the Third Week after Easter
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Daily Devotionals
Grace for Today
Romans 10:14
‘How shall they believe in him of whom they leave not heard?’
Read Amos 8:1-13
A few months ago, I listened very carefully to one of America’s most well known fundamentalist preachers. On his nationwide television broadcast he was talking about his ‘salvation experience’, and this is what he said: ‘When I got saved, I did not know anything at all about the Bible, I could not quote one verse of Scripture, and I did not know anything at all about the lordship of Christ; I simply believed that there was somebody in heaven who loved me and would forgive me of my sins. ‘His testimony, I am sure, was true to his experience. It reflects the essence of ‘easy-believism’ and ‘decisionism’.
But in the text quoted above, and in the whole context of Romans chapter 10, Paul tells us that true faith and true salvation come as the result of knowledge. Do not misunderstand me, I do not suggest that you must become a theologian to be saved, or that you can obtain salvation by your own mental powers, but I do say that where there is no knowledge of the gospel there is no true saving faith.
It is not enough simply to believe; you must believe what God reveals in his Word. In order to believe on Christ, you must know something about Christ. You must know who he is. He is the God-man, the Lord of glory. Salvation begins with a knowledge of Christ’s lordship. Everywhere in the New Testament men and women sought mercy from the hands of the Lord and called upon the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. It is not possible for me to trust Christ as the all-sufficient Savior of my everlasting soul until I know who he is, the Lord Jesus Christ. And you must know what the Lord Jesus Christ has done. Being both God and man, by his one great sacrifice, through the shedding of his blood unto death, the Lord Jesus Christ has put away all the sins of all who trust him, and now the risen exalted Christ reigns in heaven to save sinners. This saving knowledge that produces faith comes by divine revelation through the preaching of the gospel. Anyone who is totally ignorant of the gospel cannot believe the gospel.
