here and now

Romans 10:⁶ But the righteousness of faith speaks in this way, "Do not say in your heart, 'Who will ascend into heaven?'" (that is, to bring Christ down from above) ⁷ or, "'Who will descend into the abyss?'" (that is, to bring Christ up from the dead). ⁸ But what does it say? "The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart"(that is, the word of faith which we preach): ⁹ that if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. ¹⁰ For with the heart one believes unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation. ¹¹ For the Scripture says, "Whoever believes on Him will not be put to shame." ¹² For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek, for the same Lord over all is rich to all who call upon Him. ¹³ For "whoever calls on the name of the LORD shall be saved."

 

We tend to separate our day-to-day life from our spiritual life.  We may think that Jesus is far away and we'll only deal with Him one day after we die and find that we are taking the golden elevator to glory or riding the dirty laundry chute to eternal doom.  "Are you going to Heaven?" or "Are you going to Hell?" seem to be the big issues.  But the passage from Romans, above, tells us that the more important question is "Have you met Jesus here?"  This is the place and now is the time to discover that the Lord is real and Jesus is very near.  When we realize that we need Him desperately now and we need Him here and when we personally believe that God truly raised Jesus from the dead a transaction takes place that determines the Heaven and Hell question.  Belief and faith are the ultimate intimate matters.  They are the stuff that make up our personal relationship with the living God.  We are not saved in a crowd, we become saved individually.  (We may worship with others in a crowd, but we're really celebrating the ultimate personal experience with God).  I think it is good to reflect on the active verbs in the passage above: believe, confess, call.  And it is especially important to remember verse 13, that "whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved".  Aren't you glad that we can have peace about salvation now?  Truly this is freedom!

 

blessings,

Rob Smith