Spiritual death, Paul tells us above, is eternal separation from God. If you do not know Jesus at present, then the Bible tells us that this spiritual separation is an already present-tense reality. You are already, present-tense, separated from God spiritually. God is spirit and can only have relationship with man through his Spirit. Man’s spirit is dead at birth and as a result has no capacity of relationship with God. When You receive Jesus Christ, You are born from above; that is God recreates your spirit alive and you enter back into relationship with God. If you die physically first before coming to know Jesus, your deadness spiritually will then become an eternal reality.

If God’s requirement for sin is eternal separation from God, then what hope do we have? Paul gives us the answer to this question in the second half of Rom. 6:23, "For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord." Jesus tells us in the Gospel of John, "For God did not send the Son into the World to judge the world; but that the world should be saved through Him." (Jn 3:17). Jesus claimed in this passage that God the Father sent Him into the world to pay the penalty of sin in our place. The Bible tells us that Jesus died on the cross, shed His blood, for our sins. Thus, through physical death, Jesus paid the penalty of sin in our place.²²

But, if Jesus is dead and gone, how do we know that what He claimed about Himself, that He came to pay the penalty of sin in our place to satisfy God the Father’s requirement for sin, is true? What proof do we have that He really came from God and that God the Father really accepts His death as payment for our sins in our place? God the Father proved to us that Jesus did come from Him and that His death was accepted by Him as payment for our sins in our place by bringing Jesus back from the dead. Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 15 that there were over 512 witnesses to the fact of Jesus’ resurrection making it a solid fact of history.

Therefore, when Paul says we are to believe God the Father raised Jesus from the dead to be saved, He is meaning that we are accepting God the Father’s testimony about His Son, which is that His death on the cross, and that alone, satisfies the penalty of sin in our lives and that there is nothing that we can do on our part to add to it. Jesus’ death totally satisfies God the Father’s require-ment for sin in our lives: death! So we see that knowing Jesus means first of all putting our trust in Jesus and what He did on the cross and that alone to save us from our sins, nothing else.

The second thing Paul tells us knowing Jesus means is to confess Jesus as Lord (Rom 10:9-10). What does it mean to confess Jesus as Lord? In our discussion here it means basically four things:

First, it means that Jesus loves us and that He has an individual present and eternal plan for our lives, and that He is the ONLY means to God for the fulfillment of that purpose and plan in our lives. Jesus states in the Gospel of John, "The thief comes only to steal, and kill, and destroy: I came that they might have life, and might have it abundantly." (John 10:10). ". . . I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father, but through Me." (Jn 14:6).

Second, confessing Jesus as Lord means repenting of any known sin in our lives. The Apostle Paul gives us an example of what the Bible means by sin in 1 Corinthians 6:9-10,

"Or do you not know that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived; neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor homosexuals, nor thieves, nor the covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers, shall inherit the kingdom of God." (See also Gal 5:19- 21; 1 Cor 5:11-13).

The Bible tells us that to confess Jesus as Lord means to turn away from these things.

The third thing confessing Jesus as Lord means is to obey His will and plan for our lives revealed through His Holy Spirit. The Apostle Paul and John the Baptist wrote:

"But now we have been released from the Law, having died to that by which we were bound, so that we serve in newness of the Spirit and not in oldness of the letter." (Romans 7:6)

"He who believes in the Son has eternal life; but he who does not obey the Son shall not see life." (John 3:36)

Therefore, third, we know that confessing Jesus as Lord does not mean trying to attain salvation through obedience to the Law because Paul plainly tells us that Jesus’ death on the cross ended any attempt of salvation through submission to the Law.

If confessing Jesus as Lord does not mean trying to live by the Law, then what does it mean? It simply means that we give Him free will reign of our lives in every detail and in every respect of any area concerning our lives, and then do whatever He tells us to do or not to do in those areas of our lives. The writer of Hebrews tells us, "Therefore, just as the Holy Spirit says, ‘Today if you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts as when they provoked Me, as in the day of trial in the wilderness.’" (Heb 3:7-8).

You see, being religious does not save you. Jesus states in the Gospel of Matthew,

"So then, you will know them by their fruits. Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven; but he who does the will of My Father who is in heaven. Many will say to Me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your name, and in Your name cast out demons, and in Your name perform many miracles?’ And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness.’" (Matt 7:20-23).

Jesus plainly tells us in this passage that after Salvation that lawlessness is not lack of obedience to the Law of the Old Testament, but rather lack of obedience to His Lordship over our lives personally and individually as He reveals it to us.

We are saved by God’s grace (Eph 2:8-9), Jesus’ death on the cross, so that we can come to know and submit to Jesus’ individual Lordship over our lives (Eph 2:10). Doing Jesus’ Lordship, though, does not save us, but proves we are already truly saved (John 3:36). Only Jesus’ death and shed blood on the cross saves us from sins penalty. Therefore, if a person claims to be saved but shows no evidence of repentance from sin (Acts 2:38) or submission to Jesus’ Lordship over his life, then the present tense condition of his being saved can be questioned. Submission to Jesus’ Lordship over our lives proves we are already saved, not working toward it.

What does it mean to confess Jesus as Lord? To confess Jesus as Lord does not mean that we will now try to live by the Law, since Jesus has freed us from the Law; it means simply that we give Him the freedom to do with our lives what He wants to. And since we are no longer under the Law this is going to mean something different for every individual believer. This is why Jew and Gentile can be at peace with one another because there is no one blue print that fits all Christians as to how they are to live and conduct their lives. Their only commonness is their reliance on Christ’s death as total payment for their sins, Jesus’ resurrection as proof of their justification, and their confession of Jesus as Lord; but outside of moral repentance, the out come of that Lordship will be different for every believer.

Because confessing Jesus as Lord means that whatever Jesus tells us individually about our lives only applies to us and not to anyone else, for this reason we are not qualified to judge our brother’s quality of spirituality. This is why Paul states,

"For we are not bold to class or compare ourselves with some of those who commend themselves; but when they measure themselves by themselves, and compare themselves with themselves, they are without understanding." (2 Cor 10:12).

And again in another passage,

"But to me it is a very small thing that I should be examined by you, or by any human court; in fact, I do not even examine myself. I am conscious of nothing against myself, yet I am not by this acquitted; but the one who examines me is the Lord. Therefore do not go on judging anything before the time, but wait until the Lord comes who will both bring to light the things hidden in the darkness and disclose the motives of men’s hearts; and then each man’s praise will come to him from God." (1 Cor 4:3-5).

Paul states here that we are not qualified to judge each other from a purely surface standpoint and we are not qualified to judge ourselves. He says that only Jesus is qualified to judge us.