The Way of Salvation | Romans 9:30-10:13
Brian Hedges | November 3, 2019
Turn in your Bibles this morning to Romans 9-10. We are continuing our series through Romans 9-11, and this morning we come to Romans 9:30 down through 10:13. At the beginning of this series, especially as we began to examine Paul’s teaching on the sovereignty of God, one of the things I asked of the congregation is that you would be patient in this series as we look at God’s word, and that you would not judge one message in and of itself, but the whole exposition of these three chapters.
In the last couple of weeks, we have looked at the sovereignty of God in salvation, as Paul wrestles with this incredible theological problem that he faced, the problem of unbelieving Israel, who had received such great privileges from God and yet had by and large rejected the gospel; at least, many of the Jews had. Of course, Paul himself was a Jewish believer, but in Romans 9:1-3 he expresses his great sorrow and heaviness of heart because of so many fellow kinsmen according to the flesh, fellow Jews, who have rejected Christ as the Messiah and have rejected the gospel and are therefore lost. In fact, he says that he could wish himself cursed and cut off from Christ for their sake.
So he’s asking this question, “Has the word of God failed?” and his basic answer is that the word of God has not failed, and then he defends this from two perspectives, the perspective of divine sovereignty and then of Israel’s responsibility, human responsibility. As we’ve seen in the last couple of weeks, Paul begins by appealing to the sovereign purpose of God. He has said that “not all who are of Israel are Israel,” and has given us the examples of Isaac, who was saved because he was the child of promise, in contrast to Ishmael, who was a child according to the flesh; and of Jacob, whom God chose while Esau was rejected.
The basic point here is that salvation has never been by race, but salvation is rather by grace. No Jewish person was ever saved simply because of their ethnic identity, but rather salvation has always been by God’s grace, by God’s free and sovereign mercy, and so Paul has quoted from the book of Exodus, where God says, “I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy.”
But now, as we get deeper into Romans 9, we begin to see the other side of the coin. Paul now begins to give us an emphasis on human responsibility, as he explains from man’s perspective, from the human perspective, why it is that Israel is not saved.
As we’re looking at this passage, we’re going to notice an emphasis on salvation. In fact, the word “saved” shows up several times in our passage this morning, in Romans 10:1, where Paul tells us that he prays for Israel, that they may be saved; and then when he gives us the actual message of salvation down in Romans 10:9-10.
So I want to title this message “The Way of Salvation,” and I think we can approach this with a very simple outline. We’re going to look at three things:
I. Why You Need To Be Saved
II. How Not To Be Saved
III. How You Can Be Saved
Let’s open up God’s word and look at these three things together.
I. Why You Need To Be Saved
First of all, why you need to be saved. Let’s read Romans 9:30 through 10:1. “What shall we say, then? That Gentiles who did not pursue righteousness have attained it, that is, a righteousness that is by faith…” Underline that word, righteousness. This is important in understanding why salvation is necessary.
Verse 31, “...but that Israel who pursued a law that would lead to righteousness did not succeed in reaching that law. Why? Because they did not pursue it by faith, but as if it were based on works. They have stumbled over the stumbling stone, as it is written, ‘Behold, I am laying in Zion a stone of stumbling, and a rock of offense; and whoever believes in him will not be put to shame.’
“Brothers, my heart’s desire and prayer to God for them [that is, for Israel] is that they may be saved.”
So you can see that Paul here is concerned for the salvation, he’s praying, even, for the salvation of Israel, that is, ethnic Israel, those who have not believed the gospel.
Now, any time we consider the doctrine of salvation in Scripture, anytime we consider why someone needs to be saved, the first question we have to ask is, “Saved from what?” What does it mean to be saved? Before we can answer why someone needs to be saved, we have to understand why salvation is necessary in the first place.
Salvation, of course, means deliverance, so to be saved means to be delivered. What does it that we need to be delivered from? I believe that the book of Romans gives us two answers to that question. Those answers are implicit, if not explicit, here in Romans 9-10.
