If you declare with your mouth.......

Dear Friends,

“If you declare with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” Romans 10:9

In sharing the gospel these are the absolutely central and essential truths about Jesus: (1)He is Lord, (2) God raised Him from the dead. These two inseparable truths sum up what I must believe and confess if I want to inherit eternal life.

Is He Lord? That is, have I abdicated my “throne” to Him?  There was never a call from Jesus to come to Him to simply escape hell, but rather a call to turn away from blindness and deafness and be born again into the original kind of creature God intended.

And do I “believe” that God really did raise Him from the dead?  This is what changes a man’s life in regard to God in my understanding of the Bible. IF God really raised Jesus from the dead, then all that Jesus said and did is authenticated and validated—He IS the Son of God and the Christian faith is all that the New Testament says it is!  If I am unsure of the resurrection I will always be crippled spiritually, no matter how hard I “try” to believe.   But I have come to the conclusion that God did raise Jesus from the dead and that He is Lord——and that’s made all the difference in my life.

But I am required to also “confess” or “admit’ these truths.  The criminal on the cross did this, and so did the tax collectors and prostitutes——I am no better. I was redeemed not to brag about my own merits but in spite of them. He did all the work——my job is to tell the truth: He is Lord, He paid my debt on the cross and He rose from the dead.

There are other things Christians should do, and some Christian fellowships put more emphasis on those things: communion, baptism, giving,  being a member of a church, etc.   But the thief on the cross did not receive communion, baptism, never tithed, was not a church membership—— he simply BELIEVED and CONFESSED.

It’s really quit simple: But only God and I know what’s really going on in my heart when I talk about believing in Him,  and my confession either rings true or hollow when it is compared to the way I live and the good deeds that naturally spring from my soul.

“For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, so that whoever believes in Him  might not perish but have eternal life”.  It’s the greatest news of the new year.