"But what saith it? The word is nigh thee, even in thy mouth, and in thy heart: that is, the word of faith, which we preach;
That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved."
Romans 10:8-9
This is good stuff, and it makes salvation seem very simple... and it is simple in some ways. Christ died for us all, and all of us will be raised from the dead. That level of salvation is as easy as looking at the staff that Moses set up for the Israelites... all you had to do was look, and you would live.
The complexity comes both because some people refused to look, thinking that something so simple was unable to save them, and also because when we talk about being saved, we are often talking about different things. In verse 13 it tells us that if we call upon the name of the Lord we will be saved, but then clarifies afterward that we can't call on someone we don't believe, and we can't believe someone that we haven't heard, etc. And I think the first verse here also indicates that the word needs to live in us, mouth and heart, before such a confession can have real power.
This isn't to say that the gospel isn't simple... it is pretty straightforward in terms of what God asks, and what we need to do. Christ even whittled the whole thing down into two commandments for us, if we can master them. What I am saying though is that we can't cheat the gospel. We can't just say this once and be done, never considering the Lord again. It is the indication of a state of mind and heart, not a free ticket to heaven. :) First let's study the word... the scriptures and the words of the prophets, and really work on grasping what God has to say... the parts and how they fit into a whole... and once we start understanding that and we can explain it to others and we really believe in it, well, then perhaps we'll be ready for this step, and for even more steps as we progress after being saved. :)
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