that if you confess
with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in
your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved; for
with the heart a person believes, resulting in righteousness, and
with the mouth he confesses, resulting in salvation.
Romans
10:9,10 NASB
Today's subject
is confession. We are not looking at confession of sins. We are
looking at confessing Jesus as the Son of God as Peter did in Matthew
16:16. Some folks get this confused when studying about coming to
Christ. They are afraid of the confession part, they don't want to
have to confess their sins before the entire congregation. If that is
what we had to do to come to Christ, how may of us would be in Christ
today? I would dare say not too many. Fortunately God already knows
all those gritty details and He wants to get rid of them for us in
Jesus.
Paul says that
if we proclaim Jesus as the Lord and believe in His resurrection we
will be saved. Confessing Jesus aloud is part of God's plan for our
salvation. We also see this early on in the book Acts when the
Ethiopian eunuch is converted to Christ in Acts chapter eight. As
they went along the road they came to some water; and the eunuch
said, "Look! Water! What prevents me from being baptized?"
And Philip said, "If you believe with all your heart, you may."
And he answered and said, "I believe that Jesus Christ is the
Son of God." Acts
8:36,37 NASB Philip
had been studying with the ethiopian eunuch and when the man decided
he was ready to come to Christ he asked Philip about being baptized.
Philip said "If you believe with all your heart, you
may." The man then
confessed Jesus; "I believe that Jesus Christ is the
Son of God." Following his
confession Philip baptized him.
So
we see the eunuch after hearing about Jesus came to believe in Him.
He then repented and decided he wanted to follow Jesus. He decided he
wanted to be baptized, after Philip received his confession he
baptized him. The ethiopian eunuch received salvation.
Next
week we will look at the final subject in this series, baptism. What
is it and what is its significance in the salvation plan?
©
2012 Leo J. Woodman
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