Everyone Who Calls On the Name of the Lord Will Be Saved

The Summit of Our Salvation

Allen Snapp

Grace Community Church

Nov. 24, 2024

Everyone Who Calls On the Name of the Lord Will Be Saved

If you have your Bibles turn to Rom. 10. Let’s pray and then work through this chapter a little at a time.

Brothers, my heart's desire and prayer to God for them is that they may be saved. Rom.10: 1

In chapter 9 Paul was anguished over how his Jewish brethren’s rejection of Christ and wishes he could be cut off from Christ that they might be saved. But in chapter 10 Paul turns that anguish and wishing into heartfelt desire and prayer. Agonizing over the past and wishing things were different can only take us so far. Wishing a loved one was walking with Jesus, agonizing about how someone we care about is destroying their lives is a natural expression of love but we don’t want to stop at wishing and agonizing. Like Paul let’s lift the people we love up to God in prayer! Praying for their salvation, for their deliverance, for God to reveal Himself to them and transform their lives.

Paul prays for his Jewish brethren and acknowledges that they have zeal for God:

² For I bear them witness that they have a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge. Vs. 2

Credit where credit is due, they are passionate for God. Unfortunately, it’s zeal without knowledge, heat without light. Zeal for God can do a lot of damage to the name of God when our zeal is disconnected from biblical truth.

For, being ignorant of the righteousness of God, and seeking to establish their own, they did not submit to God's righteousness. Vs 3

We might think, “if they were ignorant than they just didn’t know. You can’t blame them for what they don’t know.” Sometimes that’s true. Sometimes ignorance is a matter of lack of information or opportunity to get that information. That’s not the case here, their ignorance was what Tim Keller calls “vincible” ignorance. I know what invincible means but I hadn’t heard the term “vincible”. It means “able to be overcome”. They were more than able to overcome their ignorance with the information God had supplied. It wasn’t ignorance that blinded them, it was their agenda.

They refused to submit to God’s righteousness cause they were committed to establishing their own righteousness by keeping the law. They found their identity in the pride of being zealous Jews who obeyed the law and Jesus represented the end of their agenda, the dismantling of their identity, the humbling of their pride. And they weren’t ready to submit to that.

For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes. Vs, 4

Jesus is the end of the law, not in the sense that he destroyed the law or that we aren’t meant to obey the moral law, but in the sense that keeping the law is how we become righteous in God’s sight. Quoting again from Tim Keller:

what has ended for the Christian is being “under the law” as a system of salvation. What has not ended is our obligation to obey the law as a way to please and express our gratitude to the God who has saved us by grace. ~ Tim Keller

As someone put it: Christians are meant to keep the moral law as a way of life but not as the way to life.

Why did the Jewish people, led by the Jewish leaders, reject Christ? It wasn’t because they didn’t find enough biblical evidence to believe him, it was because their agenda and their identity was bound up in their zeal to keep the law (and judge those who didn’t keep it as faithfully). They were self-righteous religious snobs!

Paul isn’t criticizing their zeal. Zeal isn’t the problem – wrong-headed zeal is the problem. In chapter 12 Paul will literally command us to serve God with zeal!

Never be lacking in zeal, but keep your spiritual fervor, serving the Lord. Rom. 12:11

Honestly I think lack of zeal is a greater challenge facing the church than too much zeal. There are churches and believers who overzealous but for most of us our issue is too little zeal not too much. I know that’s where I struggle.

If we think that zeal is an emotion we have no control over - we either feel it or we don’t – we’ll drift into lack of zeal. I just don’t feel zeal. The truth is, we never drift into the things that are best for us, we have to be intentional to cultivate them and that includes zeal. Paul commands us both negatively and positively: don’t lack in zeal, do keep your spiritual fervor. He’s saying stir up your zeal!

God says be zealous in our commitment to Him. Zealous in our desire to obey Him. Zealous in growing closer to Him. Zealous to serve one another, love one another, use our gifts to build one another up.

The other day I was doing some yardwork and had a lot of brush to get rid of so I started to bag it up but realized it would take so much time and work and bags to bag it all, so then I thought let me burn it. We have a small fire pit, so I got a fire going. It worked great but I had to make sure to keep feeding the fire so it wouldn’t go out. Zeal is like that fire, we need to keep feeding it.

