Quote:
Originally Posted by Costeon
In Romans 10:9-10, Paul locates our justification and salvation in having faith that God raised Jesus from the dead and in confessing that Jesus is Lord. This saving faith is something in the heart that is confessed with the mouth.
"9 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. 10 For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved."
What is your approach to harmonizing this passage with Acts 2:38? How do they go together?
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Verbal confession of Christ with sincere faith in Him is part of repenting and being baptized in His name. Both
Romans 10 and
Acts 2 are exhortations based upon
Joel 2:32 (and
Psalm 86:5). Repent and be baptized in His name is referred by Peter as how to "call upon the name of the Lord", whereas Paul refers to "believing in your heart and confessing the Lord Jesus with your mouth". They refer to the same thing, which we see in
Acts 22:16. There Paul recounts his own conversion, where he was instructed to be baptised and wash away his sins, calling on the name of Lord.
Therefore,
Romans 10 is referring to conversion-salvation with the emphasis on faith and confession of Christ in apposition to continuance in Judaism (as indicated by the context of Romans). Paul is explaining to Christians as well as to enquiring Jews (see
Romans 2:17 etc) the fundamental elements of faith and confession of Messiah as being the key distinctive of Christianity (and of salvation).
Peter was however actually exhorting the listeners to do something right then and there, to put into actual action the conceptual ideas expounded by Paul in
Romans 10. Paul gives the theory, Peter gives the praxis, if I may oversimplify it a bit.
Quote:
According to the standard UPCI view, salvation is not experienced till you have been baptized in water and baptized in the Spirit, so if this is how you believe, how would you explain that salvation is not in fact experienced in belief/faith and confessing that faith as Paul states here in Romans 10?
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The UPC is generally very deficient in giving exhaustive treatments of doctrine. Moreover, the UPC does not have a coherent soteriology in it's official statement of beliefs/Articles of Faith. I will go further and say their official soteriology is in fact unscriptural, and is based entirely on wordsmithing a compromise in order to make possible the original Merger out of which the UPC came into being.
Biblically, salvation is a process, beginning with election in Christ and culminating in the Resurrection and Judgment. Repentance and faith, baptism, and receiving the Spirit are all necessary component parts of the conversion experience ("becoming a Christian"). There is no reconciliation between that and
Romans 10 needed. It is only a felt need by those unsure of their own doctrine, in my opinion. As I explained above in this post, confession of Christ takes place in baptism.