Whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. (Romans 10:13)

No man has any excuse for not knowing the way of salvation, for the Bible makes it as plain as day. No man has any excuse for not taking the way of salvation, for God has made that way so simple and so open to everybody that whosoever will may come. Many years ago, I took a pedestrian tour with a friend through the Saxon Switzerland National Park in Saxony, Germany. One day we struck off from the main road and went across country on a bypath. We suddenly came upon a signboard with a crown on it and the information that the road was for the king and only for the king; common mortals were not allowed that way. But God’s way of salvation is open to all: Whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.

The way of salvation is stated in the Bible in a variety of forms so that everybody can understand it. In one place we are told that we are saved by just coming to Jesus. He Himself says, Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest (Matthew 11:28). He also says, Him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out (John 6:37).

Later we are told that we are saved by just believing on the Lord Jesus. The Philippian jailer had cried, Sirs, what must I do to be saved? Paul replied, Believe on the Lord Jesus, and thou shalt be saved (Acts 16:31 ASV).

In another place we are told that we are saved by just receiving (or taking) the Lord Jesus. John’s words are, As many as received him, to them gave he the right to become children of God, even to them that believe on his name (John 1:12 ASV). We are also told that we are saved by just looking to Jesus Christ. The Lord says, Look unto me, and be ye saved (Isaiah 45:22).

But to my mind, the simplest statement of all is that of our text, where we are told that we are saved by just calling on the name of the Lord: Whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved (Romans 10:13). Saved simply by a cry, a cry to the Lord Jesus, for that Jesus is the Lord in this passage, which is evident from the ninth verse of the same chapter, where we are told that if thou shalt confess with thy mouth Jesus as Lord, and shalt believe in thy heart that God raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved (Romans 10:9 ASV).

The statement of the way of salvation contained in our text is so simple that some stumble at its very simplicity. “Oh,” they say, “God can’t mean that all I have to do to be saved is just to cry to the Lord Jesus, simply call upon the name of the Lord.” But that is what God says; don’t you think that God knows enough to say exactly what He means?

In order for there to be no possible doubt that He meant just what He said, God has put this statement in three different places in the Bible. You will find it first of all way back in the Old Testament in Joel 2:32 (ASV), where we read, Whosoever shall call on the name of Jehovah shall be delivered. Then Peter repeated the statement on the day of Pentecost, saying, And it shall be, that whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be saved (Acts 2:21 ASV). Paul repeats it again in our text: Whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved (Romans 10:13). It is very seldom that you can find the very same statement made three different times in the Word of God. Can you doubt a statement God takes pains to repeat three times?

And that is not all. Besides this, God gives us a number of examples in the Bible of men who were saved just this way, by a cry, by calling to the Lord Jesus for deliverance. Peter is as good an example as any. Peter was sinking in the Sea of Galilee as he tried to walk across the waves to meet Jesus, and in his terror he just cried to Jesus as he was going down, Lord, save me. And immediately Jesus stretched forth his hand, and took hold of him (Matthew 14:30-31 ASV). Saved just by a cry, and anyone who is sinking in a sea of sin can be saved in precisely the same way. Jesus is ready to take hold of you tonight if you only cry to Him, and if He takes hold of you, your rescue is sure.

There are three important questions suggested by our text:

1. What is the salvation promised?
2. How can we get this salvation?
3. Who can have this salvation?

What Is the Salvation Promised?

The first question is, What is the salvation promised? The answer to this question is very plain and very easily understood. Listen to the text again: Whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. Saved from what? If you will go back to the preceding chapters of this same book from which our text is taken, you will get your answer.

First of all, the one who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved from the guilt of sin. This comes from the third chapter: For all have sinned, and fall short of the glory of God; being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus: whom God set forth to be a propitiation, through faith, in his blood, to show his righteousness because of the passing over of the sins done aforetime in the forbearance of God; for the showing, I say, of his righteousness at this present season: that he might himself be just, and the justifier of him that hath faith in Jesus (Romans 3:23-26 ASV).

We see from these verses that the one who calls on the Lord Jesus gets for himself justification, deliverance from condemnation, and salvation from the guilt of sin that the Lord Jesus made possible for us by dying as a propitiation for our sins on the cross. The same thought of salvation is found in Galatians: For as many as are of the works of the law are under a curse: for it is written, Cursed is every one who continueth not in all things that are written in the book of the law, to do them. Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us; for it is written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree (Galatians 3:10, 13 ASV).

