For Your Salvation

Establishing Your Own Righteousness

“Brethren, my heart’s desire and my prayer to God for them is for their salvation. For I testify about them that they have a zeal for God, but not in accordance with knowledge. For not knowing about God’s righteousness and seeking to establish their own, they did not subject themselves to the righteousness of God. For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes.” (Romans 10:1-4 NASB1995)

Romans, chapters 9-11, teach on the subject of the Jews who were once God’s chosen people, but who rejected Jesus Christ as the Christ, the Messiah, the anointed of God. They also rejected the New Covenant God now has with his people Israel (Jew and Gentile by God-persuaded faith in Jesus Christ). And they chose to hold on to the Old Covenant liturgical, ceremonial, sacrificial, purification, circumcision, dietary, and Sabbath laws, believing that if they kept those laws that they would be righteous.

Today this would be like those who profess faith in Jesus Christ but who are relying on their own good works of the flesh to get them into heaven, and to make them approved by God. Or they are those who are deciding to establish their own righteousness via a man-created gospel message which makes no requirements of them for biblical repentance and for walks of obedience to our Lord’s commands under the New Covenant. For they twist the Scriptures to their own advantage to be pleasing to human flesh.

So, to understand what God does require of us who profess faith in Jesus Christ, we should go back to the beginning of the book of Romans and read chapters 1 to 16, in their full context, and there we will get a much clearer picture of what the New Covenant looks like, and what the gospel of Christ looks like in its full context. And it is critical that chapter 7 is read and understood in the full context of chapters 6 and 8. Too many people are teaching chapter 7 out of context and are making excuses for their sin.

But by God-gifted faith in Jesus Christ, which is not of our own doing, we are crucified with Christ in death to sin and raised with Christ to walk in newness of life in him, no longer to live as slaves to sin but as slaves to righteousness in walks of obedience to God’s commands. We are no longer to permit sin to reign in our mortal bodies to make us obey its desires. For if sin is what we obey, it results in death. But if obedience to God is what we obey, it results in sanctification, and its end is eternal life with God (see Romans 6:1-23).

For Jesus Christ taught that to come to him we must deny self, take up our cross daily (die daily to sin), and follow (obey) him. For if we hold on to living in sin and for self, we will lose our lives for eternity. But if we deny self, die daily to sin, by the Spirit, and we walk in obedience to our Lord and to his commands, in his power, then we have eternal life with God. For not everyone who calls him “Lord” will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one DOING (obeying) the will of God (see Luke 9:23-26; Matthew 7:21-23).

Righteousness Based on Faith

“But what does it say? ‘The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart”—that is, the word of faith which we are preaching, that 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.’” (Romans 10:8-10 NASB1995)

Now this is one of the most misquoted and misinterpreted passages of Scripture on the gospel of our salvation. And many people are teaching this as the whole gospel, while excluding other teachings in the New Testament, and in the book of Romans as a whole, which do not teach that a mere verbal confession of Christ as Lord and a belief in his bodily resurrection is sufficient alone for our salvation from sin and eternal life with God. And part of the issue has to do with how we define certain words in our language.

For the word “confess” is not lip service only. In this context it means to speak what agrees with what God holds to be true, to align ourselves with God and with his teachings on the subject of the gospel in its full context. But this is not a surface level agreement, but a heart and mind and soul agreement with God that we are sinners, by nature, and that Jesus died on that cross to put our sins to death with him so that, by faith in him we will now die to sin and live to God in walks of obedience to his commands.

And for a Jew to publicly acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord (God, the Christ, the Messiah), and that God the Father raised him from the dead, it was the “kiss of death” for them. This was not a casual admission and confession like it has become today. It was death to their old lives, and it was a change to now surrendering their lives to Jesus Christ as Lord (Owner-Master) of their lives, with God being the one in charge, and no longer their human flesh. It was death to their old lives and surrender to the Lord.

For we learn in 1 John 1-3 that if we claim that we have fellowship with God, but yet we walk in darkness (sin), we are liars. If we claim that we know God, but we do not obey his commandments, in practice, we are liars. For it is not the one who claims he is “in Christ” who is “in Christ,” but it is the one who has denied self, died with Christ to sin, and who is now walking in obedience to our Lord and to his commands, in practice, and no longer in sin. We have the hope and the promise of eternal life with God in heaven.

[Matthew 7:13-14,21-23; Luke 9:23-26; John 10:27-30; Acts 26:18; Romans 1:18-32; Romans 2:5-10; Romans 3:23; Romans 6:1-23; Romans 8:1-14; 1 Corinthians 10:1-22; Galatians 5:16-24; Ephesians 2:8-10; Ephesians 4:17-32; Ephesians 5:3-6; Titus 2:11-14; Hebrews 3:1-19; Hebrews 4:1-13; Hebrews 10:19-39; Hebrews 12:1-2; 1 Peter 2:24; 1 John 1:1-10; 1 John 2:3-6; 1 John 3:4-10; Revelation 2:1-29; Revelation 3:1-22] 

Broken and Contrite  

An Original Work / May 13, 2012

Christ’s Free Servant, Sue J Love

I come before You, Lord, my Savior,

With humble heart and crushed in spirit.

I bow before You, I implore You,

Heal my broken heart, I pray.

Love You, Jesus, Lord, my master,

You are the King of my heart.

Lord, purify my heart within me;

Sanctify me, whole within.

Oh, Lord, I long to obey fully

The words You’ve spoken through Your Spirit.

I pray You give me grace and mercy,

Strength and wisdom to obey.

Father God, my heart’s desire,

Won’t You set my heart on fire?

Lord, cleanse my heart of all that hinders

My walk with You, now I pray.

Oh, Jesus, Savior, full of mercy,

My heart cries out for understanding.

I want to follow You in all ways,

Never straying from Your truth.

Holy Spirit, come in power,

Fill me with Your love today.

Lord, mold and make me; 

Your hands formed me;

Live Your life through me, I pray.

https://vimeo.com/118841304

For Your Salvation

An Original Work / December 23, 2025

Christ’s Free Servant, Sue J Love