Believe And Confess

Because you see, the cost of salvation, of confessing and believing that Jesus is Lord of my life is actually no cost at all. It is simply acknowledging the reality that Jesus is Lord. He is the Lord of all creation, the ruler of the heavens and the earth. Through Him all things were created and God the Father has declared Him to be Lord of all. To confess with our mouth and believe in our heart that Jesus is Lord is no different than confessing that the sky is blue and the sun is hot. It is simple, not complex. And the simple fact is that Jesus is Lord, whether we confess that He is or not. The simple fact is that all people will bow down before Him and acknowledge that He is Lord when He returns in judgment. The cost to us of salvation is simply recognizing the truth that Jesus is Lord. Believe and confess that Jesus is Lord and you will be saved.

Another way that many make the simple complex is by believing that we have to rely on our own righteousness. Like the Jews who rejected Jesus because they believed that the path to God is through following God’s laws, many try to earn their salvation through doing all the things that good Christians are supposed to do. We go to church every Sunday and put our tithe in the plate. We love our wives or husbands and care for our children. We help an old lady across the street. All these things are wonderful and great and pleasing to God unless we begin to believe that these things that we do pave our path to heaven. The prophet Isaiah writes that all our righteous deeds are like filthy rags. Paul writes that all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. We can’t ever be righteous in the eyes of God through our own efforts. But the simple good news is that the path to eternal life has already been paved by Christ. When we try to pave our own path to heaven through good works, we pave a path to our own destruction. There is only one path that leads to eternal life and that path has been paved through the suffering and death of Jesus Christ and His resurrection. We do good works not to earn salvation but simply as a response to God’s love for us in Christ. We love our neighbors as ourselves because God first loved us.

We sometimes don’t even realize that we are attempting to pave our own path. We think that our actions are a response to God’s love, but then when some tragic occurrence happens in our life, we find ourselves bitter towards God. We get angry that God would allow trials in our life because we are doing such great things for Him. It’s not fair, we think. How can God allow this disease, this financial problem, this relationship breakdown, to happen to me when I faithfully go to church, help the poor, pray, study my Bible, tithe? When we think that God owes us a good life because we are so faithful and do such good works, it’s a sign that we are paving our own path. God doesn’t owe us anything. He’s already given us the greatest gift of all. And He sometimes allows us to suffer in order to strengthen our faith, to help us to trust in Him even more. When we have come to circumstances beyond our control, our only recourse is to turn to the One who controls all things and that drops us to our knees in humility and brings us ever closer to Christ. Believe and confess that Jesus Christ is the one true path to righteousness before God and you will be saved.