Christ took our place on the cross of Calvary, and the moment we believe on Him, we step into His place of perfect acceptance before God. Not only is every one of our sins blotted out, but His perfect righteousness is also put to our account, and the simplest and most practical way of expressing our faith in Him is by just calling upon Him. Crying unto Him for pardon is the proof that we believe on Him; and so in crying unto Him, we are thereby justified. We are also told this in the very next verse to our text: How then shall they call on him in whom they have not believed? (Romans 10:14). The moment we thus call upon the Lord Jesus, all our sins are blotted out; God Himself erases everything He has in His books against us and puts the perfect righteousness and acceptability of Christ Jesus to our account.

But that is not all. In the second place, the one who calls on the name of the Lord Jesus gets salvation from the power of sin. This we see in Romans 6:16 (ASV): Know ye not, that to whom ye present yourselves as servants unto obedience, his servants ye are whom ye obey; whether of sin unto death, or of obedience unto righteousness? The word translated servants in this verse means literally “slaves.” Every sinner is a slave of the sin to which he has yielded obedience, but the moment he calls upon the Lord Jesus, he gets deliverance from this bondage, just as the demoniac who cried to the Lord got deliverance from his bondage to the demon, and the leper who cried to the Lord got deliverance from his leprosy. The Lord Jesus Himself puts it this way in John 8:36 (ASV): If therefore the Son shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed.

Our Lord Jesus not only died for us, and thus made salvation from the guilt of sin possible, but He also rose again and made salvation from the power of sin possible for us. This thought of the saving power of the risen Lord Jesus comes in the same chapter from which our text is taken: Because if thou shalt confess with thy mouth Jesus as Lord, and shalt believe in thy heart that God raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved: for with the heart man believeth unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation (Romans 10:9-10 ASV).

In the third place, the one who calls on the name of the Lord also gets salvation from the penalty of sin. We see this in Romans 6:23 (ASV): For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. The one who calls upon the name of the Lord – and the context shows that the Lord here is the Lord Jesus – the one who cries unto Jesus as his divine Lord for deliverance gets deliverance from the death that is the penalty of sin. We see this death in its full outworking and significance in Revelation 21:8 (AKJV): The fearful, and unbelieving, and the abominable, and murderers, and whoremongers, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars, shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone: which is the second death.

Hell, in spite of all its awful and everlasting shame and pain, has no terrors whatever for the one who calls upon the name of the Lord Jesus, for he knows on the authority of God’s own sure word that no matter how great a sinner he may have been, he has no part in the eternal shame and torment of hell.

To sum it all up: salvation from the guilt of sin, salvation from the power of sin, and salvation from the eternal penalty of sin is the salvation one gets by just calling on the Lord Jesus for such salvation. That certainly is a glorious salvation. But even that is not all, for we are not only saved from something, but we are also saved to something. We are not only saved from the guilt of sin and from the power of sin and from the eternal penalty of sin, but we are also saved to liberty, to sonship of God, and to an inheritance – a joint inheritance with Jesus Christ Himself. We read this in Romans 8 (ASV): For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus made me free from the law of sin and death (v. 2). For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God (v. 14). The Spirit himself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are children of God: and if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ (vv. 16-17).

How Can We Get This Salvation?

Now the question arises, How can we get this salvation? The text tells us that we get this salvation by simply calling upon the name of the Lord: Whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved (Romans 10:13 ASV).

What does it mean to call upon the name of the Lord? It means just what it says: all any one of you has to do to be saved is to call upon the Lord Jesus to save you. This is evident from the preceding verse: For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek: for the same Lord is Lord of all, and is rich unto all that call upon him (Romans 10:12 ASV). Bartimaeus was blind, and he got sight by crying, Jesus, thou son of David, have mercy on me (Mark 10:47 ASV). The leper got cleansing by crying to the Lord Jesus, If thou wilt, thou canst make me clean. And being moved with compassion, he [Jesus] stretched forth his hand, and touched him, and saith unto him, I will; be thou made clean (Mark 1:40-41 ASV). The publican got pardon by just crying, God be merciful to me a sinner (Luke 18:13 AKJV); and so we get salvation from the guilt and the power and penalty of sin by crying to the Lord Jesus for it.

