Guest Contributor Seth Postel
"... if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved; for with the heart a person believes, resulting in righteousness, and with the mouth he confesses, resulting in salvation. For the Scripture says, 'Whoever believes in Him will not be disappointed.' For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; for the same Lord is Lord of all, abounding in riches for all who call on Him; for 'Whoever will call on the name of the LORD will be saved.'"
Does a person have to believe that Yeshua is God in order to be saved? According to Paul, absolutely! Faith, according to Paul, is expressed by confessing that Yeshua is "Lord" (vv. 9-10). This confession is crucial since "there is only one Lord" whether one is Jewish or Gentile, and therefore there are "abounding riches for all who call on him" (v. 12). You might say to yourself: "Perhaps Paul is just using "Lord" here as an honorary title ('sir')?" Not a chance!! To prove his point about calling on Yeshua as Lord, Paul quotes Joel 2:32 (v. 13). "And it will come about that whoever calls on the name of the LORD [YHWH, Yahweh] will be delivered ['saved]" (Joel 2:32 & Hebrews 3:5). Paul, a Jewish man living during the Second Temple period, a leading Bible scholar of his day, would never have used this verse as a reference to Yeshua unless... Unless he realized, after years of studying the OT Scriptures and then meeting Yeshua personally, that Yeshua is LORD! Confessing that Yeshua is Lord means nothing less than confessing that Yeshua is "L-O-R-D, Yahweh, the God of Israel."
