What is the very heart of Christianity – that from which all else in faith flows? Where do we begin? This question is a worthwhile exercise for longtime Christians, but it is pivotal for nonbelievers. When I reject the gospel, they might reasonably ask, what is the experience of faith I am rejecting? And if I accepted it, what would be the first consequence? What would happen? Where would this experience begin exactly; what is the very beginning of the Christian faith?

DESCRIPTIONS OF THE GOSPEL VS. DESCRIPTIONS OF FAITH

I find that when most Christians try to describe faith to others, they often end up pointing to descriptions of the gospel (the content of what is believed in faith) instead. So, for instance, an evangelical might point to John 3:16: “For God so loved the world” this verse famously says, “that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life” (NKJV). Faith indeed does consist of believing the content of this verse in your heart, and having a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. But this verse itself is not really a description of faith.

Other descriptions of the gospel that people might choose would include a line from John 4:8, 18: “God is love”. Others might choose 2 Corinthians 5:17-19: “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new. Now all things are of God, who has reconciled us to Himself through Jesus Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not imputing their trespasses to them, and has committed to us the word of reconciliation” (NKJV). This latter set of verses especially is very close to my heart – and yet I do not wish to start here either. Again, I am looking for the heart of the Christian faith in the sense of its lived experience; I am not looking for pithy or beautiful summaries of beliefs.

HOW PAUL DESCRIBES FAITH: ROMANS 10:5-13

But perhaps the verse I just quoted can give us a clue. Paul speaks of “the word of reconciliation” – but what exactly is this word at its most fundamental level? As I have said, I do not mean the gospel message – that Jesus Christ has died for our sins and rose again, granting us everlasting life – for this message depends on a whole massive Christian framework to be comprehensible. I want to avoid this host of presuppositions right now. Instead I am asking, at the most fundamental, phenomenological level, what does the Christian suddenly know and confess that makes her a follower of Christ? What is at the heart of faith, nay, of salvation?

Paul, I think, gives an answer here. For this “word of reconciliation” is the very “word of faith” that he speak of in Romans 10:5-13. There Paul writes:

For Moses writes about the righteousness which is of the law, “The man who does those things shall live by them.” But the righteousness of faith speaks in this way, “Do not say in your heart, ‘Who will ascend into heaven?’ ” (that is, to bring Christ down from above) or, “ ‘Who will descend into the abyss?’ ” (that is, to bring Christ up from the dead). 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 preach): that if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation. For the Scripture says, “Whoever believes on Him will not be put to shame.” For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek, for the same Lord over all is rich to all who call upon Him. For “whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.” (NKJV).

This is a complex statement. But this series of verses, I believe, gets at the heart of what it means to be Christian in a way that most other verses don’t manage to do.

Paul’s larger point here is something that readily contradicts the intuitions of most people today: that salvation has little to do with our moral goodness. Of course, non-Christians have heard this all before: we’re all sinners in need of salvation, and our own works won’t cut it since we fail. And so, as most skeptics understand it, the Christians presumption is that we need a sort of “get out of jail free card” – and this is provided to us in Jesus, who takes the penalty of our sin on the Cross. But what Paul says here is actually much, much more profound than that.

PAUL: FAITH AS TRUST

Paul is not illustrating a way out here; rather, he is defining in the most basic manner what it means to enter a mode of trust that eschews all questions of worthiness and unworthiness. In other words, Paul’s basic question is this: what characterizes a life lived before God in the most fundamental way? What is the character of trust in Jesus Christ – what happens at the very moment that I am moved unto faith? Am I simply adopting a moral system? Am I simply learning to be conservative in my personal morals, or revolutionary in my politics? Hardly. Rather, Paul says, the very heart of faith is trust in the name of Jesus, my Lord.

My focus here is two lines from Romans: “that if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved” (Rom. 10:9, NKJV) and “For ‘whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved’ ” (Rom. 10:13, NKJV). These two lines, give to us the fundamentals of the Christian faith – or rather, the fundamentals of the experience of faith, with which Christianity begins.

Let’s look at the second line first: that “whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved” (Rom. 10:13, NKJV). This line is a quote from the minor prophet Joel (2:32), who is giving hope amidst a rather frightening prophecy:

And I will show wonders in the heavens and the earth: blood and fire and pillars of smoke. The sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, before the coming of the great and awesome day of the Lord. And it shall come to pass that whoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be saved. For in Mount Zion and in Jerusalem there shall be deliverance, as the Lord has said, among the remnant whom the Lord calls. (Joel 2:30-2, NKJV, emphasis mine).

Here Joel is speaking of the Day of Yahweh, when Israel and its enemies shall all be judged by the Lord. This is not a “Judgment Day” in the way we think of it now – it’s more of a socio-political reckoning, really – but this judgment, as Paul sees, may be understood in a truly apocalyptic fashion, giving a sense of what a truly cosmic reckoning might look like. With the cosmic imagery Joel uses, this is hardly a leap in thinking.

But the details of Joel’s imagery are not so important for Paul right here. Instead, what is important is what this text tells us about God’s judgment. It tells us that, although God cares about our works (“the righteousness of the law”), in the last analysis this does not determine God’s judgment of us. Instead, God judges us by the “righteousness [that is the goodness, uprightness, or loving-mercy] of faith.” God’s relationship to us on the day of judgment depends on our disposition toward Him. And our disposition is judged by this question: have we called upon His Name?