We feed our zeal for God by reading His word. By spending time with Him in prayer. By fellowshipping with other believers. By sharing our faith with unbelievers. Those things keep our zeal-fire burning. We don’t always feel like it! We don’t always want to! Do it anyway! If you rarely read the bible and rarely pray, you should not be surprised if you have very little zeal for God. I’d be surprised if you did! If you rarely fellowship with other believers I can predict that you will have less and less desire to fellowship and you will feel the need to less and less. That’s how it goes – like the fire, zeal goes out if it’s not fed.

So I want to encourage you to fuel the zeal. Make time every day to read your bible and pray. Attend church regularly – it’s not just you that needs it. It needs you. We need you. You never know who might encourage you on any given Sunday – or who God might use you to encourage. That’s what the Christian life’s about. Sometimes we get blessed, sometimes we are used to bless others. But its accumulative – rarely is there one church service, or one bible devotional, or one prayer lifted that transforms our life. That happens, but it’s rare. The fire needs to be fed. Paul commands: don’t be lacking in zeal, keep your spiritual fervor.

⁵ For Moses writes about the righteousness that is based on the law, that the person who does the commandments shall live by them. Rom. 10:5

Moses, the lawgiver says in Leviticus that anyone who wants to achieve righteousness by keeping the law will need to keep it perfectly, inwardly as well as outwardly. Not going to happen. The best that will happen is we’ll dumb down righteousness to whatever level we can achieve and call it good enough. But God doesn’t grade on a curve. The only righteousness He accepts is 100% perfect in every action, every thought, every motive, every second of every day of our lives. It literally would be easier for us to free-dive 700 feet on one breath because that at least is possible. Attaining God’s standard of righteousness is impossible.

Unless there’s another way than our own efforts to attain it. Paul quotes Moses again, this time from Deut. 30, where the theme is to choose to obey God rather than disobey. Choose blessing over curse. Life over death. God promises that as we, His people, move towards Him with all our heart and soul (zeal), He will restore our fortunes, bless our land, bring us back from exile. But isn’t God still asking for the impossible? God says, it’s not impossible, it’s easy!

⁶ But the righteousness based on faith says, “Do not say in your heart, ‘Who will ascend into heaven?’” (that is, to bring Christ down) 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 that we proclaim)…Rom. 10:6-8

In Deuteronomy Moses says you don’t have to ascend to heaven or travel across the seas to get there. Paul changes it (with Jesus in mind) to descend into the abyss. The righteousness based on faith is near us – as near as in our mouth and heart.

⁹ 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. ¹⁰ For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved. Rom. 10:9-10

Paul is using a Hebrew device called parallelism – two lines express one thought. Confessing Jesus as Lord is an expression of believing in our heart that Jesus died and was raised for our sins. It’s not two steps to be saved, it’s one step of faith that works out in two ways: believe with the heart and confess with the mouth that Jesus Christ is Lord and Savior.

Paul demonstrates that this declaration of faith is just as true in the OT as the NT.

¹¹ For the Scripture says (quoting Isaiah), “Everyone who believes in him will not be put to shame.” Rom 10:11

No one who calls on Jesus will in the end be embarrassed that they did! No one who puts their trust in Jesus will find that trust disappointed. On the final day, Jesus says he’ll be embarrassed to confess before the Father those who were ashamed to confess him before men. But those who confess Jesus before men – and take any mocking or rejection that may lead to – Jesus will be unashamed on that final great day to confess to the Father that you belong to him.

¹² For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; for the same Lord is Lord of all, bestowing his riches on all who call on him. ¹³ For “everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.” Rom. 10:12-13

God’s promises are generous and available. Everyone means no one is excluded – no matter age or education or status or race or anything. Everyone means anyone at all who calls on the Lord. Anyone can call on the Lord. All it takes is humbling ourselves and confessing we need God! We need a Savior!

If you’re not a Christian – call on the Lord Jesus today! Don’t wait! If you harden your heart today to the Spirit’s conviction it will only get easier and easier to harden your heart every passing day until one day you find there are no more tomorrows. Jer. 8 describes this place of hopelessness and despair:

“The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved.” Jer. 8:20

We missed the reaping season and now it’s too late. We are not saved. God says call on Me and I’ll be there to save you and be with you every step of the way!

And brothers and sisters, we can call on the Lord with confidence that He hears us. Lift that prayer request up to him. Lay that desire on the altar and say “Lord, not my will but Your will be done.” Pray your heart to the Lord and confess faith in Jesus.

Paul will next call believers not only to believe and confess, but to declare that good news to others that they may believe as well. We’ll finish out the chapter next week.

Closing songs: Call upon the Name of the Lord/Came to My Rescue