(1) First of all, we need to be saved from our sin and our unrighteousness. As Paul here is emphasizing righteousness and is praying for the salvation of unbelieving Jews, the reason he prays for it is because they have attained to righteousness. They have not attained the righteousness of faith; they have pursued righteousness through works, but that leaves them unrighteous.
We know this because of the whole argument of the book of Romans up until this point. You remember that Paul gives us his thesis statement in Romans 1:16-17, where he says, “I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God for salvation for everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For in it [that is, in the gospel] the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith.”
So the gospel is all about salvation, and the way in which the gospel is the power of God for salvation is by revealing the righteousness of God. Then, in Romans 1:18 down through chapter 3:20, Paul is building an argument for why the righteousness of God is necessary. In chapter 1:18 he says that “the wrath of God is revealed against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who suppress the truth of God in unrighteousness.”
Paul begins to build this argument for why all Gentiles as well as all Jews, when you get into chapter 2, those with the law and those without the law, they are all unrighteous. In fact, as he says in Romans 3, “There is none righteous, no, not one,” and then in Romans 3:23, “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” The reason why we need to be saved is because of our sin and our unrighteousness. We need to be saved from our sins.
In fact, that’s what Jesus the Savior was sent to do. Remember those great words that were spoken to Joseph before Jesus was born of the virgin Mary. The angel came to him in Matthew 1:21 and said, “She shall bring forth a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he shall save his people from their sins.”
What do we need to be saved from? Why do we need to be saved? We need to be saved from our sin and our unrighteousness. To put it as simply as possible, God is righteous and we are not, and because we are not righteous, we need to be saved from our sins.
(2) The reason we need to be saved from our sins leads us to the second reason for the need for salvation, and that is because of God’s wrath and God’s judgment against our sins. We’ve already seen in Romans 1:18 that God’s wrath is “revealed against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men.” Part of salvation (and this is especially clear in the book of Romans) is salvation from the wrath of God.
Look at Romans 5:9. Paul says, “Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood [that is, justified by the blood of Christ, the cross of Christ, the death of Christ], much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God.”
Isn’t it interesting how he words that? He speaks of salvation in the future tense: “Much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God.” What does he mean by that? I think he is speaking here about the future demonstration of the wrath of God against sin on the day of judgment.
In fact, this is what we see in Romans 2:5-8. Paul says, “But because of your hard and impenitent heart you are storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath when God’s righteous judgment will be revealed. He will render to each one according to his works: to those who by patience in well-doing seek for glory and honor and immortality, he will give eternal life; but for those who are self-seeking and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, there will be wrath and fury.”
We need to be saved from our sins and our unrighteousness, and we need to be saved from God’s wrath and God’s judgment that will fall on those sins. That’s why salvation is needed.
Before we move on, the first thing we need to do is just apply this to our own hearts and lives, and we can apply it in two ways; first of all, by just asking the question, “Am I saved?” Are you saved? Have you been delivered from the wrath of God? Have you been delivered from your sins and delivered from your unrighteousness? That’s the first question.
The second question is this: If you are saved, do you share Paul’s burden for those who are lost? Notice again what Paul says in chapter 10:1, “Brothers, my heart’s desire and prayer to God for them is that they may be saved.” Can that describe you as well? Do you pray for those who are not saved? Do you pray that they would be saved?
We should never think that the doctrine of election and the doctrine of God’s sovereignty, which we have been considering over the past several weeks, is in any way inconsistent with a burden for the lost and with a commitment to pray for their salvation. Paul certainly did not think so. Paul believed in the doctrine of election, he has taught it in Romans 9, and yet immediately he turns around in Romans 10:1 and says, “My heart’s desire and prayer for them is that they might be saved.” You and I should also be praying for the salvation of those who are lost.
I love the heart of Charles Haddon Spurgeon, who preached unashamedly the doctrines of God’s sovereign grace, the doctrine of election, and yet was the greatest evangelist, probably, of the 19th century. In one place Spurgeon said, “God, save your elect, and then elect some more.” Now, the theology is not quite right. That’s not quite theologically correct. But the heart is right. We should be praying for the salvation of those who are lost.
