I would like to call your attention once more to verses 9 and 10 in the 10th chapter of Paul's epistle to the Romans.

That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus,

and shall believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead,

thou shalt be saved.

For with the heart men believeth unto righteousness,

and with the mouth, confession is made unto salvation. We are completing our analysis

of this great definition which the apostle gives us here of saving

faith. We've considered its content, we've considered its character, and now we're considering

the proof of saving faith. The apostle, you notice, is very concerned about this. He is dealing here,

and as he has dealt, indeed, from the very beginning of his epistle, with the great question

of salvation. Here in particular, he's dealing with it in terms of the rejection and the refusal

of the Jews to believe the gospel. So he is particularly

anxious to make the whole character of saving faith something perfectly clear and definite.

It's the last time he really does, sir, in this great epistle. So he says it, it were, summing up his great doctrine

of salvation. And that is why he troubles to put it in the way that we've been considering.

Now we are concerned here with this last aspect, which is the proof. And here the emphasis is

upon this confession with the mouth. If thou shall confess with thy mouth, the Lord Jesus, with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.

Now, having defined what he means by that, we spent our time chiefly last Friday in showing

how this worked itself out in the first age of the

Christian Church, the way in which we find it worked out in the New Testament itself. And then we

began at the very close last Friday to consider how we do this at this present time.

And I began with a negative, and the negative is to me very important with this matter.

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