For Whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. Romans 10:13
While I was researching today’s text, I encountered a particular website that offered to explain how to be saved. First, the page presented some of the basics of the Gospel message, how that we are all sinners in need of a Saviour, and how God in His love for us offers salvation free to all. The page – citing our text today – then presented a nicely worded little prayer, after which it stated: ‘If you have prayed this prayer, you have now joined us in the family of God’. Really?? Salvation is as simple as reciting a few words found on a web page? Mind you, this isn’t the only web page that makes such a claim, and it isn’t run by the only church that makes such a claim. Now appearing to be tightly woven into the fabric on contemporary Christianity, this easy believism, repentance free gospel is growing in popularity, presumably because it spins out converts as readily as a politician spins out promises. But does our text really support the reciting of a prayer as the way of salvation? Do we need to say a prayer for God to save us? The short answer is no. The long answer follows.
Not a single verse in the entire Bible instructs us to utter a prayer to obtain salvation. It is true that the publican in the temple and the thief on the cross were saved as they prayed. But most of the others whose conversion is recorded in the New Testament were not. During his great Gospel sermon on the day of Pentecost, Peter did not respond to the question ‘what shall we do?’ with a command to pray. No, he told his Jewish audience to repent and be baptized (Acts 2:38). Philip did not baptize the Ethiopian eunuch after hearing his recital of a prayer, but after hearing his confession of faith. If there is a formula for salvation, it is found in 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’.
Many of the prayers suggested by the easy believists are for the person to invite the Lord Jesus into their heart. Or they are instructed to ‘give their heart to Jesus’. Where do they get that? It’s not found anywhere in my Bible! In fact, God condemns our hearts as being deceitful above all things and desperately wicked (Jeremiah 17:9). What type of prayer would the easy believists concoct out of today’s text? The word ‘prayer’ does not appear in the verse. In fact, it is found only once in the entire chapter 10, in verse 1 where Paul speaks of his prayer for his fellow Jews. The words ‘call upon the Name of the Lord’ do not refer to a ten-second prayer. The word ‘call’ is a present participle which does not refer to a single utterance but to a continual action by a particular group of people. In simpler words, calling on the Name of the Lord is something that saved people do, not a prayer that saves a person. The very next verse makes that plain: ‘How then shall they call on Him in Whom they have not believed?’
We have believed on the Lord Jesus Christ and are saved. Now, we can call upon His Name. -Jim MacIntosh