Romans 10:10 For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you confess and are saved.

This whole section is of enormous importance and is justly famous. However, current Evangelical interpretation of it tends to leave righteous living out entirely, in practice though not in official dogma. Church members tend to live no differently than their non-religious neighbors, and that is a tragedy. That’s what yesterday’s reading was all about. That said, we cannot earn or work our way into heaven; it’s all by grace through faith. At its heart the Gospel is astoundingly simple: recognize that you need salvation but can’t achieve it, that God has provided it through His Son’s death on the cross, and then receive it in total surrender of yourself. It’s that last part that we trip up on so badly. We tend to reduce everything to a formula, whether it’s spoken words like the Evangelicals or following a system like the Catholics, either Roman or Orthodox. There are reflections of truth in both, but neither paints the whole picture. We forget that a verbal confession of “Jesus is Lord” could get you accused of treason in the Roman empire, because they insisted that Caesar was lord. Such a confession could only come from genuine faith; intellectual assent alone doesn’t cut it. In America today we are getting back to a situation where a simple statement of fact can get you into a lot of trouble, as witness the boy who was expelled from school for a shirt that said, “There are only two genders.” Likewise, the furor over the statements of the newly elected Speaker of the House is deafening, when all he has said has been simple Biblical facts. “Jesus is Lord” is again becoming “hate speech!” Maybe the current situation is God’s grace to teach us that our confession of faith really means something.

I occasionally generate some violent responses with my blog, but I don’t “approve” such comments for others to be exposed to them. I have even had Christians essentially accuse me of being hateful for standing firm on issues of sex and morality. However, I have never been in danger of physical martyrdom because of my faith. At the same time, I know that there were more martyrs in the 20^th Century than in the previous 19 combined, and the pace has continued to pick up in the 21^st. I am to support my brothers and sisters in dangerous parts of the world in prayer, and I am to prepare the believers under my care to stand firm in their faith regardless what happens in society around us. I can’t help but feel we are in the Last Days, and I want us all to be among those who stand firm to the end.

Father, thank You for this reminder. Thank You for Your truly amazing grace. Help me live out the faith You have given me on every level, so that Your salvation may be manifested in and through me, drawing others to faith and giving You the glory that only You deserve. Thank You. Hallelujah!