Romans 10:9-10 (NIV)
That if you confess with your mouth,
"Jesus is Lord," and believe in your heart that God raised Him from
the dead, you will be saved. For
it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your
mouth that you confess and are saved.
Your salvation comes from both believing
and speaking. Your believing is an
internal matter, between you and God.
Your speaking is an external matter, between you and other people. Your heart (‘kardia’ in the Greek) is the
center of your physical and spiritual life.
It is your soul and your mind as well as it is the fountain and seat of
the your thoughts, passions, desires, appetites, affections, purposes, and
endeavors. Your mouth (‘stoma’ in the
Greek) is the verbal utterance of what is in your heart (Matthew 15:18).
Salvation means that you are set free from
the eternal judgment of God. It means
that you are no longer a slave to sin.
Sin still exists in life, but a person who is saved keeps trying to run
away from sin while the person who is unsaved keep running toward it. It’s the attitude and resultant actions that
change once a person is saved.
Salvation, according to this passage, means that you believe in Jesus
Christ as Lord because you readily confess this truth with your mouth. Salvation also means that you believe within
your heart that Jesus died for your sins and was raised from the dead by
God.
In I John 4:2, there is a very important
test that the Bible gives you to determine the true belief of someone,
including yourself, about Jesus Christ and the proof that His Spirit lives
within the person. The proof is
this---the confession that Jesus Christ is God Incarnate. That is, you believe that Jesus is God and
that God became flesh in Christ to save mankind from their sin nature. If you do not believe that Jesus is God
Incarnate (God in the flesh) and is one with God, you are not saved because you
do not have the Holy Spirit within you to glorify God.
Note that this passage affirms that you
must believe in Jesus as the Lord of your life. People might believe that Jesus is their
Savior, but don’t live their lives with Him as their Lord. Salvation is based both on believing in Jesus
as your Lord and as the Savior of your life. I know that I used to testify that I invited
Jesus in my life to be my Savior but I didn’t follow Him as Lord for several
years. I really believed that I was
saved, yet I didn’t go to church, didn’t read the Bible, didn’t do anything for
the Lord. I’ll always wonder if I was
truly saved in those earlier years before I finally rededicated my life to
Christ that involved getting active as a Christian and serving God through
serving others. Make sure that if you
believe that you are saved that you are showing the works that back up your
faith (read James 2:14-26); that Jesus is indeed Lord as well as Savior of your
life.
Why
does confession come first, then belief in verse 9 while verse 10 has belief
coming first, then confession? William
MacDonald in Believer’s Bible Commentary (p. 1722) wrote that verse 9
emphasizes Jesus coming to earth (Incarnation, Jesus is Lord) and His
resurrection (God raised Him from the dead) that occurred in chronological
order. In verse 10 the emphasis is on
the order of events in the salvation of a sinner. First, belief, then the public confession of
his/her salvation.
Can you claim these verses as your
own? If not, is it not time to take
action on what the Bible says and believe with all your heart that Jesus came
to save you and become the Lord of your life and then confess Him as your
Savior and Lord both privately and then publicly. Your eternal destiny depends on this
decision.
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