Silas
Beloved of All
Your heart for people who need salvation is a good and biblical burden, and the Scripture you shared is the very center of the gospel. Romans 10 says 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, for with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved.
That confession is more than words. To say Jesus is Lord is to submit your life to Him as Lord today, to let Him lead and rule. If someone says those words but continues to walk after the flesh in disobedience to God's Word, that confession is empty. The faith that saves is a faith of the heart, and that kind of faith transforms the life.
We are saved by grace through faith, and that faith itself is a gift of God, not something we earn. No one can be made right with God by keeping the law or by good works. If righteousness came by works, God would owe us salvation as a debt, but salvation is not a debt. It is a gift. Even as Abraham believed God and God counted his faith as righteousness, so God counts our faith in Jesus, who was delivered for our offenses and raised for our justification, as righteousness. We are justified by faith apart from the works of the law.
Yet the faith that truly justifies is never alone. Works cannot produce faith and cannot replace faith, but true faith will produce works. Faith must come first, and that faith then moves us to live for God. This is what James and Paul together teach. Paul shows we are justified by faith, and James shows the kind of faith that justifies is the kind that results in a changed life. John the Baptist said the same in another way when he called people to bear fruit that shows repentance. If we say we have repented and believed, there will be evidence in how we live, not as the price of salvation but as the proof of it. We do not look to those works to save us, we look to them as the sign that God has already saved us and is at work in us by His Spirit, whom we also receive by faith and not by earning Him.
Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. It is not blind. It actually sees more, because it takes God at His Word and holds firmly to His promises even when we have not yet seen their fulfillment. That is why faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God. Miracles alone do not create saving faith, the Word does. Your encouragement to read and study Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, beginning with John, is wise. As people hear the Word about who Jesus is and what He has done, the Spirit works to create that heart belief that leads to confession and to a new life of following and obeying Him.
So continue to point people to confess Jesus as Lord from the heart, to believe God raised Him from the dead, to turn from sin and to follow Him. Pray that God will give them genuine faith that trusts in Christ alone and then shows itself in obedience and in the fruit of a changed life, holding on to the promises of God as strangers and pilgrims here who are seeking a better country with Him.
That confession is more than words. To say Jesus is Lord is to submit your life to Him as Lord today, to let Him lead and rule. If someone says those words but continues to walk after the flesh in disobedience to God's Word, that confession is empty. The faith that saves is a faith of the heart, and that kind of faith transforms the life.
We are saved by grace through faith, and that faith itself is a gift of God, not something we earn. No one can be made right with God by keeping the law or by good works. If righteousness came by works, God would owe us salvation as a debt, but salvation is not a debt. It is a gift. Even as Abraham believed God and God counted his faith as righteousness, so God counts our faith in Jesus, who was delivered for our offenses and raised for our justification, as righteousness. We are justified by faith apart from the works of the law.
Yet the faith that truly justifies is never alone. Works cannot produce faith and cannot replace faith, but true faith will produce works. Faith must come first, and that faith then moves us to live for God. This is what James and Paul together teach. Paul shows we are justified by faith, and James shows the kind of faith that justifies is the kind that results in a changed life. John the Baptist said the same in another way when he called people to bear fruit that shows repentance. If we say we have repented and believed, there will be evidence in how we live, not as the price of salvation but as the proof of it. We do not look to those works to save us, we look to them as the sign that God has already saved us and is at work in us by His Spirit, whom we also receive by faith and not by earning Him.
Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. It is not blind. It actually sees more, because it takes God at His Word and holds firmly to His promises even when we have not yet seen their fulfillment. That is why faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God. Miracles alone do not create saving faith, the Word does. Your encouragement to read and study Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, beginning with John, is wise. As people hear the Word about who Jesus is and what He has done, the Spirit works to create that heart belief that leads to confession and to a new life of following and obeying Him.
So continue to point people to confess Jesus as Lord from the heart, to believe God raised Him from the dead, to turn from sin and to follow Him. Pray that God will give them genuine faith that trusts in Christ alone and then shows itself in obedience and in the fruit of a changed life, holding on to the promises of God as strangers and pilgrims here who are seeking a better country with Him.
