As Close As Your Mouth and Your Heart, Part 2

Today on Summit Life with J.D.

Greer. The salvation process does not distinguish by ethnicity or background or education level, religious history or moral uprightness. Everyone who calls on God's name will be saved. The gospel is the most inclusive religious message ever, creating the most inclusive community that has ever existed on earth. Thanks for joining us today for Summit Life with Pastor J.D. Greer.

I'm your host, Molly Vitovich. Let me ask you, do your circumstances feel pretty dark and heavy right now? You know, when we feel far from God, it's easy to doubt that we have what it takes to be saved. But today Pastor J.D. continues teaching in Romans Chapter 10 and we can see why we can trust that Jesus already did everything required for our salvation and that when we confess and believe that he is Lord, we will be saved from our sin. That's a truth that this world desperately needs. Amen.

Let's rejoin Pastor J.D. in Romans Chapter 10 as he reminds us once again of the beauty of the gospel. Righteousness is not a quest. You don't need to, you don't need to go up to heaven in your zeal for God in order to obtain his righteousness.

Nor do you need to reach down into the depths of your heart for the willpower to obey. And that's because Christ, the gift righteousness of God, he's the one that came down from heaven for you. He went into the abyss for you.

You are not saved by your zeal for him. You were saved by his zeal for you. The effort was his, the coming down was his, the going into the depths was his. He lived the perfect life. By the way, do you ever wonder why Jesus lived 33 years?

Saint Augustine said it was because in 33 years he is able to encounter every temptation that a normal person encounters in their lives. He wanted to face every temptation that you and I would face and pass the test. Every test that you and I failed, Jesus passed with flying colors. In fact, in one of the most mysterious scenes in Jesus's life, we see Jesus even pass the test of repentance for us. This is one of the most confusing and encouraging scenes to me. It's where Jesus goes through the process of repentance.

You say, what are you talking about? Do you remember where he got baptized by John the Baptist? Do you remember what John the Baptist baptism was called? The baptism of repentance, which is why John was so confused when Jesus steps into the water, because Jesus had never sinned. So why is Jesus being baptized with a baptism of repentance if he's never even sinned? What's he got to repent of? What is Jesus answer when John says, I don't need to baptize you. No, no, no, be still. I've got to do this to fulfill all righteousness.

Wait a minute. He was fully righteous. So whose righteousness was he fulfilling? Whose righteousness had not yet been filled up?

Yours and mine. He was doing the baptism of repentance because, watch this, you would never repent sufficiently enough to gain forgiveness of your sins. So when I used to ask that question, have I repented enough for my sins?

The answer was, no, you did not repent sincerely enough to get forgiveness of sins. That's why Jesus did it for you. He literally went through everything that you were supposed to go through and what you didn't do right, he did perfectly. He lived the life you were supposed to live. He passed every temptation you failed. He even repented in your place and then he died in your place so that when you received him as your gift righteousness, his record would become yours. Learn this term for Martin Luther.

Y'all learn it. Gift righteousness. Gift righteousness. Righteousness, righteousness bestowed as a gift. Again, verse eight.

What does the gospel say? The message is near you. Any of you.

All of you. It's in your mouth and in your heart right now. For any of you, salvation is as close as your mouth and your heart, no matter how dark your circumstances are. You come in here with all kinds of mistakes and sin, no matter how far you feel from God, no matter how much shame you feel over your past, no matter how overwhelmed you are with confusion, how bleak are your prospects. Salvation for all of you is as close as your mouth and your heart. It's not you got to go change and become better. It's not you got to erase the past.

It's not that you got to live a solid month and be a serious person and show God that you can do better. It's as close this morning as your mouth and your heart because salvation is simply acknowledging that Christ did what he said he did, that he's the one that did the work, that he's the one that lived the life, that he's the one that went into the grave. He did it all. He came down.

He went into the grave. You just receive it. So he says, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and you believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, having paid it all in full for you, if you do that, you, not might be, not or almost, but you will be at that moment saved. By the way, some people get confused and they think that these are two separate things, like a part one and a part two of salvation. The first is you believe in your heart.

