Romans 10:9-13 “If
you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God
has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one
believes unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto
salvation. For the Scripture says, “Whoever believes on Him will not
be put to shame.” For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek,
for the same Lord over all is rich to all who call upon
Him. For “whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.”
As Pastor Giglio stated
before, sinners cannot keep the law of God perfectly, and this is why the law’s
promise of justification for those who keep it can never be fulfilled by our
own obedience. The 1828 Webster’s dictionary defines the word “justification” in
theology as: remission of sin and
absolution from guilt and punishment; or an act of free grace by which God
pardons the sinner and accepts him as righteous, on account of the atonement of
Christ. Justification, therefore, must be by faith in Jesus Christ alone; a
faith that looks outside of oneself to the promises of the Lord and not to any
goodness we can achieve even with His help. I read that "Justification by faith alone" acknowledges that we are no more deserving of salvation than any other sinner,
and it recognizes that God alone must do the work of salvation, because He is
the only one who can.
Romans 5:15-21 “But
the free gift is not like the offense. For if by the one man’s offense
many died, much more the grace of God and the gift by the grace of the one Man,
Jesus Christ, abounded to many. And the gift is not like that
which came through the one who
sinned. For the judgment which came from one offense resulted in condemnation, but the free
gift which came from many offenses resulted in justification. For
if by the one man’s
offense death reigned through the one, much more those
who receive abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness will reign in
life through the One, Jesus Christ.) Therefore, as through one man’s
offense judgment came to all men, resulting in condemnation, even so
through one Man’s righteous act the free gift came to all
men, resulting in justification of life. For as by one man’s disobedience
many were made sinners, so also by one Man’s obedience many will be made
righteous. Moreover the law entered that the offense might abound.
But where sin abounded, grace abounded much more, so that as sin
reigned in death, even so grace might reign through righteousness to eternal
life through Jesus Christ our Lord.”
Yet this does not mean that
the righteousness based on faith is entirely removed from the law of God. In
fact, the righteousness by faith is a righteousness that comes from keeping the
Lord’s commandments perfectly, although it is not we who have kept them. The
One who has kept them is Christ Jesus our Lord, who obeyed the law perfectly
unto the justification of sinners. The righteousness that is by faith is indeed
a legal righteousness, but we have not achieved it. It has been achieved by
Christ, and it is imputed to us when we trust in Him alone by faith.
This lesson states that in Romans 10:9–13, Paul
continues his argument that the righteousness that is by faith—which is nothing
less than Christ, the end or goal of the law—is antithetical to the
righteousness that is based on keeping the law. He does this by emphasizing the
ease with which this righteousness of our Savior is received. All that is
required is belief—specifically, the belief in the heart that God raised Jesus
from the dead. Of course, Paul in the same verses also mentions the confession
of Jesus as Lord with one’s mouth, but he does not thereby make verbal
confession something that we add to our belief in order to be saved.
The Apostle is paralleling
the simplicity of the righteousness of faith with the fact that one does not
have to go looking high and low for the gospel. Paul is stressing the nearness
of the gospel message. The message of justification by grace alone through
faith alone in Christ alone is not so far away intellectually that one must
exert great effort to bridge the gap between present knowledge and “gospel knowledge.”
It is so easy to understand that it is right at hand even for the unlearned. Paul
wants us to know that righteousness by faith is ours via a gospel that anyone
can understand. Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. Jew
or Gentile, learned or unlearned, male or female—the gospel is no respecter of
persons.
The
emphasis on believing with the heart shows that “faith is a firm and effectual
confidence and not a bare notion only.” Saving faith is not simply knowing the
truth about Jesus or believing the facts about His life, although these things
are necessary. Saving faith also requires personal trust in Jesus for
salvation, the belief that His work and promises apply to us specifically. If
we believe such things, we are saved.
Blessings in Christ