Romans 10:8-13

Whether you blog it over breakfast, podcast it on your jog, or just enjoy it with a bag of chips on the couch at ten o’clock, the week’s political news brings a lot of double-talk.  Political figures are harpooned again and again for flip-flopping like fish out of water.  The stances of many on issues seem to change opportunistically.  It’s one facet of our political tension in America, regardless of our party-leanings.  We’re frustrated with people whose mouths don’t match up with what’s in their hearts.

It’s not just political figures who are opportunistic with the motions of their mouths.  Sometimes we have spiritual double-talk of a sort.  We sit in the car, stuck on the 405 at 4:05, going only four or five at best.  The motions of our mouths speak a tired despair over our day and what we’ve not got done and never will.  Also, the guilt of our sins hangs on us and hampers us, almost like running overloaded with baggage through a crowded terminal to catch a connecting flight.  We think and say things like: “If I just adjust things a little bit, I can carry this load better and make it work.”  “If I only try this or that, I’ll feel better about myself.”  The Apostle Paul would say that kind of speech doesn’t match up with what we’ve claimed in our hearts.

We, who believe, have in our hearts “the word of faith.”  The word of faith is important because it’s the message of trust in the Lord.  We trust in a God who did everything necessary to save us: Jesus died and rose.  Sin is paid; death is done.  By faith, the trust that God does that work of salvation is in our hearts.  Paul says it reaches our mouths, too: “It is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you confess and are saved.”  Take your guilt and shortfalls and drop them at Jesus’ feet; set down the bags, and speak from the heart the truth of who you are: the Lord’s own, bought with Christ’s blood, saved.  There is no difference; whatever the problem, whatever your background, let your mouth confess who you are.  You are saved by Jesus’ work; your work is simply to confess your joyous confidence in him.