I’ve written about this once, but I’m struck anew with the simplicity of the gospel message as proclaimed by the first believers. The resurrection was all they had!

And with great power the apostles were giving their testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and great grace was upon them all. (Acts 4.33, ESV)

I was stunned to recall a verse in the middle of the night, one I memorized when I was a kid. Does it really say that? Surely not. But I looked it up first thing the next morning, and it does. How did I miss it? Here’s the verse:

If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. (Romans 10.9, ESV)

Confess that Jesus is Lord. That’s big. Caesar is not Lord. I’m not Lord. Jesus is Lord. So there’s a commitment there. A change of allegiance. But what do we believe? That God raised Jesus from the dead. That’s all.

This is the Paul that had just written in this same letter a long treatise on how the gospel works. Romans chapters 1 – 5 is a thorough explanation of justification by faith, apart from the deeds of the law. You’d think that to be saved, you’d have to understand and believe all that. Nope.

Then that same morning, I received an email addressed to Navigator staff asking us to recall the Thessalonians’ experience. Paul writes:

They tell how you turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God, and to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead—Jesus, who rescues us from the coming wrath. (1 Thessalonians 1.9, 10, NIV)

“Turned to God from idols” = Jesus is Lord – check. And wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead – check. It’s the same as Romans 10.9.

I don’t yet know the implications of all this, but I suspect, as Andy Stanley argues in Irresistible, that we sometimes ask people to believe too much.

Moreover, brethren, I declare to you the gospel which I preached to you, which also you received and in which you stand, by which also you are saved, if you hold fast that word which I preached to you–unless you believed in vain. For I delivered to you first of all that which I also received: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He rose again the third day according to the Scriptures. (1 Corinthians 15.1 – 4, NKJV)