Till Death Do Us Part

The Covenant of Our Faith; Romans 10:8-15

 

Background:

• Divine Covenant Defined: God’s gracious, relational commitment to bless individuals and communities who have faith in Him and are faithful to Him.

• Covenant Requisite: Saving faith in Christ is required for entrance into the covenant community.

 

What Is Saving Faith in Christ?

1. The Need for Salvation

• God created all things to display His own glory

• We rejected God’s purpose

• Our rejection produced an infinite chasm between God and us, placing us under His wrath

1. The Plan of Salvation

• God planned our salvation before the world was created

• God used humanity’s rejection to advance His purpose of displaying His own glory, especially His righteousness, justice, wrath, grace, mercy, and patience

• God disclosed His plan of salvation through progressive and successive ways, clearly revealing His plan

• God’s primary intent is to display His glory through the exaltation of His Son

• God’s Plan of Salvation through Faith in Jesus Christ Maximizes God’s Intent

1. The Means of Salvation

• Sin pervades all of life rendering us incapable of saving ourselves

• Jesus Christ bears the judgment penalty for our sin

• God freely grants forgiveness through the His Son’s death and resurrection

• All who receive Jesus Christ by confessing His Lordship of their life and by believing in His redemptive act of living, dying and rising again from the dead will be saved

 

 

Till Death Do Us Part

The Covenant of Our Faith; Romans 10:8-15

Scripture Reading and Prayer by Leslie Evans, Romans 10:8-15 (slides)

1. Divine Covenant Defined: God’s gracious, relational commitment to bless individuals and communities who have faith in Him and are faithful to Him.
2. Covenant Requisite: Saving faith in Christ is required for entrance into the covenant community.
3.   What Is Saving Faith in Christ?
4. The Need for Salvation

• God Created All Things to Display His Own Glory

  • Humanity is the penultimate expression of His design

  • This unique position necessitated that humans be created as moral agents

• We rejected God’s Purpose for All Things

  • In Adam and Eve, humanity rejected God’s intent by falling into self-absorbed rebellion

  • Read Romans 3:23 (Slide 2)

  • This rejection creates an infinite chasm between God and humanity

  • This initial rejection by Adam and Eve continues in greater and greater force with each passing year

• Our rejection produced an infinite chasm between God and us, placing us under His wrath

  • Read Romans 1:18-19 (Slide 3)

• 1. The Plan of Salvation

• God planned our salvation before the world was created

• God’s plan of salvation is not a plan B, this is not some last minute, late hour reaction on behalf of God for humanity

• God used humanity’s rejection to advance His purpose of displaying His own glory, especially His righteousness, justice, wrath, grace, mercy, and patience

• God displays His attributes of holiness, righteousness, justice, wrath in His judgment of Adam and Eve and the rest of humanity

• God displays His attributes of grace, mercy, longsuffering, kindness in His gracious provision for Adam and Eve and the rest of humanity

• God disclosed His plan of salvation through progressive and successive ways, clearly revealing His plan

• The initial creation and fall

• The calling of Abraham

• The giving of the Law

• The giving of the kingdom in David

• The promises to the prophets

• The coming of Christ

• God’s primary intent is to display His glory through the exaltation of His Son

  • That is THE purpose of salvation, the glory of God through the exaltation of His Son

  • This contradicts the anthropocentric worldview of all religious systems

  • This contradicts the anthropocentric worldview of all secular systems

  • This contradicts the anthropocentric worldview of much of evangelicalism

  • We are not saved for our sakes, but for the sake of God’s glory manifested in the exaltation of His Son

• God’s Plan of Salvation through Faith in Jesus Christ Maximizes God’s Intent

• God revealed this plan through successive and progressive revelation

• God’s Plan Reveals His Glory

  • Humanity justly resides under the wrath of God

  • God graciously provides the means to restore the original design of creation

• God’s Discloses His Plan in Clear, Manifest, Open Ways

• Read Romans 10:8 (Slide 4)

  • His plan does not require some extraordinary effort to discover

  • No prodigious search necessary

• The Primary Intent of His Plan is to exalt His Son

  • He does this in the life, death and resurrection of His Son Jesus Christ

• Salvation by Faith in Jesus Christ Maximizes God’s Intent

  • He will not share credit with us

  • He will not allow anything to diminish His Son’s glory

• 1. The Means of Salvation

• Sin pervades all of life rendering us incapable of saving ourselves

• Jesus Christ bears the judgment penalty for our sin

• God freely grants forgiveness through the His Son’s death and resurrection

• Read Romans 10:9 (Slide 5)

• These two elements Confess and Believe are not two different steps of salvation

• Rather, these two elements are both present simultaneously when a person is saved

• Saved from what? Saved from our sins. More specifically, saved from the consequences of our sins. Our saved from the wrath of God because of our sins.

• Read Romans 10:10 (Slide 6)

  • Justification and salvation are not two different acts, but one act resulting in two outcomes

  • In baseball, if a person hits a homerun in the bottom of the ninth we would say, he hit a homerun and won the game – a single act, hitting the ball, with two positive outcomes

  • The reason I think this is one act is that in verse 13 it says, “Whoever will call upon the name of the Lord will be saved.”

  • A single act – call upon the name of the Lord; With two features – believe and confess

  • One result – saved; Two outcomes – justification and salvation

  • All who receive Jesus Christ by confessing His Lordship of their life and by believing in His redemptive act of living, dying and rising again from the dead will be saved

  • Read Romans 10:11-12 (Slide 7)

1.   Conclusion: How this truth unites our church, how does this Gospel faith unite?

• First, all people have been made in the image of God and therefore have infinite inherent value or worth – this must unite us as we affirm in each person here the value that is theirs in their relationship to their Creator

• Second, all people are sinners, residing under the wrath of God – this must unite us as we are all sinners and none of us stands perfect on our own

• Third, all believers are saved by grace and not on the basis of works – this must unite us as not one of us was saved through some means different than another

• Read Romans 10:13 (Slide 8)

• All, all who call upon the Lord

• The is the call of someone in need of help, someone who is desperate, someone that acknowledges their need

• Fourth, the indwelling Holy Spirit for every believer – this must unite us as every believer in the Lord Jesus Christ has the Holy Spirit, leading, guiding, convicting

• Fifth, the penultimate goal of the glory of God through the exaltation of His Son unites us with a common purpose

• Sixth, our common destination of eternity in the presence of God unites us

• Seventh, our common calling to take this message to the world (more next week)

• These seven and a host of others, makes the unity of this covenant community worth preserving

 

⁸But what does it say? “The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart”—that is, the word of faith which we are preaching, ⁹that 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; ¹⁰for with the heart a person believes, resulting in righteousness, and with the mouth he confesses, resulting in salvation. ¹¹For the Scripture says, “Whoever believes in Him will not be disappointed.” ¹²For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; for the same Lord is Lord of all, abounding in riches for all who call on Him; ¹³for “Whoever will call on the name of the Lord will be saved.”

¹⁴How then will they call on Him in whom they have not believed? How will they believe in Him whom they have not heard? And how will they hear without a preacher? ¹⁵How will they preach unless they are sent? Just as it is written, “How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news of good things!”