Righteous And Salvation

[0:00] Open up your Bibles. If you have your own copy of the Scriptures, then open up to Romans chapter 10.

[0:19] ! You are, of course, welcome to use the pew Bibles that are in the chairs. In case you're using one of those, you just need to turn to page 946 and that will get you to Romans chapter 10.

[0:29] So Romans chapter 10, we're going to jump in in the middle of this chapter in verse 9 and only read down to verse 13 this morning. And so I would like to ask you guys to stand in honor of God's Word as we read together.

[0:43] The Apostle Paul writes in verse 9, Because if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.

[0:56] For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved. For the Scripture says, Everyone who believes in Him will not be put to shame.

[1:09] For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek. For the same Lord is Lord of all, bestowing His riches on all who call on Him. For everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.

[1:23] What a great truth that we get to think about this morning, Father. Help us to celebrate the great gift of salvation as we meditate on your Word.

[1:36] I ask this in Christ's name. Amen. You guys take a seat for a bit. We have been now on a journey through the book of Romans for quite some time.

[1:48] June will mark two years that we have been in Romans. Of course, we have taken a little bit of time out here and there for Christmas or for Easter and other such things. But for the most part, we have been steadily walking through this book for almost two years now.

[2:03] And we're just now here in chapter 10. And of course, chapter 10 is a part of this great section of Romans 9 through 11 that we've been looking at for two or three months now.

[2:14] This great section in which Paul turns his attention to answer a crucial question. A question that may not immediately occur to us, but it would have certainly occurred to Paul's Jewish kinsmen.

[2:25] It would have occurred to those Jewish believers to whom Paul wrote this letter along with the Gentile believers in Rome to whom he wrote this letter as they sat in fellowship with their Jewish brothers and sisters.

[2:37] That great question of if we are to trust God's great gospel promises now, promises such as we see in Romans chapter 8, if we are to trust those and believe in those now, we need to have confidence that the promises that he made beforehand to Israel, that those promises have not themselves failed.

[3:00] Because, of course, Paul finds himself in the situation that we have discussed quite a bit in which the vast majority of his Jewish kinsmen have not believed in Christ the Messiah.

[3:11] They have rejected him. Paul says they have stumbled over the stumbling stone, the stumbling stone being Jesus himself. They've stumbled over him. They've not believed in him.

[3:23] And so they are presently, the vast majority of the people of Israel, they are presently now without hope. They are presently now cut off, separated from Christ.

[3:34] They are in need, Paul says at the beginning of Romans 10, they are in need of salvation. He prays that they might be saved, telling us that they are, in fact, not saved.

[3:45] And if that is true, what are we to believe about all the great promises that God made to the people of Israel in the Old Covenant? You read through the Old Testament beginning with Abraham, the father of the people of Israel, and you see great and wonderful promises made to them, and yet here they sit, cut off from the Savior, without the hope of eternal life.

[4:10] And so Paul writes these three chapters to answer that very question. Can we trust God's promises if it appears on the surface level that his promises made to Israel in the past have not come true?

[4:23] And he gives really a two-part answer in Romans 9 and 10. He begins in Romans 9 with the first answer, which we covered in some detail, which is that the promises of God were never intended by God to be fulfilled in every single individual descendant of Abraham.

[4:39] He says that not all who are from Israel are Israel. Not all the children of Abraham are actually counted as the offspring of Abraham. Paul says that always throughout the Old Testament there is a remnant within Israel, so that not every single descendant of Abraham ever was actually a recipient of the saving promises of God.

[5:00] But there has always been a remnant. Paul calls that remnant the elect. And he says that there is an elect remnant even today. In fact, that elect group has now been expanded to include not only chosen people from out of the nation of Israel, but now God has called not only from the Jews, but also from among the Gentiles.

[5:23] And so his first answer to the question, what about the promises, is every single person among the people of Israel to whom God intended those promises to be fulfilled, they have been fulfilled for those people, for the elect.

[5:37] That's answer number one, bound up with the great mystery of the doctrine of predestination or election. But now he's giving us an answer from another perspective in chapter 10.

