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Examined Doctrine
PASSAGE · BSB

Romans 10

5 positions in the corpus lean on this chapter. Cited verses are marked.

1Brothers, my heart’s desire and prayer to God for the Israelites is for their salvation.

2For I testify about them that they are zealous for God, but not on the basis of knowledge.

3Because they were ignorant of God’s righteousness and sought to establish their own, they did not submit to God’s righteousness.

4For Christ is the end of the law, to bring righteousness to everyone who believes.

5For concerning the righteousness that is by the law, Moses writes: “The man who does these things will live by them.”

6But the righteousness that is by faith says: “Do not say in your heart, ‘Who will ascend into heaven?’ (that is, to bring Christ down)

7or, ‘Who will descend into the Abyss?’ (that is, to bring Christ up from the dead).”

8But what does it say? “The word is near you; it is in your mouth and in your heart,” that is, the word of faith we are proclaiming:

9that if you confess with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.

10For with your heart you believe and are justified, and with your mouth you confess and are saved.

11It is just as the Scripture says: “Anyone who believes in Him will never be put to shame.”

12For there is no difference between Jew and Greek: The same Lord is Lord of all, and gives richly to all who call on Him,

13for, “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.”

14How then can they call on the One in whom they have not believed? And how can they believe in the One of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone to preach?

15And how can they preach unless they are sent? As it is written: “How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!”

16But not all of them welcomed the good news. For Isaiah says, “Lord, who has believed our message?”

17Consequently, faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ.

18But I ask, did they not hear? Indeed they did: “Their voice has gone out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world.”

19I ask instead, did Israel not understand? First, Moses says: “I will make you jealous by those who are not a nation; I will make you angry by a nation without understanding.”

20And Isaiah boldly says: “I was found by those who did not seek Me; I revealed Myself to those who did not ask for Me.”

21But as for Israel he says: “All day long I have held out My hands to a disobedient and obstinate people.”

Who leans on it

Calvin on the nature of saving faithPRIMARY SOURCEAFFIRMS°Faith is a certainty about God's disposition toward the believer, not a bare crediting of propositions. Calvin builds the definition by elimination in Institutes III.ii.7: knowledge of God's will is not enough, because m…Jonathan Edwards on the nature of saving faithPRIMARY SOURCEAFFIRMS°Faith is one act of the whole soul receiving Christ, not a compound assembled from parts: "the whole soul according and assenting to the truth, and embracing of it ... with the belief, and with the inclination and affect…Second London Baptist Confession on natural / general revelationPRIMARY SOURCEAFFIRMS°Chapter 1.1 grants that creation and providence genuinely manifest God's goodness, wisdom and power, and that they do so far enough to leave every person inexcusable — but not far enough to save. Chapter 20, which has no…John MacArthur on the nature of saving faithPRIMARY SOURCEAFFIRMS°Faith as trust that turns to Christ and confesses him as sovereign Lord — the signature move of his "lordship salvation" position, where faith isn't framed as bare intellectual assent but as inseparable from submission t…Charles Haddon Spurgeon on the nature of saving faithPRIMARY SOURCEAFFIRMS°Explicit three-part definition — knowledge, assent (belief), and trust — worked through in turn as successive stages, with trust named as the culminating "lifeblood of faith" rather than the whole of it.