Salvation and Scripture

"Moreover, brethren, I declare unto you the gospel which I preached unto you, which also ye have received, and wherein ye stand; By which also ye are saved, if ye keep in memory what I preached unto you, unless ye have believed in vain. For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures; And that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures: And that he was seen of Cephas, then of the twelve: After that, he was seen of above five hundred brethren at once; of whom the greater part remain unto this present, but some are fallen asleep" (I Cor. 15:1-6). I would like to suggest to you to read this passage of scripture again, very slowly and thoughtfully. There is more there than what it appears with a quick skim-over. Note particularly that the apostle is writing to 'brethren,' meaning those who are already born again. After that read the following passage the same way: "But what saith it? The word is nigh thee, even in thy mouth, and in thy heart: that is, the word of faith, which we preach; That if thou 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" (Rom. 10:8,9). Note again in this passage that the same apostle Paul was writing once again to those who were already in Christ, in whose hearts and mouths the word of God already dwelt. And once again that 'word' was and is that Jesus died for our sins and rose again on the third day, and that he alone is the Lord. So there are two points I would like to make by these passages. One is that we need to be fully established in both the faith and the love of these basic Gospel truths. There is coming a great spiritual warfare in the earth where Satan is going to pull out all the stops to try to corrupt these fundamental elements of the Gospel, and if we are not fully anchored in these things then we will be moved. In fact the same thing was going on among the early believers, and that is exactly why these passages of scripture were written. The 'antichrists' of the apostles' days were hard at work trying to change the Gospel of Jesus Christ into something other than what it simply is; and change Jesus Christ into someone else other than who he plainly is (I Jn. 2:18,19,22,23; II Thess. 2:7: II Pet. 2:1; Jude 1:4).

The other point I want to make is that Romans 10:9 is no more a call to repentance for sinners to become born again, any more than 1 Corinthians 15:1-6 is. Both passages say the same thing, and both passages were written to born again believers as an exhortation for them to maintain the faith that they had begun in. As stated previously, these exhortations were necessary because apostate teachers were "denying the Lord that [had] bought them," and thereby bringing "damnable heresies" to corrupt the faith of the early believers (II Pet. 2:1). In both passages we see that these basic truths of the Gospel must be retained in our faith in order for us to be saved in the end. To get people who are unregenerate to repeat Romans 10:9 as a supposed means of conversion to Christ is out of order and ineffective. To call this process 'salvation' is unthinkable and grossly heretical, seeing that salvation is at "the END of our faith," if indeed we have "endured [faithfully] unto the end" (I Pet. 1:9; Mat. 24:12,13). Sinners must simply confess their sins to Jesus, believe that he died for their sins and rose again, and trust in him with all their heart to take their sins away. If and when that repentance and faith is genuine and complete, Jesus will baptize them with the holy Ghost even as he said he would (Jn. 7:37-39; Acts 1:4,5; Jn. 4:14; I Cor. 12:13). When this experience of the remission of sins takes place in one's life, he or she will also manifest the heavenly witness of "speaking with other tongues as the Spirit gives the utterance," even as it was in the beginning (Acts 2:4). After that the born again believer can "confess [truly] that Jesus is the Lord," because the scripture says that "no man can say that Jesus is the Lord but by the holy Ghost" (I Cor. 12:3). Then we are in the number who need to be reminded to keep our first faith and our first confession active in our lives, and spirits, and mouths. Then we are those to whom Romans 10:9 was written, as well as 1 Corinthians 15:1-6. Let me add that if you want to more fully understand this or any other article written on this page, be sure to go through the scripture references in parentheses and read them along with the article. Amen.