[5:49] If the first answer to why God's promise has not been fulfilled to every single Israelite is because not all of them are elect, the second answer is because not all of them have received the free righteousness that God offers in the gospel through Jesus Christ.

[6:06] Answer number one, from the perspective of God's sovereign plan over history and even in the salvation of individuals, one that confounds us at times. But answer number two, one that is actually much simpler and easier for us to understand.

[6:19] Answer number two, because they have not trusted in the Messiah himself. In fact, they have not trusted in him to provide the very righteousness that they are trying so hard to establish and achieve for themselves.

[6:40] So now here we are in the midst of chapter 10 in which Paul is defending that very assertion. Paul has said very clearly that they have rejected the word of God.

[6:53] They have actually rejected the promises of God and that's why the promises of God have not been fulfilled for them. And he's gone so far as to say that these promises are not something new and different from the promises that God made to Israel under the old covenant.

[7:10] He says these promises are the fulfillment of all those promises. In fact, he says in chapter 10 verse 4 that Christ is the end or the goal of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes.

[7:22] In other words, the promises made to Israel were always pointing them to Christ. It was always pointing them away from themselves, away from trying to earn their own righteousness, looking ahead to one who would come and provide righteousness for them.

[7:40] That's what the scriptures were telling the people of God all along. Look to another. He is coming. And now Paul says he has in fact come. Look to him. Trust in him.

[7:53] And so we saw last week that Paul's not just going to make that kind of an assertion. He's not just going to say that the law was always pointing to Christ and not prove it. We saw last week that he actually cites from the law, that is from what we call the Pentateuch or the Torah, the first five books of our Bibles, Genesis through Deuteronomy.

[8:13] He actually cites from the law to prove that the law was always pointing to Christ. That in fact what the law was giving testimony to was the work of Christ on behalf of his people.

[8:27] Promising it, looking ahead to it, directing their hope, not to themselves, but to the coming Messiah, who is now the Messiah who has already come and done all that is necessary.

[8:43] In fact, just look up at the passage that we considered last week for a moment. He quotes from Leviticus 1 in verse 5, and then he quotes from Deuteronomy in verses 6 and 7 and 8.

[8:57] And then in verse 8 though he says something that he's going to key off of for the rest of this paragraph that we're looking at this morning. In verse 8 he speaks of the word that is near you, in your mouth and in your heart.

[9:11] And then he clarifies, that is, the word that I'm talking about, the one that I'm saying is near you, that is the word of faith which we proclaim.

[9:24] And so now the question becomes, what precisely is this word of faith that Paul has been proclaiming all over the world? Well, in a sense we already know that answer because the book of Romans is written really to answer that question.

[9:39] The book of Romans is written to tell us what this word is, what this good news, this gospel is. So we've actually been soaked in this good news, this word of faith now for two years as we've been walking through Romans.

[9:52] So I could say, I could just stop my sermon right here and say, hey God, by the way guys, rest this paragraph kind of summarizes everything we've been saying. We're good to go. Listen to the rest of the sermons you need to online.

[10:03] We'll pack up and go home. But I'm not going to do that because we need to cover 9 through 13 in Romans chapter 10. And what's great about verses 9 through 13 is they're one of those quick, short summaries of the gospel that Paul will periodically provide for us throughout his letters.

[10:21] Every once in a while, Paul will, in the midst of a more complicated argument, he will just give us a real simple, short, quick, by the way, here's what I'm talking about. Here's the gospel.

[10:31] So I'll give you a good example. He does that in 1 Corinthians 15. You don't have to turn there, okay? He does that in 1 Corinthians chapter 15 where he's actually entering into a discussion about the resurrection of Jesus.

[10:42] And he's about to launch into a full-scale defense of the physical resurrection of Jesus. And he gets into some more complicated things. But before he does, he says to the Corinthians, by the way, when I was there in Corinth, I declared to you what was of first importance, that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day.

[11:08] So he gives, in the midst of a lot of complicated things in 1 Corinthians, he just gives this quick gospel summary, and then he moves on to talk about the resurrection. Well, I kind of feel like that's what he's doing here in the middle of Romans chapter 10.