Of course, the cry to the Lord Jesus that really gets salvation must be a real cry; it must be genuine; it must be sincere; it must be honest. I hear many call, “Lord Jesus, save me,” and they do not get saved. Why? Because the cry is not real; it is not genuine; it is not sincere; it is not honest; it is not earnest.

What does a real call upon the Lord Jesus for salvation imply?

First of all, a real call upon the Lord Jesus implies a realization that we need salvation, a realization that we are sinners, and a realization that we are lost. No man is going to call upon the Lord for salvation in any real way if he does not realize that he needs to be saved. To call upon the Lord Jesus to save you when you do not know you are lost, or do not believe you are lost, is a mockery.

Many people, however, call upon the Lord Jesus today without any genuine realization that they are lost. Many cry, “Lord Jesus, save me.” But if you should ask them, “Do you really believe you are lost? Do you really believe you are a guilty sinner before a holy God? Do you really believe you are under the curse of the law of God which you have broken? Do you realize you are a slave to sin? Do you realize you are sinking down into an everlasting hell? Do you believe that you are a poor, vile, miserable, worthless, hell-deserving sinner?” they would likely flare up and say, “I am nothing of the kind; I am just as good as you are. I don’t believe that old worn-out superstition about human depravity and everlasting perdition and all that.” Well, then, you cannot genuinely call upon the Lord Jesus to save you, and you cannot be genuinely saved. You are mocking God when you do call upon the Lord for salvation when you do not really think you are lost, hopelessly lost, without the Lord Jesus. There is no more hideous mockery than for a man who does not believe that he is lost, to call on the Lord Jesus to save him.

In the second place, a real calling upon the Lord Jesus to save implies a sincere desire for salvation. Many men call upon the Lord Jesus to save them who do not really desire to be saved; they think they do, but they don’t. I have seen men kneel down and cry, “Lord Jesus, save me,” and they did not want a bit to be saved. Perhaps they thought they did. They wished to be saved from hell, but that is not the essential point of salvation. Everybody wants to be saved from hell. Even the foulest infidels want to be saved from hell. Nobody wants to spend eternity in hell. But being saved from hell is not the essential thing in real salvation, and desiring merely to be saved from hell is not really desiring to be saved. Many desire to be saved from the trouble and misery that sin has gotten them into. There is not a person in the county jail that does not want to get out. But desiring to be saved from the consequences of sin is not a true desire for salvation.

A true desire for salvation is a desire for salvation from sin itself; that is the most important thing about it. The man who does not desire to give up all sin – not merely the sins that are getting him into trouble – does not really desire to be saved, and a call of such a person upon the Lord Jesus is a mockery and will do him no more good than whistling, “I want to be an angel.”

This is why the cries of many of you for salvation do no good whatever. You don’t really wish to be saved from sin, but merely from the unpleasant consequences of sin. A man in Chicago was once lamenting to a friend of mine that he could not be saved. My friend answered bluntly, “You don’t want to be saved.”

“Yes, I do,” the man answered with tears. “No, you don’t,” my friend insisted. Then he asked him, “Do you want to quit drinking?”

The man was silent a while and then said, “I don’t know as I do.” That is the way with thousands. Others may wish to quit drinking, but there are other sins they do not wish to quit. Do you really desire to quit all sin, to quit doing anything and everything that displeases God? If you do, you have a real desire for salvation, and if you cry to the Lord Jesus He will save you. Blessed are they, says Jesus Christ, that hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled (Matthew 5:6 ASV).

The desire for salvation must also be earnest; it must be a desire to be saved at any cost. When a man so earnestly desires salvation from the guilt, the power, and the consequences of sin that he is willing to pay any price to get it, he will get it, and not until then. God says in Jeremiah 29:13, Ye shall seek me, and find me, when ye shall search for me with all your heart.

In the third place, a real calling upon the name of the Lord for salvation implies a throwing away of all confidence in anyone else and in anything else and everything else as a way of salvation. The man who is trying to save himself cannot honestly call upon the Lord Jesus to save him; the man who is trusting in his own good works, his own personal piety, his own benevolence, or his turning over a new leaf or any other thing he can do, cannot truly call upon the Lord. This is the trouble with many of you; you have not reached the end of yourself and your own efforts; you still hope to do something to commend yourself to the Lord. Only the man who realizes his own helplessness, his own inability to do anything to cover his guilt or break away from sin or escape its consequences can throw himself in utter helplessness on the Lord Jesus and cry to Him to save him as poor sinking Peter cried, Lord, save me.