Second, you got to confess with your mouth as if this is like a part one, part two, or like that annoying two-step verification process that my device is asking me to do every time I sign into something now that drives me crazy. That's not what this is. All right, here's how we know. Paul has made very, very clear that the only thing you need to be saved is to transfer the hopes of your salvation off of what you do onto what Christ has done. And for him to suddenly add that you also got to verbalize it would be to add a work to salvation. And that would not be consistent with what he said throughout the book of Romans. What he's using is a device called, it's in Hebrew called parallelism.

We use it in English today. It is where you say the same thing from two different angles, poetically. If I were to say to a guy, if I were to say, you know, if you want to get married, you got to walk that aisle and say, I do, and you got to put the ring on her finger. I'm not talking about two separate ceremonies. I'm talking about one marriage covenant.

And I can just say it in two different ways. It makes sense. What Paul is talking about is one faith because he assumes that if you do believe in your heart, you would confess it with your mouth. He explains what he means by this in the next verse.

Look at this. One believes with the heart resulting in righteousness. Question, friend, what is the instrument of your salvation? Is it with the body you get baptized? Is it with the willpower you obey? Is it with your mouth you take the Eucharist? Is it with your feet you walk down the aisle? Is it with the wallet that you give enough? No, it is with the heart that you believe.

That's it. And of course, if you do that, parallelism again, and one confesses with the mouth, that results in salvation. For what does the scripture say? Paul now quotes Psalm 25, three. Everybody who believes on him, everybody who rests in him will never be put to shame.

All those who trust in him for salvation are never going to be disappointed. One of the simplest illustrations that we use of this, I use it with children. I use it with teenagers.

I've used it with you. As we say, it's just like sitting down in a chair. When you sit down in a chair, what are you doing? You are transferring the responsibility to keep you off the ground. You're transferring off of your legs and you're just transferring it onto the chair.

That's it. That is what faith is, is I'm no longer trusting in my righteousness to get me to heaven. I am seated in what Christ did for me saying, you are my hope of salvation. Now, some people will say, they'll be like, well, J.D., I just don't, I just don't remember what I said to God. I mean, did I pray enough?

Did I repent enough? And I'm always like, I mean, I go back to the chair. I'm like, well, let's say that you had a little ceremony when you sat down in the chair. Let's say that you said something to the chair. Oh, chair, thou art a lovely chair. I just say, I love you so much.

And my whole life has been looking for you. And I want you to be my personal chair. If the chair had ears, it would probably be moved, right?

Be like, oh, thank you, right? But the point is not what I said to the chair. The point is, am I seated in the chair? It has zero relevance what you said to God. I don't care if you prayed. I don't care if you got baptized. I don't care if you walked an aisle.

I don't care if you prayed for an hour. I don't care. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter what you said to the chair.

All that matters is the posture you took toward the chair. Right now, you are in one of two postures in relation to the finished work of Christ. You were either standing, saying, I think I can be good enough to get to heaven.

I think if I try hard enough, I can get there. Or you have sat down and said, my only hope is Jesus' finished work. You were either standing in control of your own life, I'm the one that's in charge, or you have sat down in submission to Jesus. You were in one of those two postures right now in relationship to Jesus Christ. And what does the scripture say? Everybody who rests on him will never be put to shame. God's not going to get you to heaven and say, hey, get up out of that chair. He didn't pray right. He's going to say, were you trusting in what I said I did as your salvation? If so, you're not going to be disappointed, not put to shame. Your posture toward Jesus Christ is either trusting what he said, or it's standing in unbelief.

Which of those two is it? Paul then turns now in verse 11 there, and he begins to reflect on the fact, watch this, that this kind of gospel message has created the most inclusive community the world has ever seen. That's where we get that word everyone right there. Everybody who puts their trust in God to save them will be saved. And so Paul goes on from there verse 12. Because see, there really is no distinction when it comes to salvation between the Jew or the Greek or the black or the white or the rich or the poor, the uneducated or the educated. None of it makes any difference because the same Lord of all richly blesses all who call upon him. And he quotes Joel chapter two, for everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. The salvation process does not distinguish by ethnicity or background or education level, doesn't distinguish by religious history or moral uprightness. Everyone who calls on God's name will be saved. The gospel is the most inclusive religious message ever. Creating the most inclusive community that has ever existed on earth. And I'm grateful also that it included me. It includes all of you.