[11:22] Because let's be honest, all right? Some of Romans 9 and 10, it's a little hard, right? It's a little hard. I'm slugging my way in my office through these chapters, and I know more is coming in chapter 11 of tough stuff, and I'm only feeling encouraged because Peter himself said that there are some people who twist what Paul says, just like the rest of the scriptures.

[11:47] And then he says, you know, there are some things in Paul's letters that are hard to understand. I feel encouraged that if Peter finds some of the things that Paul says to be difficult to understand, that it's okay if occasionally you and I have to do a little bit of wrestling with some of the things that Paul says because they're hard to understand.

[12:07] And I feel like last week, as we were looking at how Paul uses Deuteronomy 9 and Deuteronomy 30, that was a little tough. That was a little bit difficult. And some of you might have been scratching your heads and thinking, I'm not sure exactly where he's headed with all of this stuff from Deuteronomy and Leviticus.

[12:20] It was a little bit tough. But I'm thankful that in the midst of some of those more difficult conversations that Paul is having with us, that he gives these quick, short, simple gospel summaries.

[12:32] Look at verse 9. Now, in the English Standard Version, which I really enjoy preaching from, it begins verse 9 with the word, because. As if verse 9 is sort of giving the cause of what he said in verse 8.

[12:51] But I'm not sure that that's quite right. Because this particular word here can also be, and it's often translated as that. Or as in, that is. As in, now I'm going to offer you an explanation of something I just said.

[13:04] So that what I really think is happening in verses 9 through 13 is Paul has mentioned the word of faith that we proclaim, that, and now he's going to tell us what the word of faith is, that if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord, and there he goes through verse 13, telling us exactly what is the word of faith, what's the content of it.

[13:26] Yes, we could go back and read chapters 1, 2, 3, and 4 of Romans and get a detailed explanation of this gospel message, this word of faith that he's been proclaiming. But now he's going to give us a real short one.

[13:37] And so this morning, he keeps it simple, so I'm going to try my best to keep it simple. We're just going to answer three basic questions about this word of faith, this gospel message that he's going to describe for us in these verses.

[13:51] The first question is, we're just going to ask the what question. What exactly is it? What is he aiming towards here? What is the goal here? And then secondly, we're going to ask, how does Paul say we get there?

[14:04] How does this happen? And then thirdly, who? For whom are these things true? For whom does this happen? So let's talk about the what, because it's hard to even word the rest of the questions without answering the what question.

[14:18] The what here is this idea of salvation. Notice he mentions it more than once. He says in verse 9, you will be saved.

[14:29] He speaks of those in verse 10, a person who is saved. And then, of course, he mentions in verse 13, those who will be saved.

[14:41] So the what here is salvation. That's what he's discussing. That's what he's talking about. What does it mean to be saved? How does a person get saved?

[14:51] Who belongs to the group of people who are, in fact, saved? But I love the way that he words things in verse 10. Because verse 10 is divided into two even parts.

[15:04] You can look at it. You can see it pretty clearly there. Verse 10 is divided into two parts. The first part says, with the heart one believes and is justified. That's part one.

[15:15] With the heart one believes and is justified. Part two, with the mouth one confesses and is saved. So first he describes salvation using the language of the heart and believing and righteousness.

[15:30] Literally, he says that those who believe, believe unto righteousness. Those who confess, confess unto salvation. So he's back to something that we keep seeing over and over.

[15:43] He's back to this righteousness language, this justification language. He's back to that. And he's using it to express the same thing that he expresses with the word salvation.

[15:55] Salvation. Those two terms are used almost interchangeably by Paul here. Now, of course, they don't have exactly the same meaning. The word salvation has a little bit broader meaning than the word justification or the righteousness that Paul is talking about here.

[16:12] Salvation includes not just the beginning of our salvation, but carries it all the way to the end. And so salvation is a broad term, whereas the righteousness language, the justification language, which is just talking about God, the moment we trust in Christ, declaring us to be righteous.

[16:30] Saying to those who trust in Jesus, I credit, I count as yours, the righteousness of my own son. So Paul says in 2 Corinthians that God made Christ to be sin so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

[16:51] The point being that there's this great exchange that takes place when we trust, when we put our faith in Jesus. That Christ, in a sense, becomes sin. He takes on our sin and endures the wrath of God in our place.