The fact of the matter is we don’t know who the elect are and who are not elect. One of God’s great means of bringing people to saving faith in Christ is the fervent prayer of the church, the fervent prayers of the saints. Therefore let us be praying.
II. How Not To Be Saved
So we’ve seen, first of all, why you need to be saved, and then secondly, let’s notice how not to be saved.
This passage is about unbelieving Israel. This is Paul’s focus, and he’s showing us why it is that they are lost. In doing so, he gives us something of a profile of religious unbelief, and it shows us three ways not to be saved. I think this is important for us, because so many people today mistake the way of salvation. So many people think that essentially the way to get to heaven is to try to live a good enough life so that when you die or when you stand before God on the day of judgment God will weigh your good works over and against your bad works, and if you have more good works than bad, then you get in.
Well, everything that Paul says in this passage shows that that is not the case. Notice here three ways not to be saved.
(1) First of all, you cannot be saved by works of the law. Look again at chapter 9:30-32. “What shall we say, then? That Gentiles who did not pursue righteousness have attained it, that is, a righteousness that is by faith [we’ll come back to that in a few moments]; but that Israel who pursued a law that would lead to righteousness did not succeed in reaching that law. Why? Because they did not pursue it by faith, but as if it were based on works.” They’re not saved because they have pursued righteousness through works. The works of the law can never save us. The works of the law can never justify us.
Isn’t that exactly what Paul says in Romans 3:20? “For by works of the law no one shall be justified in his sight, for by the law comes the knowledge of sin.” What Paul is showing us in the book of Romans is that the law could never lead to salvation. The law can show us God’s righteousness, the law can show us God’s righteous character, the law can show us what is holy and just and good—in fact, Paul describes the law in just those terms in Romans 7.
But the law is something like an x-ray machine. It’s a great tool for diagnosis. Have you ever broken a bone, and you go to the emergency room, and there you in ER and they do an x-ray? What does the x-ray do? It can show the fracture in the bone, but the x-ray cannot set the bone. The x-ray cannot bring healing.
The law is like that. It can show you what is wrong, it can show you what is broken, it can show you the problem; but it can never bring restoration. The law can never bring salvation, “for by works of the law no one shall be justified in his sight.”
Well, the problem with these unbelieving Israelites is that they are attempting to be saved by works of the law. They think that they will be righteous by trying to keep the law. Such has not been the case, and no one will ever be saved by works of the law.
(2) The second way not to be saved is by religious zeal. Look at chapter 10:1-2. “Brothers, my heart’s desire and prayer to God for them is that they may be saved. For I bear them witness that they have a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge.” Here are people who have zeal, they have religious zeal, but it’s not a zeal that’s according to knowledge.
John Stott on this verse says this, “The proper word for zeal without knowledge, commitments without reflection, or enthusiasm without understanding is fanaticism, and fanaticism is a horrid and dangerous state to be in.”
This is part of the problem. There are many people in the world who are religious, but it is religion without Jesus, and religion without Jesus leads to a bad place. Religion without Jesus can actually turn people into worse people rather than better people. Have you ever noticed that sometimes religious people can be really mean, can be really mean-spirited, can be really self-righteous and judgmental and looking down on others and superior and holier-than-thou? People who have a zeal, even a zeal for God, but it’s not based on knowledge, it’s not based on truth. It’s not connected to the truth of the gospel.
You cannot be saved by your religious zeal, whether that zeal is expressed in sacrifice, in works, in morality, in law-keeping, in religious ceremony, in church attendance—any of the ways in which we think that our religion, our observance of religious practices, could bring salvation, they all fail.
Remember those words of Augustus Toplady:
“Not the labor of my hands
Can fulfill thy law’s demands.
Could my zeal no respite know,
Could my tears forever flow,
All for sin could not atone;
Thou must save, and thou alone.”
(3) You can’t be saved by works of the law, you can’t be saved by a religious zeal, and then thirdly (here’s a third way not to be saved), you can’t be saved by self-righteousness. Look at chapter 10:3. “For, being ignorant of the righteousness of God, and seeking to establish their own, they did not submit to God’s righteousness.”