You say, wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute. You just said, there's only one way to be saved. That doesn't sound very inclusive. In fact, that sounds like the definition of exclusive.

Okay. But first you need to realize and be honest with yourself that all religious claims, all of them are inherently exclusive. All of them. For example, if you say, I think good people from every religion are going to go to heaven. Well, that sounds like uber inclusive, right?

It sure does. But who have you excluded? Bad people. And I suppose you get to define who is bad. And I suppose racist and misogynist and child molesters are on that list. If you're morally conservative, you probably put sexually deviant people on that list. If you're liberal, you probably put people who judge others for their sexuality on that list. But nobody looks at the racist or the rapist and they says, well, just for me, I think that you shouldn't do that, but that's your truth and I respect that. None in all of us have a list of what is good and what is right and what is not.

Everybody has a line for who is in and who is out. Every moral and religious claim is exclusive. But the gospel of Jesus you see offers a, listen, different kind of exclusivity. Because the gospel teaches that our acceptance with God is not based on anything about us. God gives salvation as a gift to all who will repent and receive it in humility and faith.

And that produces a different kind of exclusivity. It is a humble, gracious, inclusive exclusivity. You're listening to Summit Life with J.D. Greer. To learn more about this ministry, visit us online anytime at jdgreer.com. Before we get back to today's teaching, I want to take a moment to remind you about an amazing free resource that we offer our listeners. If you have real life questions about real life problems about theology or what the Bible teaches on certain hot topics, you won't want to miss Pastor JD's Ask Me Anything podcast. In each episode, Pastor JD answers actual questions submitted by listeners just like you. Are you unsure what to think about a current debate in culture? How should we live in light of truths found in scripture? Pastor JD tackles the toughest questions that you can drum up.

And the best part? It's completely free. You can access Ask Me Anything with J.D. Greer by visiting jdgreer.com slash podcast or by searching for it on your favorite podcast platform.

Don't miss a single episode by subscribing to the podcast today. Now let's get back to today's teaching. Once again, here's Pastor JD on Summit Life. Listen, y'all, what made the gospel in the first century scandalous was not whom it excluded. What made it scandalous was whom it included because the gospel started to create communities that the world had never seen.

I'll give you just one example. It's one of my favorite ones from the book of Acts. Paul. Now, Paul was a Jewish rabbi. In the Talmud, every morning a Jewish man would pray, Lord, I want to thank you. I want to thank you that today you did not make me a woman, a slave, or a Gentile. That means that every Jewish man walked around with his Jewish male privilege just all day, all day, and they prayed it every morning.

Thank you that I'm a woman, a slave, or a Gentile. So Paul, a Jewish rabbi, goes into Philippi to win some people to Jesus. Who were the first three people the Spirit of God has him win to Christ? You know Acts 16? A woman named Lydia, a slave girl, and then a Gentile, the Philippian jailer.

You can't tell me the Holy Spirit's not just giggling up there and playing little jokes on Paul, right? That means the first church service is a Jewish rabbi, a woman, a slave, and a Gentile. That is a community the world had never seen and it was scandalous. The Romans had never seen people that were poor and rich and educated and uneducated and different classes and former slaves and masters all come together on equal ground and say we're all saved the exact same way.

And it was scandalous, which is why the gospel has produced the most demographically inclusive community the world has ever known. You study what's going on in world religion. Islam is still predominantly Arab.

And to become a Muslim, you basically have to become culturally Arab because they say you can only understand the Quran if you read it in Arabic. Buddhism is still predominantly East Asian. Hinduism is still predominantly South Asian. But Christians are now evenly divided between Europe, North America, Latin America, Asia, and Africa.

And it's growing right now the fastest in Latin America, Asia, and Africa. Like every other religious claim, Christianity is exclusive, but it is the most inclusive exclusivity. Let me just say this here. If your idea of heaven on earth is a group of white American English speaking Christians, you are not going to enjoy heaven that much because every single time you pray, you pray to a brown skinned Middle Eastern refugee.

