Tag: Salvation

Digging in Deeper: Romans 10:8b-10

14 Comments

“This is the message of faith that we proclaim: 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. One believes with the heart, resulting in righteousness, and one confesses with the mouth, resulting in salvation.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

How does salvation work? Every single worldview has an answer to that question. That’s one of those fundamental questions people have always asked that worldviews are designed (albeit not necessarily intentionally so) to address. And most worldviews answer the question in roughly the same way. Yes, the details are different, but in the big picture, they’re all the same. There’s one exception to this. Let’s talk about why all the others are the same and why Christianity is different.

Read the rest…

Morning Musing: Romans 10:5-8a

1 Comment

“…since Moses writes about the righteousness that is from the law: ‘The one who does these things will live by them.’ But the righteousness that comes from faith speaks like this: ‘Do not say in your heart, “Who will go up to heaven?”’ that is, to bring Christ down or, ‘Who will go down into the abyss?’ that is, to bring Christ up from the dead. On the contrary, what does it say? ‘The message is near you, in your mouth and in your heart.’” (CSB – Read the chapter)

In Christ, God did something totally new. At the same time, He was continuing something very old. He was completing an old covenant and creating a new one. The goal of both covenants was the same: our living in a right relationship with Him. The path these two covenants took to get there, however, was not. Paul offers a little study in contrasts here. Let’s talk about the differences and explore how Paul makes this distinction.

Read the rest…

Morning Musing: Romans 10:4

1 Comment

“For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes…” (CSB – Read the chapter)

It’s hard to know what something is unless you know what it’s for. But if you get what it is for wrong, you’ll get what it is wrong too. Perhaps the best illustration of this comes from Scuttle the seagull in Disney’s The Little Mermaid. When Ariel brings him a fork, he identifies it as a “dinglehopper,” used by humans for doing their hair. Among followers of Jesus there is an occasionally robust debate about the purpose of the Law of Moses in light of Christ and His ministry. Paul gives us an important clue here. Let’s talk about it.

Read the rest…

Morning Musing: Romans 10:1-3

Leave a comment

“Brothers and sisters, my heart’s desire and prayer to God concerning them is for their salvation. I can testify about them that they have zeal for God, but not according to knowledge. Since they are ignorant of the righteousness of God and attempted to establish their own righteousness, they have not submitted to God’s righteousness.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

One of the most entertaining, but also frustrating experiences in life is having an argument with a toddler who is convinced she’s right when she’s really not. That little girl will passionately defend her position to the ground. It’s cute, really. The problem, of course, is that she doesn’t know what she is talking about. She has zeal, but insufficient knowledge. Knowing something with a lot of passion and even confidence doesn’t count for much when you’re still wrong. As Paul continues talking about Israel and the church here, he says one of those groups was in that position. Let’s talk about which one and why.

Read the rest…

Digging in Deeper: Romans 9:22-29

2 Comments

“And what if God, wanting to display his wrath and to make his power known, endured with much patience objects of wrath prepared for destruction? And what if he did this to make known the riches of his glory on objects of mercy that he prepared beforehand for glory—on us, the ones he also called, not only from the Jews but also from the Gentiles? As it also says in Hosea, ‘I will call Not My People, My People, and she who is Unloved, Beloved. And it will be in the place where they were told, you are not my people, there they will be called sons of the living God.’ But Isaiah cries out concerning Israel, ‘Though the number of Israelites is like the sand of the sea, only the remnant will be saved; since the Lord will execute his sentence completely and decisively on the earth.’ And just as Isaiah predicted: ‘If the Lord of Armies had not left us offspring, we would have become like Sodom, and we would have been made like Gomorrah.’” (CSB – Read the chapter)

So, yesterday we started a really uncomfortable conversation about God’s sovereignty and our subjection to that sovereignty. We like to think of ourselves as truly and completely free individuals. We are autonomous beings. And then Paul asks something like, “On the contrary, who are you, a human being, to talk back to God? Will what is formed say to the one who formed it, ‘Why did you make me like this?'” That hits hard. And the more you think about it, the harder it hits. In fact, it hits hard enough that whereas I was originally going to treat these verses in the same post as yesterday’s passage, there was enough here when I started writing that I had to break it up into two posts. Without further ado, then, let’s keep working through Paul’s exaltation of God’s sovereignty and what that means for us.

Read the rest…