Here is, again, the problem with unbelieving Israel: they are seeking to establish their own righteousness. They are self-righteous rather than relying upon the righteousness of God, this divine provision of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ.
This was exactly the problem with the apostle Paul until he was converted and brought to Christ. Remember how he describes this in Philippians 3. He describes his credentials, his pedigree. He was a Pharisee, he had all these reasons, he says, to have confidence in the flesh. He was “circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews, as to the law a Pharisee, as to zeal a persecutor of the church, as to righteousness under the law blameless.”
But then remember what he said in verses 7 and following. “But whatever gain I had I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ—” listen to this “—and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith.”
Well, this is what the unbelieving Jews were missing in Romans 10:3. “For, being ignorant of the righteousness of God, and seeking to establish their own, they did not submit to God’s righteousness.” You cannot be saved by works of the law, by religious zeal, or by self-righteousness. It doesn’t matter who you are; you can never be good enough. Your sins will condemn you.
The great Scottish Robert Murray M’Cheyne was one day passing out tracts and handed one to a very well-dressed woman, who was obviously someone who was well-off, someone who was from the upper echelons of society. She gave him a very proud look and she said, “Sir, you must not know who I am.” In his kind and tender way, M’Cheyne replied, “Madam, there is coming a day of judgment, and on that day it will make any difference who you are.”
So it is with us all. John Calvin said the first step to obtaining the righteousness of God is to renounce our own righteousness. This is how not to be saved. You can’t be saved by works of the law, by religious zeal, or by self-righteousness.
III. How You Can Be Saved
Well, then, how can we be saved? What is the way of salvation? That leads us to the third point, and I want you to notice here three things that Paul says about how we can be saved.
You all know that we have recently celebrated the 502nd anniversary of the Protestant Reformation, and you remember those great watchwords of the Reformation, the solas of the Reformation? We are saved by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, for the glory of God alone; and all of this is based on the word of God alone, the Scriptures alone.
Well, when you look closely at what Paul says here in the book of Romans you can see where the Reformers got this language, why they spoke of salvation by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone. That is the way of salvation, and that’s what we see in this book.
(1) First of all, we are saved by grace alone. The word “grace” doesn’t appear in our reading for today, but grace is all the way through the book of Romans. The book of Romans is a book full of grace. I’ll just remind you of Romans 3:23-24. Paul says that “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.” We are justified by his grace. We’re justified by the gift of God’s grace.
Then do you remember in Romans 5 where Paul emphasizes the free gift of righteousness that comes to us through the one man, Jesus Christ? He sets Christ in contrast to Adam, the first man. With Adam there was one man through whom sin came into the world, and death through sin; and in contrast to that you have Jesus, whose obedient life leads to righteousness and to life for all who will receive the free gift of righteousness.
Then in Romans 9, which we’ve been studying these paster several weeks, it’s all about the freedom of God’s mercy, the freedom of God’s grace. He will have mercy upon whom he will have mercy.
This is what it means to be saved. This is the only way to be saved, to be saved by grace, the free and unmerited favor of God given to us as a gift, given to those who do not deserve it.
I once heard the testimony of a man named Tom Papania was at one time a very violent member of the Mafia. He was a hardened criminal, a sophisticated, ruthless gangster of the worst sort. God brought a Christian man into his life who continually invited him to come to church. He didn’t want to go, but finally, just to get the man off his back, he decided that he would.
The church had a small congregation, but they all seemed so happy that Tom thought they must have been hiding something. He surmised that they must have been covering up some incredible amount of money and were playing a practical joke on him, so he determined he would go back to the church, he would murder the pastor, and he would steal the money.
With this as his intention, he went back to that church to see the pastor in his office, and he walked out a saved man, because the pastor began to talk to him about Jesus and about his need for salvation and shared the gospel with him.
I’ll never forget how Tom Papania summed up his testimony. He said, “One day, God had nothing better to do, so he rolled up his sleeve and reached down into hell and found the dirtiest, filthiest thing he could find. He found me, and he plucked me out and cleaned me off and saved me.”