[17:07] And at the same time, we get his righteousness counted as ours and we get his reward. Eternal life. So there's this great exchange.

[17:19] And when Paul uses the righteousness language or the justification language, that's the exchange that he's talking about here. So salvation here in this context is narrowed down a little bit from the way in which it's often used and it's used almost interchangeably to mean the same thing as to be justified or to be counted as righteous by God.

[17:43] So the what question here, what is the gospel about? What is it proclaiming? It is proclaiming salvation and righteousness.

[17:54] Salvation from the penalty of our sins and righteousness credited to our account because Jesus has earned all of it for us and in our place.

[18:07] That's the what. The gospel message is not complicated. The gospel message is you need to be saved because you're a sinner and God's wrath goes towards sinners.

[18:19] And yet, Christ has lived a perfect life and endured the penalty of sin on behalf of all those who trust in Him. It's salvation and righteousness.

[18:32] That's the what of the word of faith that Paul is proclaiming. How precisely does salvation and righteousness, though, come to a person?

[18:44] How does that happen? Well, it's throughout the passage. You really can't. It's difficult to miss it. But Paul, in the same way that he uses different terminology to describe salvation, he uses the righteousness language and the salvation language, he's also going to use different terminology here to describe the how of salvation.

[19:07] Start back up in verse 9 again and notice what he says. If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord... So that's the first thing. Again, we have two parallel statements. If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord...

[19:20] There's the first part. ...and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead. So we have confession and we have believing. We have open confession of what we believe and we have heartfelt inward trust in what we believe.

[19:36] Confession and faith. And then he says the same thing in verse 10. For with the heart one believes and is justified. And with the mouth one confesses and is saved.

[19:49] But by the time we get to verse 11, that's all condensed down to just believing. Verse 11, he says, everyone who believes in Him will not be put to shame. Verse 13, it's the language of calling.

[20:00] Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. So we have to ask the question, does Paul have in mind two things that we're supposed to do or one thing that we're supposed to do to be saved?

[20:13] Why does he speak this way? Why does he speak of confession and faith? Especially in light of the fact that throughout this gospel he has been insistent on the point that it is by faith alone apart from works of the law, apart from any external thing that we might do.

[20:33] It's faith alone that results in justification. Why now suddenly throw in something called confession? What's happening here? Well, I think that he's doing the same thing that he does with the righteousness and salvation language.

[20:47] That is, he's using two terms to describe the same thing but from a slightly different perspective. So that he's describing when he speaks of believing from the heart or trusting from the heart, he's talking about the inward reality of the faith that flows from our hearts and grasps Christ and clings to him.

[21:14] That's the inward reality. That's the heart doing what the heart does when God causes us to be born again. That's us trusting, believing in Christ.

[21:26] But the natural result of the heart connecting to Christ and clinging to Christ is that the mouth automatically confesses. So they're not really two separate events.

[21:38] It's not two things happening. It's one thing described using two different forms of terminology. Because I can't imagine anyone actually believing and trusting in Christ with all their heart, taking Him to be their treasure, taking Him to be their Savior, their Lord, and everything that that entails, and yet, it never passing through their lips.

[22:05] It's an impossibility. It's not something that Paul even fathoms. He doesn't take the time to explain all of this because it doesn't enter the Apostle Paul's mind that it's even possible to believe in your heart without confessing with your mouth.

[22:21] They are one and the same. There is the inward trust and the outward expression of that trust. They're not two things. They're one thing happening simultaneously.

[22:35] That's the first part of the answer to the how question. How do we get this righteousness? How do we get access to salvation? Answer number one, you believe. That is, you believe with your whole heart in such a way that confession flows from your mouth.

[22:51] That's the first part. But the second part is, in what do we believe? In what or in whom are we trusting? To where is our faith directed? And he's very clear on that as well.

[23:05] Notice what he says. He highlights some very specific things here. He says that you must confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord. That's one thing.

[23:16] You must believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead. So he mentions two specific things here. Confessing that Jesus is Lord.

