Romans 10:17

Romans 10:17: “So then faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.” Learning something takes a lot of work. Study, memorization, repetition, and you can get exhausted. You have to put a lot into it. Thanks be to God that you aren’t saved by learning. You’re saved by faith. There’s a difficult distinction here for us to understand, between believing and understanding. You can believe without understanding. Faith is not the activity of your mind. Faith is the reception, the mark on the doorposts of your heart, of grace you have received. Scripture says that “faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God”: hearing itself, the capacity to receive, is given by the Word. You do nothing. God and his Word does everything. Faith then working in your heart causes you to overflow in activity. Faith is not dead, but living and active. It will cause you to obey the first table of God’s Law, to “love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and with all your mind,” so that you are made to praise and confess your faith, to call on him in trouble, and to worship him and go back to receive his Word again and again. That’s what comes as a result of your salvation. And faith causes you to obey the second table of God’s Law, to love “your neighbor as yourself,” reflecting the love Jesus had for you in saving you, sharing that love you have received with others. The life and righteousness you have is all what Jesus did, keeping that Law in your place. And he gives it to you freely by his Word. Amen. Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, forevermore. Amen.