Folks, that’s grace. That’s what it means to be saved by grace alone. It means that God takes initiative and that God plucks us out of the mire, he rescues us out of our sin, and he does it freely, as a gift.
(2) We are saved by grace alone, and then we are saved through faith alone. Look again at chapter 9:30. Paul says, “What shall we say, then? That Gentiles who did not pursue righteousness have attained it, that is, a righteousness that is by faith.”
Now, he’s talking here about Gentiles (that is, non-Jews) who have come to believe in Jesus Christ, and he says that they weren’t pursuing righteousness. They weren’t even looking for it, and yet they’ve attained it. How is it that they’ve attained it? They’ve attained it by faith. We are saved by grace alone, through faith alone.
Indeed, the rest of Romans 4, at least Romans 4:5-11 or 12, 13, those verses are really showing us the two kinds of righteousness, a contrast between law righteousness and faith righteousness. He’s showing us that law righteousness could never lead to salvation, but faith righteousness does.
(3) We are saved by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone. You see the emphasis on Christ in chapter 10:4. Paul says, “For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes.” That verse is actually one of the most controversial texts in the book of Romans. How do we exegete that verse? How do we interpret it? There are lots of different options, and it all hangs on the word “end.” Christ is the end, the telos (τελος) of the law.
That word “end” could mean Christ is the goal of the law. It could also mean end in the sense of termination, the ending point. Charles Haddon Spurgeon preached a sermon on this verse, and he actually ran it in three ways, and I think all of these are true to Scripture.
He said that, first of all, Christ being the end of the law for righteousness means that Christ is the purpose or the goal of the law. You remember how Paul says elsewhere that the law is the guardian or the schoolmaster to lead us to Christ. The law was given to show us the reality of sin and our need for salvation, to show God’s people in the Old Testament their need for a mediator, for a redeemer. Christ is therefore the goal of the law, the purpose for which the law was given in the first place.
Secondly, Spurgeon said that Christ is the end of the law because he is the law’s fulfillment. Jesus came and he perfectly fulfilled the law. He obeyed every precept of the law. He did all that the law required. He perfectly obeyed God, unlike us, who have broken the law in point after point, in time after time, action after action. We could just summarize it this way. Do you remember how Jesus summarized the law with the two greatest commandments? The first, he said, is to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength; and the second is to love your neighbor as yourself. Well, Jesus did that. We have not, but Jesus did. He perfectly loved God, he perfectly loved neighbor. He absolutely fulfilled the law in every point. He is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes because he has fulfilled that law.
Here’s the third thing that Spurgeon said. He said that Christ has also brought the termination of the law; that is, he has brought an end to the law, and in a couple of different respects. First of all, he’s brought a termination to the law as a law covenant. We are no longer under the law covenant. Paul says it, doesn’t he, in Romans 6:14? He says, “For sin shall not have dominion over you, for you are not under the law but under grace.”
You might think of the law and grace as two different kingdoms, two different regimes. There’s the kingdom of the law that reigns over all those who are in sin, and then there is the kingdom of grace. In fact, in Romans 5 Paul describes grace reigning in righteousness, and he says, “Sin shall not have dominion over you, because you are not under the law any longer, but you are now under grace.” We are not under the law as a covenant.
We could also say this, that we are no longer under the curse of the law. Galatians 3:13 tells us that Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law because he has become a curse in our place, for our sakes. As it is written, “Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree.” When Jesus died on the cross, what happened? When Jesus died on the cross, Jesus became a curse for us. He was cursed under the wrath of God. He was judged for our sins. The curse that we deserved fell on him. He was innocent, he was righteous, and yet he was treated as if he was sinful, and therefore he has redeemed us from the curse of the law. He has completely exhausted, he has taken that curse, he has taken that penalty. He has fully paid the penalty for our sins.
In his commentary on Romans, James Montgomery Boise tells the story of a worker in the 19th century, a social worker named Henry Moorehouse. He lived in London, and one day he was walking down the street and he saw a little girl who was carrying a jar or a pitcher of milk, and she slipped and she dropped the jar and it broke, and she was very upset over this broken jar, this broken pitcher of milk.