[23:26] So that's a part of what? What we have to believe. That's the content of our faith. Faith and also believing that God raised him from the dead.

[23:38] Now you might say, is that it? I mean, is that all? Say Jesus is Lord and believe that the resurrection actually happened? Well, no. Of course, that's not all. I said this is a very simple summary.

[23:48] He's not packing everything that he could say into here. And I say that with confidence because he's already indicated in chapter 10 something else that you need to know besides the lordship and deity of Christ and besides the resurrection of Christ.

[24:04] Look up just a few verses in chapter 10. Verse 2 I bear them witness the people of Israel that they have a zeal for God but not according to knowledge for being ignorant of the righteousness of God and seeking to establish their own they did not submit to God's righteousness.

[24:21] There's something else. There's something else that you have to know. There's more information about the object of your faith. Now we have this idea of you've got to trust in God's righteousness.

[24:34] So Jesus is Lord He's raised from the dead and you're trusting in His righteousness. There's more. You could go back to Romans chapter 1 for instance where Paul is telling us the content of the gospel again and he speaks of Christ as being descended from David according to the flesh declared to be the Son of God in power through the resurrection of the dead.

[24:55] So there's more than just these simple little things of say Jesus is Lord believe in the resurrection. There's more there but these things are a good clear summary and they're a good clear summary if you understand all that is implied in those phrases and in those confessions.

[25:16] What does it mean to say Jesus is Lord? What does it mean to make that confession? It's not merely outward and outward saying.

[25:28] It cannot be. It's connected. It's parallel with believing in the heart. It flows from the heart. It's more than just an outward confession. This is a full heart involvement.

[25:43] This is a full commitment to the truth that Jesus is Lord. Lord. But then of course there's a lot packed just into the word Lord.

[25:54] It's a very common word in Greek. It's just the word kurios. It means Lord or Master. It's used over and over throughout the New Testament. It is actually the most common title for Jesus that you find throughout the New Testament.

[26:07] But what does it mean here when Paul says that we should confess Jesus as Lord? It may mean no more than recognizing that Jesus is your Master and your Sovereign.

[26:18] It may mean no more than recognizing that because of course one's Lord is in fact their Master. So it may mean no more than committing to Christ who is your Master.

[26:30] But I think it means more than that. I don't think it means less than that but I think that more is intended and is communicated here by Paul. And I say that because this word Lord is frequently used in place of the name Yahweh when the Old Testament is translated into Greek.

[26:50] See the apostles and especially the Gentile believers to whom they preached they had copies of portions of the Old Testament for them to read. But of course a person living in Rome couldn't read Hebrew but they could read Greek and so there was a well known translation of the Old Testament in the possession of many Greek speaking Jews and that came to be in the possession of many Christians called the Septuagint.

[27:14] It was a Greek translation of the Old Testament. And what's interesting to note is when you read that very ancient Greek translation of the Old Testament what you will find consistently over and over is that whenever you find the word the name Yahweh or Jehovah God's personal covenant name by which He makes Himself known to His people in the Old Testament when you run across that in the Greek translation of the Old Testament it's translated with the word kurios the word Lord Lord now that may mean nothing here that may have no connection with saying Jesus is Lord except for one thing let your eyes glance down here to verse 13 where Paul quotes from the book of Joel chapter 2 verse 32 for everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved that's a direct quotation from Joel chapter 2 verse 32 and guess which word we find in Hebrew in the Old Testament for Lord Yahweh so here in this very context in which Paul says you must confess that Jesus is Lord he goes on to quote from the Old Testament where we find the word Lord and he uses the word kurios the same word that we have to confess about Jesus and yet it's clear that that is a reference to God Himself so to confess that Jesus is Lord is more than mere words it contains with it an acknowledgement of the deity of Jesus of the uniqueness of Jesus and of His sovereign rights as the creator of all things and the one who actually made all of these promises of His sovereign rights over your life so I said I don't think it means less than

