communication tool of the good news of Jesus.

There is a subtle pride in enforcing Christianese within evangelical circles. It presumes that the language of scripture is inadequate to communicate the gospel today. It pushes Jesus message of the kingdom of God into a mold that fits our preferences. There is no ambiguity in the meaning of the death and resurrection of Christ in the New Testament. There is an absence of “canned” or stilted language—the kind of-verbiage we refer to when we want to reduce the message of life in Christ to a one-size-fits-all formula.

If Christ followers are going to communicate in a way that is effective in our modern culture, we must present the challenging truth of the New Testament without apology. But that also requires the kind of clarity that comes from avoiding insider language that is more a product of evangelical conformity than careful thought.