My beliefs and my words do not change Who the Lord is or What God does.
Romans 10:9-10 says, “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.” Paul writes from Rome, first to the Jews and then to the gentiles. He is reminding the Jews how many of them lived a believing life but not a confessing life.
At the time he wrote this, Paul was saying that many Jews believed that Jesus was Lord but just as many would not confess that God had raised Jesus from the dead. They valued what man might think of them more than the value they placed on being saved. What man thought of them bothered them more than what God thought of them.
But the Word in Romans is not limited to the Jews. It is also written for the gentiles (non-Jewish people or people who are not of Jewish religion). I imagine many of us reading my messages are gentiles – believers Yes – but gentiles, nevertheless. Paul has a warning for us. Pay attention to how the Jewish leaders lived and you live differently. While the salvation of the Lord is a free gift to us, having the gift it will cost you something just like it cost the Jewish leaders of old. If you have the gift of salvation, it will cost you to give up on what you want to think of yourself and on what you want man to think of you.
As I have watched my life, it came to me to look at Romans 10:9 this way. I will confess to God and to others that Jesus Christ is exactly Who He says He is in the scripture. And I will believe in my heart that God raised Him from the dead. Note that I am not saying I will live a life free of sin. Sin is sin. It means we come short of living the way the Lord us to live. But sin does not change who the Lord is or what God has done and will do for us.
What I now know is that Romans 10:9 says to me that while I am a sinful man, I should never confess something about the Lord that is not of the scripture. And I should never believe God has done or will do anything different from what He has said. I should value the Lord more than I value myself or man.
You see, my desire to be valued by man could cause me to confess what I do not believe or to believe what I do not live out. My desires and my beliefs do not change Who the Lord is or Who God is. Who God is and what Jesus did for us is not wrong, but I could be. I want to live a confessing and believing life. And I want that life to be before God alone. Man can catch a glimpse of my life, but my life is not lived for the glory of what man says or for the glory of what I want.
So, confessing with my mouth that the Lord Jesus is the Christ means to me that I know He is more than the Son of God. He is the Son of God and everything else scripture says. I’m not just intellectually saying I believe He is Christ. I am saying He is all that He says He is. I am saying, I will try to live life based on all that He says He is.
Believing in my heart that God raised Jesus from the dead means to me that I know God raised Jesus from death just as He said He would. Jesus did not stay dead. He is alive just as He was before He came to earth. And because He is alive, we have salvation through our belief in Him.
Believing in my heart means that I believe everything God said about Jesus. Confessing with my mouth means that I speak everything Jesus and God has told me about Jesus. I want to live the way the Jewish leaders of old could not live. I want to use their poor example to move me to a place where I value living before God and Jesus more than I value living before man.
Check your own life. Ask yourself if you are living a confessing and believing life. Ask yourself if your praise of the Lord is meant to mean more than for the Lord than for man. Ask yourself if your belief is more to set you apart among man than to establish a place for you with the Lord. Ask yourself if you value what others think of you as much as you value what you hope the Lord will think of you. Ask yourself if your presence means more about how you look and feel before man and others or how you believe the Lord and God would look upon and feel about you carry yourself.
Confessing and believing. What life are we living? Learn to live a confessing and believing life. You will have something of value that man cannot understand.
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