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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: when is someone saved? |
Bible Note: John, You wrote "Do you not see that this mis-interpretation of the gospel is a return to salvation by works! What happened to the GOOD NEWS that we have been saved by GRACE not WORKS?" Please let me clarify that we CANNOT earn our salvation through works. To have Jesus Christ as our Savior we must acknowledge that we have sinned, that our sins have placed us under a sentence of death and that we need forgiveness through Christ's sacrifice. We must then accept Jesus as our personal Savior, recognizing that He died for us. Regrettably, many people stop right there and think that's all there is to it. They fail to recognize the crucial necessity of personal repentance. In recognition of Christ's sacrifice and a desire to change our lives to please God, each of us must forsake the sinful ways that brought the death penalty upon us and made Jesus' sacrifice necessary in the first place. We cannot continue to live as we lived before. We must undergo a life transforming change of heart and direction, a process the Bible calls repentance. Peter said, "Repent, and let every one of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins; and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit" (Acts 2:38). Remission means release, that is, release from guilt for your sins. God forgives our past sins and clears our record. After receiving God's Spirit, we are justified, that is we become righteous in God's sight. God counts none of our past sins against us (Romans 3:25). If we stumble and sin, we must ask God's forgiveness so that our state of forgiveness is not lost by our return to our old sinful way of life (1 John 2:1-6). When we are justified, God deals with us as though we had never sinned; the death penalty has no hold on us. However John made it plain that Christians at times will still stumble and sin. "If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness" (1 John 1:8-9). John wrote these words after several decades as a Christian and an apostle of Christ, and he included himself among those who still fell prey to sin. The difference in the life of a Christian is that he no longer practices unrighteousness as a way of life. "In this the children of God and the children of the devil are manifest: Whoever does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor is he who does not love his brother" (1 John 3:10). A Christian practices righteousness by obeying God's commandments. Yet our obedience to God's law does not save us. It is God who saves us through Christ. The law cannot save us, but our striving to obey it is a condition of our salvation. If we ultimately refuse to obey God, He will not ultimately save us. You quote the verse on predestination (Romans 8: 29), but this is a very controversial subject with many different ideas and interpretations. Let me tell you I have seen a number of ex-Christians on other forums as well as where I work, who will freely admit they no longer practice Christianity because they believe it is a lie or a fraud or simply a fairy tale. This seems to confirm what Jesus said in the parable of the "sower" in Luke Chapter 8. Much more can be said on this subject but I need to stop here for now. respectHim. |