So I would think twice before distaining somebody like that, okay? Now, one final thought before I close our time in this passage. This passage emphasizes that Christianity, get this, is a word-based faith. It's word-based. Salvation, Paul says, is all about believing a word declared from heaven. Sometimes people ask me, how come in your church service the longest part of the service is reserved for somebody standing up on the stage and yelling at everybody with a Bible open? That is because this is a word-based faith. It's why the center of our church here is not an altar. The center of our church is a pulpit. The word is the means by which God does everything.

It's always been this way. In the beginning, God created with what? A magic wand? He created with some spells, some potions?

No. He creates with a word. He speak. Why does scripture make that clear?

Because it is showing us from the beginning the powers and the word. How did Jesus heal when he walked around? Did he heal by pointing?

No. He healed by speaking. He would say to the lame person, get up and walk. And if they believed him, then all of a sudden power would come into their legs and they would stand up and they would walk.

The blind would see. Even after becoming a Christian, how were you made righteous? God declares a word.

It is finished. Your salvation is done. Jesus is Lord.

He went to the grave and he came back up and paid for your sin. You are declared righteous the moment that you believe that. You believe the word. Even after becoming a Christian, the amount of God's power at work in you is directly proportional to the amount of his word that is in you. No word, no power. You want more power?

You need more word. Y'all, that was Martin Luther's great discovery from the book of Romans. He started to study the book of Romans because he just didn't know like, how do I know that I have peace with God?

How do I know that I'm going to go to heaven when I die? He searched and searched and he thought, I bet you the book of Romans has the answer. And so he started to teach it at like a college class because the best way to learn something is to teach it. So he starts working his way through Romans. And in there, he discovers partially through chapter 10 that we just went through that it's all in a word. It's just like God spoke, let there be light. And there was, God said, I declare you forgiven.

And when you believe it, it's yours. And it saved his soul. It transformed him. So he starts to preach it and he starts to write about it. Well, the church at the time was like, well, you can't. We can't be tying salvation to a believed word because if that's the truth, then the church was going to lose all its control. Because the church had its control on controlling people's behavior and say, no, no, salvation only happens when you come in here.

And you got to come in here and give money and you got to come in here and do what we tell you to do. And so they were being threatened to lose their power. And so they arrested Luther and they brought him, hauled him into court. There was a Cardinal, came Cardinal Cajetan who represented the Roman authority. And he is in this courtroom with Luther and he says, Luther, you got to stop saying this. You got to stop saying this.

And he said, he said, Luther, I'm going to let you walk out of here just if you utter one little word, one little word. And the word in Latin was revoco. Revoco, which means I can't. It says right now you don't have to answer. You don't have to apologize.

You don't have to give any kind of full rebuttal. You just need to say one word and you can walk out of here a free man. Otherwise we're going to take you to Rome and you'll probably spend your life in prison and more likely you'll be burned to this day. One little word will set you free. Luther's response was, this much I know, I would be the most beloved person in the empire if I were to say this one little word, revoco.

But how can I deny the power through which I became a Christian? Later, he would pin the words to the famous hymn, A Mighty Fortress is Our God, undoubtedly thinking about his conversation with Cardinal Cajetan. Because here's the words that he wrote, and though this world with devil's field should threaten to undo us, we will not fear, for God has willed his truth to triumph through us. The prince of darkness grim, we tremble not for him. His rage we can't endure, for lo his doom is sure.

One little word, one little word will bring him down. What Luther said back to Cajetan in that trial was, I will not say the word revoco. What I say is credo, which is a Latin word for I believe. I believe Luther understood something that we often forget, and that is that all the power of God rests in the word of the gospel, and one word of faith connects you to the power of an empty tomb. Just saying it from the heart, Paul says in Romans 10, nine, declares the sinner righteous.

