Romans 10:9, 10 - That if you confess with your mouth, "Jesus is Lord," and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you confess and are saved.

Introduction:

Salvation is granted to us on the basis of the twin actions of Confession and Belief.

I. What is the meaning of confession?

A. There's some misunderstanding about this matter in some segments of the church today. We know that God's words are creative - by His Word the worlds were created, by His Word all things are sustained. Some want us to believe that because we are like God, we too have power to create with our words.

For example, if you're driving up to a toll booth on the turnpike and in the land next to you is a beautiful, blue Mercedes. You would like to have a car like that, and you believe that as one of the "Children of the King", you should only have the best. So what do you do? You claim it. You confess it out loud, "I am going to own a car just like that." Some teachers go a little farther and instruct us to be specific and name precisely what it is that we want. By speaking it forth, we can, by the power of confession, bring it to pass. Well let me tell you, it didn't work for me. I'm still driving a crumpled nosed '87 Buick station wagon. And furthermore, to me that sounds more like covetousness than faith.

You see, they have gone too far. We are like God in many ways. For example, we have the capacity for relationships, and the most important ingredient, communication.

If I am ill, I do not have the power to speak my own healing into existence. Of course a hopeful positive attitude is always helpful in maximizing conditions for healing. But our faith for healing is not in our own ability to create, but our faith is in God who alone has this power.

If mankind ever had the ability to bring something out of nothing by speaking it into existence, that ability was lost when Adam and Eve were expelled from the Garden of Eden. Only God can create, if we say we can too, we are really claiming to "be God", rather than possessing the marred image of God. Actually, the "creative word" teaching is only a very short distance from the New Age teachings which horrify us all. Our words are testimonial, they are merely communication, not creative.

B. What "confess" literally means is, "to say the same thing", i.e., to agree with God about the identity of Jesus. He is God's only Son, born of a virgin, crucified to pay the penalty for our sin, and risen again to sit on the right hand of the Father.

When you confess the Lord Jesus, who are you then claiming that He is?

C. Let's look at significance of the expression, "Jesus is Lord."

The word here is "kurios", which means "master." Remember when Jesus was being tempted? At one point Jesus said to Satan, "Do not put the Lord your God to the test." (Matthew 4:7) Referring to God, Jesus used the word "kurios". Again in verse 10, He said, "worship the Lord your God." At another place, Jesus called God "Father, Lord of heaven and earth" (Matthew 11:25), and when identifying the greatest command He said "Love the Lord your God with all your heart." (Mark 12:30) This He quoted from what is called the "Shema", the most oft repeated prayer in the world, taken from Deuteronomy 6, "the Lord our God is One".

So, when we say, "Jesus is Lord", we are saying, "Jesus is God". The people who belong to the sect or cult called "Jehovah Witnesses" apparently do not understand where the word came from. In the revelation which God gave to Moses at the "burning bush", the name identifying God was "YHWH". In the ancient Hebrew there were no vowels - they seemed to have been supplied by oral tradition. Later, these four consonants, "YHWH" were put together to make up a new word because the Jews feared to say the name of God out loud. This was done to avoid even the possibility of taking Lord's name in vain. So ancient scribes took these four consonants, and combined with them three vowels which they borrowed from another word for "lord", the word "adonai". So, Jesus is Jehovah! Jesus is God! (Jehovah Witnesses really believe that Jesus is actually Michael the Archangel.)

The word "kurios" then is the New Testament equivalent of "Jehovah." Remember what Jesus said about God and "mammon" (money)? "No man can serve two masters" (Matthew 6:24). Again, the word is "kurios". You get to choose, but you will serve a master!

I once visited an elderly Salvation Army man in the hospital. His younger years had been lived out during a time when the Salvation Army was known for much more than merely ringing bells along side the Christmas bucket outside the Mall entrance. At that time it was very clear that their priority was on saving souls. Lying in his bed, this wrinkled faced man with a twinkle in his eye told of the days when he would go down the main street of Manchester, CT witnessing. One of his methods of choice was to wear a sandwich board. As people would approach him from the front they would see the words, "I Am God's Fool." Of course after they passed him they wouldn't be able to resist reading what was printed on the sign on his back. It read, "Whose Fool Are You?"

The Bible makes it very clear, that each of us will serve a master. The question that remains is simply, who will that master be? Will it be the Lord Jesus Christ, or will it be sin and Satan?

To "confess" that Jesus is Lord means that you are pledging yourself to be a Servant of the Lord - He is your Master.