Text. Romans 10:9
That if you shalt confess with thy
mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God
hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved.
I am very conscious that we who have been given the privilege of
meditating and propounding the faith of the Christian Church
have made our theology often difficult and boring to our
congregations and those outside the fold. But Paul, the greatest
missionary the world has seen, reminds us in the text that it is
all simple and easy to understand. Two things are needed, that
is to confess and to believe. They are the two sides of the same
coin. You cannot have the one without the other. But to be
orderly I want to follow the pattern laid down in the text by
the Apostle. Firstly to confess. We have a Person to be proud
of. Jesus is Lord. The word Lord has a particular place in
Scripture. In Hebrew God was called Yahweh but when the
scriptures were translated into Greek, Kyrios namely Lord became
the title for the one who has created heaven and earth and
everything which is invisible and visible. The word Lord for God
is used through the New Testament.
I will give you two examples
from the life of John the Baptist, who prepared the way for the
Lord Jesus. In the desert he referred to the coming of the Lord
and quoted Isaiah and the familiar words of preparing the way of
the lord, namely the way of God. Luke, the historian, gives the
background for John the Baptist when he refers to his godly
parents who were righteous before God, careful in keeping to the
ways of the commandments and enjoying a clear conscience before
the Lord. So the word Lord had uniqueness, and the confession
meant at least four things to Paul:
a) He accepts the meaning given to the word by the
Greek translators of the Scriptures. Lord is equal to God.
b) This word Lord is more important than any other
word. Paul explains this further in his letter to the Church at
Phillipi. He says ‘because of that obedience, God lifted him
high and honoured him far beyond anyone or anything, ever, so
that all created beings in heaven and earth – even those long
ago dead and buried, will confess that this Jesus Christ is
Lord, to the glorious honour of God the Father’.
c) That we approach God in the name of Jesus Christ,
‘and that everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be
saved, whoever he is’.
d) The relationship between God and the Lord Jesus
is an intimate one. When Paul sent his greetings to the Church
at Rome he did so in ‘Grace and Peace’ from God our Father and
the Lord Jesus.
Therefore we have an obligation to give the same worship and
obedience to the Lord Jesus, that we give to the Father Luke
Johnson puts it succinctly:
By calling him Lord we imply that the worship and obedience we
pay to the risen Jesus is the worship and obedience we pay to
God.
This leads to the second proposition of Believing. ‘Those that
believe in the Lord Jesus will be saved’. But Paul speaks in
something different – to confess with our lips yes and then to
believe with our reason and our emotions (another word for the
heart) that God has raised Jesus from the dead. Paul wants us to
understand the meaning of the Resurrection as he wanted his
contemporaries in Rome to understand it. After all Paul was
surrounded by paganism as we are in the western world. He refers
in his first letter to the Church at Corinth (Chapter 8) of
sacrificing to idols, and he mentions the community in Corinth
with its many gods and lords. But then he adds that we have one
God who is the Father, fountain of everything and one Lord
Jesus, and that everything is for his sake, including us. He was
not a mythological figure but an historical character. He lived
and died on the cross when Pilate ruled Judea in the name of the
Emperor. But he conquered the grave. To Paul the belief that God
had risen Jesus from the dead is the basic belief and different
to all other religions. This is the belief that gives us as
Christians uniqueness. Indeed if Christ has not risen, our
preaching is of no value, and our faith has no impact. Jesus has
conquered and his disciples will live, they are more conquerors
through the love of the Lord. Though they have suffered
persecution and hunger and violence one cannot quench the love
of God that opens the gates of death.
Thirdly, the consequences of
our belief and the consequence of confessing and belief is
salvation. You will be saved, and will live for ever with God.
One commentator has said that there are three stages in
salvation for the individual, firstly to the Lord Jesus,
secondly to the Church and thirdly to the world. The first
response is to believe and confess the Lord Jesus, to be
inspired by his person, his challenge, his victory and his
presence. The second response is to experience the privilege and
responsibility of being a member of his Church on earth and to
share our concerns with our fellow believers. Thirdly we are not
saved for our own selves or for God’s Church on earth but to
exercise responsibility for the sorrows and needs of the world.
Salvation is incomplete if it does not give the Lord Jesus the
central place in our lives, and if we cannot involve ourselves
with our fellow Christians, and if we cannot be involved in
making the world a better place.
We can say with E J Burns:
New we rejoice to name him
King,
Jesus is Lord of all the earth,
The gospel message we proclaim,
We sing his glory, tell his worth.
AMEN