Just saying that you believe that Jesus raised from the dead. If you say that in faith, it releases the power of salvation in you. It makes the lame walk and the blind see, and the dead get out of the grave. It brings power into your parenting, hope into your trials, and strength into your captive soul. You remember the gospel is the only thing, I told you, the only thing in all of scripture that is ever referred to directly as the power of God, other than Jesus himself.

That's why Luther closed the song like this. That word, that word of faith, I believe that Jesus did what he said he did. That word above all earthly powers, no thanks to them abideth. Not you, Cardinal Cajetan, not the church, not the church. The spirit and the gifts are ours through him who with us iteth.

Let goods and kindreds go, this mortal life also, the body they may kill. God's truth abideth still, his kingdom is forever. So see, friend, what that means is that when you're unsure of salvation, you need to speak that word. I believe, I believe that Jesus really did do what he said he did. I believe he died for my sin.

I believe he raised from the dead, and I believe that all those who trust in that will never be put to shame. And that means when you feel overwhelmed by circumstances, you need to speak that word. I believe that the God who is fighting for me is greater than the forces arrayed against me.

There is no shadow of turning with him and that he is working all things together for good. And when you face addictions that you feel like you cannot overcome, you got to speak that word. That greater is he that is in me than he that is in the world. And when you hear those voices of condemnation telling you that you are not enough, making you feel afraid and ashamed, you got to speak that word. I believe that nothing will separate me from the love of Christ, that God has a plan for me to use me for good and to make me a blessing.

When your life tells you that you are a failure, when your heart tells you you're a failure and you feel alone, you got to speak that word. You don't have to say, Credo, you just say, I believe, I believe you will never leave me or forsake me, and I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. And to speak that word, you got to know that word, which is why we say, coming to church twice a month is not enough.

Just coming to church four times a month is not enough. You got to saturate yourself in the Bible. You got to saturate it until it just flows in you and controls your thoughts, which is why I tell you the most important thing I do every single day is about 30 to 35 minutes, sometimes 45 in the morning, when I get up and the first person I meet with is God before I talk to anybody. And it involves an open Bible and me dialoguing with it. And one of the things that I'm trying to do is I'm trying to get the gospel down in my soul so that everything else I see that day is through the lens of the gospel.

It's why you memorize it. It's why the music you listen to, you want it to be songs and hymns and spiritual songs because it is controlling how you think and what you see. It's why you listen to podcasts, sermon podcasts, and you saturate yourself with the word of God because the believed word, the imparted word is where the power of God is. One little word releases in you the power of God, just as it brought to you the righteousness of God.

When life cuts you, do you bleed the word of God? It's a strong challenge today to saturate ourselves in scripture from Pastor JD Greer here on Summit Life. If you've been following along with us in this teaching series through Romans, you've probably noticed the Apostle Paul referencing the Old Testament a lot.

JD, what is that all about? Well, you know, the New Testament in its final form didn't exist when Paul was writing Romans. When Paul wants to quote from the kind of the authorized canon at that point and he wants to ground his point in scripture, he reaches for the Old Testament. So when you're studying Romans, pay attention to whenever and however Paul uses the Old Testament to ground his argument. Go back and read these passages. I try to do that when I'm teaching through these passages to point out where Paul is pulling from the Old Testament and how that amplifies what he's trying to say.

We get into this a lot more in this new resource written by Tim Keller that takes you to the first seven chapters of Romans. It's a two-part series. We're giving out one through seven now, and it's a great resource that you can use in a small group or you can use for individual study that will go right alongside what you're hearing here at Summit Life and will help make this even deeper and more impacting. Just go to JD Greer, J-D-G-R-E-E-A-R, dot com. We'll send you a copy of Pastor Tim Keller's study through Romans chapters one through seven as a way to say thank you for your financial gift of $35 or more to this ministry. We wouldn't be on the air today without friends just like you who have partnered with us in the past, and we'd be honored if you would consider doing the same today. To give, call us now at 866-335-5220 or you can give online right now at jdgreer.com. I'm Molly Vidovich inviting you to join us again next time. Pastor JD encourages us to put our yes on the table, so start by saying yes to joining us Thursday right here on Summit Life with JD Greer. Today's program was produced and sponsored by JD Greer Ministries.