Romans 10:1-13
10 Dear brothers and sisters, the longing of my heart and my prayer to God is for the people of Israel to be saved. 2 I know what enthusiasm they have for God, but it is misdirected zeal. 3 For they don’t understand God’s way of making people right with himself. Refusing to accept God’s way, they cling to their own way of getting right with God by trying to keep the law. 4 For Christ has already accomplished the purpose for which the law was given. As a result, all who believe in him are made right with God.
Salvation Is for Everyone
5 For Moses writes that the law’s way of making a person right with God requires obedience to all of its commands. 6 But faith’s way of getting right with God says, “Don’t say in your heart, ‘Who will go up to heaven?’ (to bring Christ down to earth).7 And don’t say, ‘Who will go down to the place of the dead?’ (to bring Christ back to life again).” 8 In fact, it says,
“The message is very close at hand;
it is on your lips and in your heart.”
And that message is the very message about faith that we preach: 9 If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. 10 For it is by believing in your heart that you are made right with God, and it is by confessing with your mouth that you are saved.11 As the Scriptures tell us, “Anyone who trusts in him will never be disgraced.” 12 Jew and Gentile are the same in this respect. They have the same Lord, who gives generously to all who call on him. 13 For “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.”
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Two paths again–God’s way or our way. Paul says we don’t understand God’s way. We even refuse to accept it. God’s way involves my whole life–saying Jesus is Lord, and in my heart believing that God raised him from the dead and that he lives today! But people still try to create their own version of “God’s way”–of the “Law.” It’s a universal human failure. We won’t–we refuse to–accept things God’s way.
It seems in this passage that the resurrection is even more important for me to believe and accept than the reality of the cross. Not in any way to make light of the cross. But it is a dividing point between those who believe and know that Christ rose from the grave and those who question the reality of the resurrection. Saw that in the study on Acts as well. After all, the resurrection is what validates everything Jesus did by dying on the cross.