Friday, August 31, 2018

Belief Salvation



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

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