[28:59] Christ is your master and Lord because for Christ to be identified as God Himself automatically means that He is your Lord and He is your sovereign and He rules over you so there is a lot packed into this confession when we trust in Christ with our hearts we are trusting in more than just a statement about Jesus being Lord we are trusting in who He actually really is that's significant for us because boy there are so many groups around us in the world and even in our own community that would outwardly make the confession Jesus is Lord but then would deny the truth that that confession attests to they would deny that Jesus is Himself God in the flesh they would deny that Jesus is Himself the second person of the Trinity they would deny these great truths all contained within that confession all the while outwardly making the confession it's not enough it's not enough for somebody to just say words they must be words that flow from a heart that has taken as its treasure the true Lord Jesus and not some pretender that we've invented in our own minds so how how do we have access to the great salvation and the free gift of righteousness we have access by believing in by trusting in all the scripture reveals about who

[30:40] Jesus is and what He has done on our behalf who is He? He is the sovereign Lord of the universe because He is Yahweh the one who made all things that's who He is that's what we confess and that's what we believe what has He done?

[30:58] He has been risen from the dead which implies as we saw in 1 Corinthians 15 that He also died for our sins you have access to righteousness by believing trusting with your whole heart confessing outwardly what flows naturally from that heartfelt trust you have access to righteousness by faith in all that Christ has done and all of who He is that's how we have access to the free gift of righteousness and salvation from our sins but who gets to participate in that?

[31:38] Who gets to be a part of salvation? That's a crucial question especially coming off of Romans chapter 9 where we dealt with all that business about election because it's tempting sometimes for us to say when we encounter the doctrine of election well if that's true then it doesn't really matter what we do it doesn't really matter God's already chosen some people so never mind it doesn't matter or it's tempting to think I mean I don't know if I'm one of the elect I don't know I guess I'll find out someday it's tempting to think in that kind of way but that's not how the apostle Paul thinks that's not how his mind works and more importantly that's not what the scriptures say the Bible is very clear here yes the doctrine of election is real but right alongside it we must hold up this simultaneous truth that everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord will be saved that all those who believe in him will not be put to shame this is amazingly broad language that we find the apostle Paul using four different times in these verses he uses a word that's translated in two ways in the ESV it's translated as everyone or all but it's the same word in the original language look and I'll show it to you you can see it very clearly verse 11 the scripture says everyone who believes in him will not be put to shame verse 12 the same Lord is Lord of all that's the same word as everyone bestowing his riches on all who call upon him and then finally here it is again for the fourth time for everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord will be saved this is incredibly broad language and what it's telling us is that every single person who actually believes who actually believes from the heart and calls upon the Lord all of them will in fact be saved they will all receive the free gift of righteousness this is good news because it means we never have to guess it means we never have to sit around and wonder am I saved or do you believe in the way that Paul describes here are you a part of the everyone and the all you never have to wonder what needs to happen for my brother or my sister or my child to be saved what do they need to do what do I need to tell them you never have to wonder it's a simple message believe in him because everyone who believes and everyone who calls will be saved and it's not insignificant that in one of these instances in which we find the word everyone the word all it's the second time that Paul has quoted this verse just in the just on this one page in your

[34:32] Bible or at least it's all on the same page in mine Paul has quoted from Isaiah chapter 28 verse 16 already at the very end of chapter 9 and now he quotes it again here but he makes a slight change look up to chapter 9 the last verse verse 33 where he quotes it more extensively he says behold I am laying in Zion a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense and here's what he quotes in chapter 10 and whoever believes in him will not be put to shame whoever believes in him will not be put to shame that's a pretty good rendering of the Hebrew original matches with the Greek translation with the Septuagint but then when Paul comes down here in verse 11 to quote it again he changes the whoever to everyone he makes a change which means that Paul wants us to notice this he wants this to stick out for us he doesn't just say this in passing he wants us to notice it he wants us to sit up and say wait a minute before you just said whoever believes you've switched it to everyone you're trying to emphasize something here and he is he's trying to emphasize the certainty that all all all who call upon the

[35:48] Lord all who trust will indeed be safe provided that they are trusting in the true Lord Jesus provided they are trusting in all that he has done in dying and rising again rather than in what they have done this is a pretty simple message believe in Christ who he is and what he has done on your behalf and every person who does that will be saved and will receive the free gift of righteousness let's pray for to to