THE NAME OF JESUS, THE CRY OF FAITH

To call upon God’s Name – the name, that is, of Jesus – is to dispose ourselves towards Him. It is to trust Him – for (as in the passage from Joel) we are crying to Him for help. It is to know Him as one who is merciful, as good, as one to whom we can come in our need. It is to know Him, in other words, as one who is trustworthy.

This trust, this call, this throwing ourselves before a name – this is not a logical deduction or a carefully reasoned belief. It hardly has a belief-content at all. It is more primal than that, more intuitive. It is a grasping, a holding onto the Name – the name of God, the name Jesus, the Name above every name, to whom I call out in my time of need. This reaching out, this grasping onto a source of hope – this is the most basic, pre-conceptual, phenomenological act of the Christian. It is an act where I place my trust in this God whom I name – believing that it shall not be in vain and knowing that this Name has power.

(To my Christian friends: Don’t worry, I am not describing a “name it and claim it,” Word of Faith theology here. I am merely saying that the One to whom I call in faith has the power to forgive sins and grant eternal life. I do not think that we can lay claim to material goods and attain them if we just have enough faith. The only good that’s guaranteed to us is the spiritual good we pray for – and this is only truly guaranteed at the end of time for the faithful.)

THE CONFESSION: JESUS IS LORD

This brings us to our first quote, “that if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved” (Rom. 10:9, NKJV). And here we might add another, similar line, “Jesus is Lord,” an utterance that Paul calls necessarily God-inspired (1 Cor. 12:3).

I have already described what it means to “confess with your mouth” the Name of Jesus (Rom. 10:9). But what does it mean to confess the Lord Jesus – to say that “Jesus is Lord” (1. Cor. 12:3)? It means, of course, to confess Jesus’ Lordship – to say, in some sense, that Jesus is Lord over my life. It is, once again, to trust Jesus – but not simply as a helper, or a friend, but as my Lord. It is to hand control of my life over to Jesus – not to a pastor, a spouse, a community, etc., but to the very divine presence that has compelled me to confess His Name.

To give control to Jesus – to trust in the one whose Name I proclaim, to trust that He is present and merciful in this Name, that He is there when I proclaim it, guiding me towards something good, towards something I can be confident is good and beautiful and true – this is the true heart of Christian confession. To confess is not simply to profess a belief, in the sense of a series of propositions. Nor is it simply to reveal one’s misdeeds. Rather, it is to trust and to follow the one whom I now believe in, the one whom I trust, and the one to whom I will therefore confess all my evils. To confess is, even without having spoken, without having given a thought, to have the name of Jesus trembling on my lips, always.

THE BELIEF OF THE HEART: JESUS ROSE FROM THE DEAD

But this confession implies a belief: namely, that Jesus rose from the dead. We must believe this in our hearts, Paul says. But why this belief in particular – why is this bizarre profession so essential?

This profession, of course, is part of the great scandal of Christianity: the fundamental belief that God became incarnate, was crucified, died and rose again bodily. Since ancient times this has been an offense, as Paul puts it. Our bewilderment at this is not new – it does not come from some sort of new scientific or cultural knowledge we now possess as moderns. This belief was always deemed absurd. Yet for 2,000 years the largest faith in the world has proclaimed this as its fundamental, bedrock event.

What makes this fundamental? The long answer is actually rather complicated – but the short answer can be given now.

The short answer is that to believe Jesus is risen is to believe that He was raised by the power of God. It is to believe what Jesus’ whole earthly ministry showed: that the power of God works in and through Him. As Paul writes: “we preach Christ [Jesus] crucified, to the Jews a stumbling block and to the Greeks foolishness, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God” (1. Cor. 1:23-4, NKJV). And those who are called are those who call upon Him – the wisdom and power of God made manifest, Christ Jesus.

To call upon the Name of Jesus, then, and to confess Him as Lord, is to call upon the power of God made known in Jesus of Nazareth. To trust in this God, that in His power He is good and merciful, and that His path is the true path, which I must follow – this is what it means to call upon His holy Name. This, I think, is the very beginning of faith: when, in an instant, I am rapt up by a power beyond my control, and am moved to confess this Name, to trust in this Jesus, who now so compels me that – all of a sudden, in a flash – I grasp hold of Him as my hope, and the Lord of my life.

POSTCRIPT: Some might be surprised that, despite my discussion of Paul’s contrast between “the righteousness of the law” and “the righteousness of faith,” I have not really talked about the forgiveness of sins. Rest assured, though, this will be covered elsewhere, when I talk about the profession of Jesus as Messiah and Savior!

DAN TATE is a writer and blogger at Christ & Cosmos. A former atheist, he’s been surprised and amazed by the God of all things, and he’s passionate about sharing the gospel in ways that respond to contemporary concerns about theology, philosophy, spiritual practice, science, art, and more. A lifelong writer hailing from Upstate New York, he has a B.A. from Allegheny College, an M.A. from Syracuse University, and an M. Div. from Princeton Theological Seminary.