“If you confess with your mouth the
Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you
will be saved. For with the heart one believes to righteousness, and with the
mouth confession is made to salvation” (Romans 10:9-10)
We get encouraging emails from individuals and groups, such
as the regular mailings from RBC Ministries. A recent message from them was
entitled, “Share Your Faith,” using a Scripture in
1st Peter as a reference. All too often, however, and with too many people, “Share Your Faith” is something more like, “share your religion,” or possibly “my
way or the highway.” We all desperately need to “find God,” and how you do it, how you become right with
the Lord can seem to be confusing, depending on who you are listening to.
A month ago, we were in St. Michael’s Russian Orthodox
Cathedral, in Sitka, Alaska, and it was a rainy day. We were told that the area
of Sitka contains only about “20 good days a year,”
which they defined as “sunny” days. About 345 days
a year, they said, it is raining, snowing or overcast. But it really is a
beautiful place, rain or shine. We also toured the Finnish Lutheran Church
across the street. The men in black who greeted us at the door of the Orthodox
Church charged us for admission, but we consider it worth the price – the
experience was interesting to say the least.
The Orthodox Church had a number of plaques on the walls,
and each contained noteworthy information. The plaques included data about
Orthodox services, information on “The Alaska Saints,”
and a fascinating one was called: “What is the Orthodox
Church?" The answer provided on that plaque was lengthy and it included
these words: “The word ‘Orthodox’ is Greek for ‘right
glory’ and refers to the correctness and truth of the Orthodox Church’s faith
and worship,” citing John 4:23-24, which contains the words, “God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit
and truth.”
The plaque goes further: “Protestant
denominations (such as Baptist, Anglican or Episcopalian, Lutheran,
Presbyterian, etc.) have their origins in 16th-century Western Europe. These
groups were a departure from the Catholic Church which, five hundred years
previous, had departed from the Orthodox Church. Some of the Protestant
reformers were earnestly trying to return to the Church of the New Testament –
the early Church of the Apostles, which they believed had been distorted by the
Catholic Church. Ironically, with a bit of education they would have found what
they were seeking in the Orthodox Church.”
In other words, according to the Orthodox Church(es), the
Roman Catholics have it wrong and so do the Protestants, which is the all too
common refrain we hear in “Christian” groups – My group is right and
everybody else's group is wrong!
When we returned from a week in Alaska, I viewed and/or
opened over 4,000 emails, including a regular report from the “CR Daily – Your Source for Christian News.” It was dated
“July 2007,” and it had a commentary entitled, “Protestant Groups React to Bashing from Vatican,” quoting
an article issued in Rome. The article from the Vatican said, “Christ ‘established here on earth’ only one church...”
The other communities “cannot be called ‘churches’ in the
proper sense” because they do not have the ability to trace their bishops back
to Christ’s original apostles.” So, according to the Roman Catholics,
they are right and everybody else is wrong, which, when you think about it, includes
not only the Protestants, but also the
Orthodox Catholic Churches as well.
The Rev. Setri Nyomi, general secretary of the World
Alliance of Reformed Churches, in an open letter addressed to Cardinal Walter
Kasper, president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, said,
“An exclusivist claim that identifies the Roman Catholic
Church as the one church of Jesus Christ … goes against the spirit of our
Christian calling toward oneness in Christ. It makes us question the seriousness
with which the Roman Catholic Church takes its dialogue with the Reformed family
and other families of the church. It makes us question whether we are indeed
praying together for Christian unity.”
What a good question. We’ve been in many PROTESTANT
(non-Catholic) Churches who have a variety of denominational or non-denomination
labels, and they often hold that any church with a name that includes the word
“Catholic” is on the wrong track and should change
its ways. It’s frustrating. How do relatively honest, individual sinners who
really want to come to the Lord, know what to do? And it is at that point we
discover the real problem – our need is not really to find the right religion at
all. Our real need is to find God and become acceptable in His sight. It's HIS
way of looking at us that matters.
The answer to the problem is not as difficult as you might
think and it is found in plain words within our Scripture for today, which tells
us how to find God – It says, “If you
confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has
raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes to
righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made to salvation”
(Romans 10:9-10).
God’s gift to this world is not some mental ability that
enables us to correctly choose the right religion. His gift to all of us (including you and me) is the gift of His Son, Jesus Christ. It is with the “heart” not simply with the mind, that “one
believes to righteousness,” and when you trust in Him, you will not be
ashamed, as expressed in the statement, “with the
mouth confession is made to salvation.” You will want to tell others
about your new Best Friend, your Savior and King, the Lord Jesus Christ.
When we attempt to please God through mere religion, commendable
though our efforts may seem to be, we fail; not necessarily in our own sight,
but what is most important, we fail in the sight of God. He is the One who makes
the rules. He has decreed that, “All have sinned and come
short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23). The context of that verse
informs us “that a man (or a woman) is justified by faith apart from the deeds of the law”
(Romans 3:28). And the context continues with a look at Abraham, the formerly
childless man who became the “father of many nations”
(Genesis 17:4). Scripture says about the man that he “BELIEVED
God and it was accounted to him for righteousness" (Genesis 15:6, Romans
4:3). It continues that he is “the father,”
that is to say, the model “of all those who believe”
(Romans 4:11), no matter who we are or what religious or cultural setting we may be in. How can
you find the Lord and be made RIGHT in the sight of God?
You find God through faith in His Son. That's
how to be RIGHT with Him.
Father, I confess my need and trust in Your Son. Thank
You. In Jesus Name. Amen.
