“For the Scripture says, ‘Everyone who believes on him will not be put to shame,’ since there is no distinction between Jew and Greek,  because the same Lord of all richly blesses all who call on him. For ‘everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.’” (CSB – Read the chapter)

Who can be saved? Yesterday we joined Paul in a conversation about how salvation happens. But who is it for? It’s not at all uncommon for someone under conviction from the Holy Spirit to declare something like, “There’s no way God could accept me.” It’s also not nearly as uncommon as it should be for folks from a tribe with a strong Christian tradition to look at folks from another tribe—especially an enemy tribe—and declare something like, “Salvation is surely not for them.” Paul disagrees. Let’s talk about just who salvation in Christ is for.

Let’s start with this question: Is there anyone who can’t be saved? The simple answer to that question is no, there’s not. Now, it’s harder for some than others. Jesus Himself noted that very wealthy people will often have a hard time as making the switch from trusting in their stuff to trusting in Him is not an easy one to make.

People who have convinced themselves that salvation isn’t necessary or at least that they don’t have need for it at all will also have a pretty steep hill to climb to get there. These are the unlost who first have to be helped to see their actual lostness before they are going to accept the help available in Christ to be found. Often it is only a personal life tragedy, or perhaps getting existentially rocked by a witnessed tragedy that will shake them from their deluded confidence in their own righteousness. Sometimes a particularly grievous brush with the world’s brokenness that leaves them entirely unable to deny its existence that will do the trick. Either way, evidence and argument won’t easily help them climb out of a pit that evidence and argument didn’t actually dig for them.

There’s one other person who often struggles with receiving the salvation available in Christ. This is the person who has grown up in the church, but whose heart was never penetrated by the Gospel for one reason or another. He doesn’t have any particular animus against it thanks to a bad experience of some kind, but in always just assuming on the culture of the church and even giving mental acquiescence to the basic arguments and truth claims of the Christian worldview, he’s never reached the point of inviting Jesus into his heart. He was likely baptized according to his faith tradition’s practices and is maybe even serving in the church in some inner circle capacity, but he hasn’t actually embraced the Gospel at a personal level.

There are no doubt still others who might have a hard time being saved. Paul understands this well. He was once firmly in that camp. He hated Christianity and Christians. He was a passionately committed Pharisee whose goal was the purification of the Jewish faith by the eradication of this ugly heresy. When he was unleashed by the Jewish religious elite on Jerusalem, believers had to flee the city. Luke tells us in Acts 8 that none but the apostles remained. They were all terrified of him. There was no human enemy of the church more determined and dug into his opposition. And then he encountered Jesus and did a complete and dramatic worldview 180. So sudden and unexpected was his conversion that when he tried to go to Jerusalem to meet with other disciples, none of them would have anything to do with him for fear it was all a ruse to find them out and continue his campaign against the church.

Paul went from an absolute if utterly deluded confidence he was right with God to humbly throwing himself on the mercy of Christ. Why? Because “everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.” God’s salvation is available equally to everyone. Salvation is a function of faith, and everyone is capable of faith.

In fact, more than that, everyone lives by faith. Every worldview is ultimately a proposition of faith. Religious worldviews obviously operate on faith, but so do the various secular worldviews. How could this be? Because as much as the secularist likes to mock the idea of having faith in a God whose existence can’t be empirically demonstrated by something that coheres with his artificially narrow definition of evidence, the uncomfortable (for him) fact is that God’s non-existence can’t be empirically verified either. This is because the existence or non-existence of God is not a scientific proposition. It is a philosophical one. Which position you choose on the question ultimately boils down to worldview commitments and, yes, faith. The salvation offered by the Gospel, then, is just a matter of pointing the faith you already have in the proper direction. Salvation is for everyone.

What’s more, pointing our faith in the direction of Jesus is not something that will come around to backfire on us. “For the Scripture says, ‘Everyone who believes on him will not be put to shame.'” Now, I should caveat that just a bit. If you put your faith in something other than Jesus while convincing others and even yourself that you actually did put it in Jesus, you will eventually have reason to be ashamed of that. Misplaced faith leads to shame for many people, especially when they didn’t realize it was misplaced for one reason or another. This is why it is so important for teachers of the Gospel to not water it down or to euphemize it to soften some of its harder edges. We don’t need to make a club out of it, but we also need to be honest about it so people who are considering embracing it do so with their eyes wide open, fully aware of both its rewards and its demands.

But when faith is placed truly and well, there won’t ever be reason for shame. God isn’t going to leave you suddenly high and dry. You won’t find out somewhere along the way that there was some easier path or shorter route that you missed out on because you didn’t check certain boxes. “Since there is no distinction between Jew and Greek, because the same Lord of all richly blesses all who call on him.” Salvation really is for everybody, and there’s only one salvation to be had. That salvation is found in no one but Jesus.

The question that matters most, then, is this one: Have you received it? Have you called on the name of the Lord? He’s waiting for you, to receive you into His kingdom when you are ready to enter through Jesus. He is ready to pour out His rich blessings on you. Believing on Him won’t magically fix everything broken in your life. It won’t make all your troubles disappear. In fact, it might bring problems and complications into your life at first as you appear on the enemy’s radar and those pieces and parts of your former life react to your newfound faith, but you won’t be alone to face them. You will not be put to shame.

So then, what are you waiting for? Step out and embrace the faith that has the power to save you. You will most definitely be glad that you did.