He began to inquire why she was so upset, and she was afraid that her mother would severely punish her when she got home because of this broken jar. So he tried to help her put it back together, tried to reassure. They were unable to fully put it back together; in fact, when they almost had it back together again she again dropped it and it just shattered in pieces, and she was distraught. She was so upset.
But he wanted to help her, so he took her to a little shop, and he bought her a new pitcher so that she would have a complete and a whole pitcher, a jar to carry home the milk in. He asked her the question, “Do you still think your mother is going to punish you?”
She said, “Oh, no, sir, because this one is a lot better than the one we had before.”
Well, that little story is just a faint picture of what Christ has done for us in salvation. We’ve broken the law, and we are characterized by our unrighteousness, but Christ has come and he as fulfilled the law, and what he has done is so much better than anything that we had before. He has completely removed from us the penalty of our sins; not only that, he has fulfilled the law in our place. We are, therefore, saved by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone.
Then when you keep reading in chapter 10:5 and following you see this contrast I’ve already mentioned, the contrast between law righteousness and faith righteousness. Look at what he says in verse 5. “For Moses writes about the righteousness that is based on the law, that the person who does the commandments shall live by them.” This is according to the book of Leviticus. This is the basic principle of the law: those who do will live. Obedience to the law, doing the law, is necessary in order to live by the law. The problem, of course, is that none of us perfectly keep the law. We break the law rather than doing the law or obeying the law.
Then look at the contrast between law righteousness and faith righteousness. Pick up in verse 6. Paul says, “But the righteousness based on faith says, ‘Do not say in your heart, “Who will ascend into heaven?”’ (that is, to bring Christ down) ‘or “Who will descend into the abyss?”’ (that is, to bring Christ up from the dead). But what does it say? ‘The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart’ (that is, the word of faith that we proclaim).”
So now Paul is quoting from the book of Deuteronomy, and his point is basically this, that in contrast to the law, which requires you to do in order to live, the way of salvation through faith is very simple, and it’s very accessible. It’s the word of faith, and this word is near. It’s in your heart, it’s in your mouth, the word of faith that we proclaim.
Then look at these key verses, verses 9 and 10. Paul says, “...because, 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. For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved.”
There are perhaps no two more simple verses in all of Scripture about the way of salvation than that. The way to salvation is not by works, it is through faith, through faith in Christ alone, confessing that Jesus is Lord and believing in your heart that God raised him from the dead. If you do that, you will be saved.
Then Paul just expands this in verses 11-13. Verse 11 says, “For the Scripture says, ‘Everyone who believes in him will not be put to shame.’” This is a quotation from the book of Isaiah. He’s already quoted this, actually, at the end of the Romans 9.
What does he mean, everyone who believes will not be put to shame? I think he’s thinking here of the day of judgment, and he’s saying that if you believe in Christ, when you stand before God on the day of judgment you won’t be put to shame, you won’t be condemned; rather, you will be saved.
Then verse 12 shows that this is for both Jews and Gentiles. “For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; for the same Lord is Lord of all, bestowing his riches on all who call on him.” It’s for the Jew and the Greek, it’s for the Jew and for the Gentile.
Then verse 13 describes faith with different language. He says, “For ‘everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved,’” now quoting from the prophet Joel. Very simply, how do you believe in Christ? How do you express saving faith? You ask God to save you for Jesus’ sake. You call on the name of the Lord, and everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.
Won’t you call on his name today? My friend, have you recognized your need for salvation? Have you recognized that you are a sinner, that you are unrighteous, and that because of your sin and your unrighteousness you are deserving of the wrath and the judgment of God? Do you see? Maybe you’ve seen for the first time this morning that you can’t be saved by your morality, by your law-keeping, by your own righteousness. You can’t be saved by religious zeal. This is the way to be lost, not the way to be saved. How then can you be saved? There’s only one way. The only way to be saved is by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone.
Weary, working, burdened one,
Wherefore toil you so?
Cease your doing; all was done
Long, long ago.
Cast your deadly doing down,
Down at Jesus’ feet;
Stand in him, in him alone,
Gloriously complete.
Brian G. Hedges
