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NASB | Romans 10:9 that if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved; |
AMPLIFIED 2015 | Romans 10:9 because if you acknowledge and confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord [recognizing His power, authority, and majesty as God], and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. |
Subject: Alter Calls? |
Bible Note: Wow...Calvinism from a Catholic! Now I HAVE seen everything! :) Lisa, we are simply influenced in our society by secular psychology, which says that the ultimate goal for our lives is freedom from pain and having a high self-esteem with everything in your life "going right." That is the spirit of our age, and like every spirit of every age, it tries to make biblical Christianity conform to its image. The fact is that people try to cast Jesus as someone who "makes all our troubles go away." While it is true that faith in him makes our ULTIMATE trouble go away, people generally do not recognize sinfulness as a problem in the first place. The fact is that conversion to Christianity can lead to all sorts of "problems": the world hating you (Matthew 10:22); persecution and imprisonment (2 Timothy 3:12, Philippians 1:29, Hebrews 13:3 and a whole host of other verses and examples of the apostles); the possibility of your spouse leaving you (1 Corinthians 7:15); and even death (Acts 7). Being a disciple of Christ is not the painless, trouble-free life that so many preachers proclaim from the pulpits today. Think about it: they are doing no less than LYING to their congregations when they promise them that Jesus will undoubtedly save their marriages, make them well-adjusted and more liked by others. Jesus came that we might have a spiritually abundant life (John 10:10), but that abundant life is antithesis to the Christ-hating world. We must be very careful to preach the whole counsel of God to the unbeliever, rather than selling them a false bill of goods falsely labelled "Christianity." Christianity is truth, Christianity is joyful (but not because of material blessings -- Philippians 4:11-13), Christianity is forgiveness of sins and eternal life with God. Christianity ios not a fix-all for our earthly concerns, and those who come forward selfishly expecting it to be so are often disappointed when Christianity doesn't "work" the way they think it should have. --Joe! |