“Because 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.” -Romans 10:9
Salvation is so simple, yet we often make it hard. In the Church, there is a tendency to look down on the many rules that the first-century Jewish leaders burdened people with.
We are no better.
Our rules are different. They seem appropriate in our time. One group feels that those who truly follow Jesus will do one thing. Another group believes those who truly follow Jesus will do something else.
We tend to think our way is right. Conservatives say that liberals are not truly Christian because they do not vilify a certain sin. Liberals say that conservatives are not truly Christian because they do not partake in a particular act of service. It is not that people shouldn’t participate in acts of service or that people should condone sin. The point is that we all have our rules that we want others to follow.
Paul, however, is pretty clear in Romans when he says that if you confess Jesus as Lord and believe in His power over death, you are (will be) saved. That is it: belief and public acknowledgment of that belief. I will say, I do not think in this context that “confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord” means there is some special magic in the verbal proclamation of faith. We’ve seen some pretty bad people pay lip service to Jesus throughout history. I believe Paul means we need to live, with both our words and actions, a life that demonstrates Jesus is Lord. No… I am not going to define that. I don’t want to start making rules.
The one “rule” I will point to is that John makes it clear that we cannot be without love and still be a follower of Jesus. (1 John 4:8) But it is up to God to decide what exactly that means and what it looks like, not me.
I am not at all undercutting things like the Fruit of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. (Galatians 5:22-23) These aren’t rules. They describe the character of a person undergoing spiritual formation by the Holy Spirit. Also, they aren’t different fruits; they are a description of the character of the one fruit.
Importantly, the elements of the Fruit of the Spirit are descriptive, not a set of rules. We get into trouble when we start making rules to govern what the Holy Spirit’s formation looks like in our day and context.
Personally, I think we need to trust God more. We make these rules, at least partly, to control who is in and who is out. We should trust that to God and focus on cultivating our own love for others, God, and ourselves. Let God decide who is in and out. He will almost certainly include people I would exclude. But He is smarter, more loving, more gracious, and more forgiving than I am, which is a good thing.
A Quote to Consider
“During times of universal deceit telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.” – Anonymous (often misattributed to George Orwell)
Orwell is one of the great political prophets of the twentieth century. While the quote above is apocryphal, it certainly echoes a major theme in his writing.
When I first started teaching college, I took a job with a small religious school that was incredibly unhealthy. As an act of subversion, a librarian suggested we read Orwell’s 1984 in the faculty reading group. It was too real for me. The book reminded me of my life at that institution, and when my world there erupted, I had to set the book aside for a time. A few years later, I picked the book back up. It was still raw but manageable after some time had passed.
Around that time, I ran across a picture of an old building with graffiti that read, “Tell the truth, even if your voice shakes.”
I have tried to live that way. Imperfectly, but I have tried.
In my experience, most people don’t tell lies because they are trying to manipulate the world to their will. There are people like that. I’ve met some and could tell stories. But most people lie to protect themselves or because they believe the lie will serve a greater good.
Some people also aren’t really lying when they lie. Lying means that a person is trying to deceive. Many people spread things that are not true because they believe them. For some, it is because they have a personality that makes them believe whatever they want or feel is true. I have met people like this and could tell even more stories! For some, they have succumbed to the universal deceit of our age and have a worldview shaped by that deceit, resulting in a malformed conception of, and reaction to, reality.
Telling the truth demands not only that we believe that what we say is true, but that it has actual consonance with reality. That can be revolutionary.
There are times when we are surrounded by those who lie for gain, those whose truth has been formed by their desires rather than reality, and those whom a narrative of deceit has overcome. In those moments, we are tested. Will we speak the truth? Will we make the revolutionary act of insisting that reality is real? Will we, even as our voices shake, resist deception, cling to truth, and proclaim truth?
Prayer
Lord,
Help us trust Your grace rather than our own rules. Teach us to love others without judgment and to speak the truth with courage, even when our voices shake.
Amen.
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