Calling on His Name

               Romans 10: 8-13

 Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to live your life with fewer rules? Everywhere you go, everything you do, there are rules to follow. If you drive a car, there are rules of the road. You have to pass both written and driving tests before you can get a driver’s license. Go to the local swimming pool and you will find a posted set of rules for you to follow if you want to swim. The laws of this state take up about fifteen feet of shelf space. Even a kindergarten classroom has a list of rules, though most kindergarteners don’t arrive at school armed with the knowledge of how to read those rules.

In the book of Exodus, God handed the people of Israel Ten Commandments, ten rules to live by. Of course, by the time of Jesus, that set of ten rules had expanded through men’s interpretations to a legal system of 613 laws. 248 were positive. 365, one for every day of the year, were negative. There were 39 different categories of work alone, and sub-categories underneath those.

Without changing the law at all, Jesus reduced it to two rules. We call them the Great Commandments, loving God and loving our neighbor as much as we love ourselves. Jesus let us know that he came not to change, but to fulfill, the law that God had handed down to Moses at Mt. Sinai.

But the Jews never got the message; at least many of them didn’t, and that’s okay, because it was in God’s plan all along. The message of the gospel, the plan of salvation, was never meant to be for the Jews exclusively. They were the movie screen on which God told his story to a watching world.

Of course, Paul knows this. He spends all his efforts in Romans 9-11 condemning not the Jews, but their attitude toward the gospel. They have failed to see Jesus as the Son of God, the Messiah on whose arrival they are still waiting. Paul, a Jew himself, was sad that his own people could not see the forest for the trees.

Paul quotes Moses’ farewell speech some 1300 years before: “But the word is very near you. It is in your mouth and in your heart, so that you can do it” [Deut. 30: 14]. What Moses was saying about teaching is what Paul is saying about the gospel, that it is not difficult to find or hard to discern. Rather, it is in us. It is part of who we are. It doesn’t matter about our pedigree. It doesn’t matter about where we come from, how much education we have, how much money we make. What matters is that we see it, we acknowledge it, and we live it. Theologian John Stott says this passage reminds us that the gospel has been made accessible to us all by Jesus. God plays no favorites. The common denominator is also the divisive factor. Do you believe? Answer that question in the affirmative and you are in God’s camp. Do you believe? Forget the rules and answer that question.

The word is very near you, says Moses, and Paul echoes him. Paul goes farther and says that the word is “the word of faith that we proclaim.” In the time of Moses, the word was God’s commandments, loving God and walking in his ways. In this passage Paul quotes Moses, but Paul takes us to another level, to faith in the gospel of Jesus Christ. Some have called the proclamations in verses 9 and 10 the basis for the first Christian creed: “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.” Billy Graham loved this sentence. I think he said it in every crusade I ever heard. No 613 laws, no complicated set of rules. Just say it and believe it. What is “it?” It is that Jesus is Lord of all and God raised him from the dead. Confess and believe the lordship of Jesus, his death and resurrection. And Paul ties that wonderful package into a bow by asserting that belief is the key—not knowledge or family tree or power—just belief.

Think about the promise made here. Think about what it means. We don’t have to do anything. It’s already been done for us. We just have to own it. If we let Christ into our hearts, the gospel comes with it. Then we need to say it aloud. That’s part of the ownership. Paul seems to be saying that the two go hand in hand. You believe with your heart. This makes you justified, righteous. But it is incomplete without confessing that lordship of Christ publicly. Paul says that one confesses with the mouth and is saved. So our salvation depends upon our acting on our belief. It’s like faith and works. Without works, where is the proof of your faith? Without confession of your belief, how can you be seen to believe? Inward belief leads to outward confession.

In addition to quoting Moses, Paul draws upon Joel, a prophet to the southern kingdom. Joel is a curiosity. Scholars cannot agree upon when he lived, and date him from the eighth all the way to the fourth century BC.  Joel was primarily concerned with the day of the Lord, the coming of God to judge, and he prophesied about that event and what it would mean. Paul borrows from Joel to illustrate that Jesus has come, not for a specific people group or nation, but for all who believe. He says it three different ways. First, he says that there is no shame for those who believe in him. He follows that with the statement that the Lord’s riches will be bestowed upon all who call on him. Last, Paul quotes Joel (2:32), saying that “everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.” Three straight times, Paul tells us to believe in Jesus and call upon his name. Is there a message here?

While we’re quoting Joel, don’t miss what happened here. Way back, hundreds of years before Christ came to earth, the prophet Joel is saying that everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. Did Joel mean every one of the Jews who call on God’s name? Maybe.  But what did God mean? It doesn’t take a theologian to figure out what Paul means, and what he thinks Joel meant. Paul identifies with Joel’s prophecy, interpreting it as a signature of salvation on all who call on the name of Jesus.

In context, we need to remember that much of Paul’s writing, and certainly the scripture here, is a defense to his ministry to the Gentiles. The church is a new creation and in its infant stages. Paul feels compelled to justify his position. Some accused him of being an apostate, a person who had abandoned his belief. Theologian Thomas Schreiner explains Paul’s stance this way: “Since the same Lord is the Lord of all and since the OT itself anticipated that Gentiles who call on his name would be saved, the inclusion of Gentiles into the church is not a sign of Pauline apostasy but rather an evidence that the last days have dawned in which God is fulfilling his saving plan” [Romans, p. 562].

This is a wonderful and simple passage. In the same way that we don’t have to know what century Joel prophesied in, that we don’t need to know whether Joel fully understood the far-reaching arm of his words, neither do we have to wonder about what nationality or gender or race we are. Jesus claims all who call on his name.  This is the wonder of this passage.

In the same way that Jesus reduced centuries of man-made laws and regulation to two simple rules of love, so Paul has here reduced the entire gospel and its entire message to two simple points. Believe it and say you do. Believe that Jesus is risen from the dead, that he lives forever and then confess that belief with your lips. This is the simplicity of this passage, If I might dare to add to Paul, it would be that confession is not just a saying. It is much more an action. It is the way we do business with this thing called Christianity. Do we confess it, or do we ignore it?

To say that Christ died for us is certainly true and it is awesome. But it is also incomplete. He rose! He lives for us too! To leave Christ on the cross as our martyr is an unworthy Christianity. He is so much more. He is our victor! Believe it and confess it, every way you can, every day you can, to everyone you can.