Believe In Your Heart

(Romans 10:9-10) “That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. {10} For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness, and with the mouth, confession is made unto salvation.”

Starting in Romans Chapter 10 verse 9, Paul is telling the Jews or anyone else who would listen to how to be saved. 

The thing that I want you to understand is that salvation doesn’t come from man. It comes from God; it comes out of His grace. All one needs to do is to just open the door by faith to the grace of God. Do not think that you have saved yourself when you believe in your heart that God has raised Jesus from the dead; for you have not. It is God who has saved you.

(Ephesians 2:8) “For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God:” 

There is another thing that you need to understand about what Paul means by, “believe in thine heart”.

1. The word “believe” is the verb for the noun “faith”. Most of the time the sentence that has the word “believe” can be rewritten. Using the word “faith” in place of “believe” will often have the same meaning. 

2.    C.H. Spurgeon in his little book “All of Grace” says, “What is faith? It is made of three things- knowledge, belief, and trust.”  I want you to understand just what faith is so that you can know you have it.

a.   One cannot believe anything that one does not know. Having knowledge is the first step into faith. There is more than one way to gain knowledge but the easiest way to gain knowledge is to hear it. Paul points this out by asking the question in Romans 10:14, “How then shall they call on him in whom they have not believed? and how shall they believe in him of whom they have not heard? and how shall they hear without a preacher?

Paul ends by saying, (Romans 10:17) “So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.” This is the reason Jesus commanded, (Mark 16:15) “And he said unto them, Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature.”

b. The next thing is that is needed to have faith is “belief”. What Spurgeon means is to accept the thing that you hear as true. You hear a lot of things and then have to decide what is true and what is not. When you do hear the gospel I believe that the Holy Spirit will give you a sense that it is true. On top of that, there is a lot of evidence that the gospel is true.

c. Now you can hear a lot of things, that when you hear them you know that they are true, but can you “trust” them? “Trust” is the last thing you need if you are to have faith. Just because you hear something that you know is true, does not mean that you can trust it or that you want to trust it. For example, you can hear that if you eat less you will lose weight. You know that it is true but do you trust it enough to eat less? 

3. When you hear this, (Romans 10:9) “That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved.” 

Do you accept the truth of this and do you trust the one that made this promise? Do you trust him enough to do what He asked you to do which is to believe in thine heart that God has raised Him from the dead? 

God is the one that makes the promise to save you if you believe with both mind and emotions which is your heart. Do you believe without question that it is true, and do you trust it?

*Devotional written by Ralph Williams, retired pastor and member of One Hope Mobile.

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