Here’s my fairly literal
translation of these verses:
5For Moses is writing [regarding] the righteousness which [is] out of law, that the man doing these things will live in them, 6but the righteousness out of faith says thus, “Do not say in your heart, ‘Who will go up to heaven, that is to bring Christ down?’ 7or ‘Who will go down into the Abyss, that is, to bring Christ up out of dead ones?’” 8But what does it say? “The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart,” which is the word of faith which we are preaching, 9that, if you confess with your mouth [the] Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead ones, you will be saved. 10for with the heart one believes into righteousness and one confesses into salvation, 11for the Scripture says “Everyone believing upon Him will not be ashamed.”
This is another passage that could be written in gold letters. This is it. To understand and embrace these seven verses is the difference between life and death, between heaven and hell.
What do we find? In v.5, Paul is referring to Moses’ words in Lev. 18:5. “The man who does these things will live by them.” At first glance (and to an unregenerate mind), it might seem as if Moses is speaking like a legalist – “Do these things and live.” That understanding would be true except for one HUGE problem: We can’t. Anyone who took that meaning and tried to live it would (should) very quickly have realized something was seriously wrong, that no matter how hard they tried, they constantly failed. That, of course, should have pointed them to Christ – which was the whole point of the Mosaic Law to begin with.
Whether we’re talking about our eternal salvation or our daily lives, the Law’s model, “Do this and live,” doesn’t work. Every time we climb up one rung on that ladder, it would seem God moves up three. However, the whole Bible, the book of Romans, and the passage before us would tell us there’s a different way. As we read in 3:19, all legalism gets us is “…every mouth stopped and the whole world standing guilty before God.” Verse 21, however, says, “But now a righteousness from God apart law has been made known…” Rather than this “righteousness out of law,” there is a “Righteousness out of faith.”
Once again, to understand these things is the difference between life and death, between heaven and hell! I suppose, if a person actually could realize that their natural legalism won’t work, but that God has a different way, we would probably think it must be time to “roll up our sleeves” and embark on some new assignment that God is about to give us. We’d probably think, “This must be something really complex and difficult – but, no matter what, I must comply.” That is actually Paul’s point in alluding to Moses’ words from Deut. 30:11-14 – the “Who will ascend into heaven…who will descend into the Abyss…?” was just a Jewish way of expressing that something is impossible (cf. Ps. 139:7-10).
Instead of some new, difficult, complex, impossible assignment, what does our passage tell us? “The Word is near you, it is in your mouth and in your heart.” We already have the one thing we need! It’s been there all along. All our lives we’ve turned our backs to God and not our faces! I once spoke with a man who was dying of cancer. He started telling me that, as far as he could see, there were many possibilities of what happens to us after we die, and it just wasn’t clear what was true.
As we talked, he would say things like, “I just hope God lets me in.” In all his ramblings about “You just can’t know,” he kept making references to God and Jesus, to heaven and hell.” After a while, I pointed that out to him. I said, “It is true, a lot of people have a lot of different ideas, but it seems to me you really do believe in your heart there is a heaven and a hell, and that God and Jesus are very real.” I pointed out several things he had said, and suddenly I could see the wheels turning in his mind.
A short time later, he was a born-again man. He had realized exactly what Paul says in this passage, “The Word is near you, it is in your mouth and in your heart.” It wasn’t complex, it wasn’t difficult. In fact, he already “knew” it. He just needed to stop turning his back to God and start turning his face.
And what exactly is this “faith” that makes all the difference? These are the very words that turned on the lights in my own young heart: “That if you confess with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believe in your heart God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.” I struggled for a long time to understand this faith thing. If you ask any Christian, “What must I do to be saved?” they will probably answer, “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will be saved.” Jesus Himself even said, “He who believes in me has everlasting life” (Jn. 6:47). My question was, “But what does it mean to believe?”
At that time, basically everyone in America went to church on Sunday and could talk about heaven and hell and about God and Jesus and the Bible. I could honestly say, “Everyone in America believes in Jesus.” My problem was, it was obvious to me they weren’t all saved. I wondered, “So what makes my ‘believing’ any better than theirs?” I said to myself, “It’s great if all that is required is this ‘believing,’ but what does that really mean?" It was obviously something different than what “everyone believed.”
Then one day I stumbled across this passage, Romans 10:9: “That if you confess with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believe in your heart God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.” That’s it! Real saving faith is to tell God, “I accept that Jesus is Lord (the Boss), and I do believe in my heart that He died for me and rose again,” That’s it! It’s one thing to “believe” all that “stuff about Jesus.” It’s another thing to actually come to grips with the fact that He is LORD. Real believing always deals one way or another with this question of who’s going to be the boss in my life. And realizing that Jesus is the rightful Boss, I then have the problem that, up to today, I’ve been a cosmic rebel against Him. However, even as I embrace His rule over me, I also embrace the simple truth that He Himself took care of my sin problem. He died and rose again for me!
That’s what I mean about letters of gold. How could it be any simpler? And it isn’t difficult. It’s what I really already know in my heart. It’s been there all along. We’ve always known God was only a prayer away. We just wanted to go our own way, so we conveniently ignored Him.
People may get distracted by the idea of “confessing with your mouth” and “believing in your heart.” To me, the simple answer is that there is no such thing as a true believing that doesn’t change our lives. To truly believe that Jesus is Lord means I’m already changed. I want to live a new life. I want to be a different person. The “believing” which goes on inside will change us on the outside. “Scholars” can argue all of that for pages and pages, but it isn’t that complicated. Real faith simply produces real Christians.
And what do we find? “Everyone believing on Him will not be ashamed.” Whether it’s a question of our eternal salvation or simply our daily lives, we can always rest assured that trusting God is the safest thing we can do. He will not disappoint us. In the short run, He may not give us what we think we want. In the short run, He may allow pain and trouble in our lives. However, faith will always, always, always be found to be its own reward. To trust God, to love Him, to turn our faces toward Him, is the smartest thing we can ever do!
It is really very simple!
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