“And behold, a lawyer stood up to put him to the test, saying, ‘Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?’ He said to him, ‘What is written in the Law? How do you read it?’ And he answered, ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.’ And he said to him, ‘You have answered correctly; do this, and you will live” (Luke 10:25-28, ESV).

Now, let’s back up and read Romans “…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. For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved” (10:9-10, ESV).

We also know there will be many crying out with their mouths, “Lord, Lord,” and Jesus will send them to hell saying He never knew them. Just calling Jesus “Lord” with your mouth isn’t enough. We can’t make big claims about God, the Bible, salvation, and faith in Christ based on just that one verse in Romans. The second verse says that we are justified by a believing heart. Remember that faith without works is dead, that we show our faith by our good works (that’s James 2:17-18). So, from all of this, where do we end up?

We are saved by our believing hearts. Out of the overflow of our hearts, our mouths speak, calling Jesus, “Lord,” and rightly so, because we have faith in our hearts that shows itself in love for God and others. It’s not a worldly love that any unbeliever can show, but it’s a love that comes from God giving us the power to love as God loves: unselfishly, obediently, surrendered.

It’s a love that doesn’t just think of its own interests, but also the interests of others. It’s a love that thinks of others more highly than itself. It’s a love that is united. It’s not divided between God and money, or God and any other thing. It’s a love for God alone. Everything is surrendered, given up and over to God. You let go of all people, hobbies, goals, desires, sins. You give them to the Lord because you love Him more; He is the most important thing to you. He can take them away, or He can consecrate them for His purposes and give them back. But it doesn’t matter to you because you don’t love those things any more, except with the love He’s given you for them.

You love God with your whole heart, mind, soul, and strength, so you don’t feel like you are missing anything. It’s not giving things up for Him because you have to in order to be saved. It’s loving Him with your all, so that it expresses itself in your abandoning everything to Him because you love him most of all.