There is one more thing that an honest call upon the Lord Jesus implies, and that is faith in Him, faith in His power to save. This comes from the verse immediately following our text: How then shall they call on him in whom they have not believed? (Romans 10:14 ASV). If my cry to the Lord Jesus means anything, it means this: faith that Jesus can and will save me. This faith may not be very strong; it may not be very confident; it may be very weak, but there must be faith enough to call with some expectation, no matter how small, that we shall be saved. We may have to come to Jesus with just a little faith, like the man whose son was a demoniac, and he cried to Jesus, If thou canst do any thing, have compassion on us, and help us. Jesus said unto him, If thou canst believe, all things are possible to him that believeth. And straightway the father of the child cried out, and said with tears, Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief. But Jesus took him by the hand, and lifted him up; and he arose (Mark 9:22-24, 27 AKJV).

The Lord Jesus responded to his feeble faith and helped his unbelief by doing what he sought; so will He do for us if we come in that honest, earnest way, even though our faith is small. All one needs to do, then, to be saved is (1) realize his own need of salvation, (2) earnestly desire to be saved, (3) throw away all trust in anyone and anything else but Jesus, (4) believe He can and will save, and (5) call upon Him to do it. That is all – Whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved (Romans 10:13 ASV).

Who Can Have This Salvation?

Now, just a few words on who can have this salvation. The answer to this question is very plain, as it is set forth in the text: Whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved (Romans 10:13). The Greek words translated whosoever mean “everyone who.” I sometimes wish that the verse had been translated literally and so read in this way: “Everyone who shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.” That surely means everybody. It means rich or poor, wise or foolish, learned or ignorant, good or bad, moral or vicious. John Berridge once said in preaching on this text, “I would much rather it be written, ‘Whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved,’ than ‘If John Berridge shall call on the name of the Lord, John Berridge shall be saved,’ because how do I know but that there might be another John Berridge in the world to whom these words were addressed? But when I read, Whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved, I know I must be included.”

Yes, thank God, that is the way it reads: Whosoever [or everyone who] shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. The good man can get salvation in this way and in no other way, and the bad man can get salvation in this way and in no other way. All any man needs to know in order to be saved is just enough to call on the name of the Lord Jesus. The skeptic may be saved this way. He may have many doubts, but if he believes he is lost, if he honestly desires to be saved, if he throws away confidence in everyone and everything else and has enough faith to call on the Lord Jesus, even though it be almost in despair, he can put this promise to a practical test: Whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.

Many are saying, “I have sinned away the day of grace, and therefore I cannot be saved.” But God says, Whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. All that you, as well as anybody else, has to do then is just to call. Just call.

Another says, “I have committed the unpardonable sin; therefore there is no hope for me.” But God says, Whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. Just call, then.

Another says, “But my sins have been so many and so black that there is no hope for me.” But God says, Whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. Just call, then.

Another says, “But I have had so much light and sinned against it; there certainly can be no hope for me.” But God says, Whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. Just call, then.

But another says, “I have no feeling; my heart is as hard as a stone. Surely there is no hope for me.” But God says, Whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. Just call, then.

But another says, “I am sure I cannot hold out even if I start, so there is no hope for me.” But God says, Whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. Just call, then.

Whosoever, Whosoever, Whosoever. This wonderful text sweeps away all our excuses. It throws the door wide open for anyone to enter tonight who has any real desire to be saved. Some old theologian pictured Peter preaching on the day of Pentecost:

A man pushed his way through the crowd and said, “Peter, do you think there is hope for me? I am the man who made that crown of thorns and placed them on Christ’s brow. Do you think He will save me?”

“Yes,” said Peter. “Whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved, and you are a whosoever; if you call, he will hear your cry. He will answer your prayer and save you.”

Another man pushed his way up and said, “Peter, I am the man who took the reed out of his hand and drove it upon that cruel crown of thorns, sending it into his brow. Do you think he will save me?”

“Yes,” said Peter. “Whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. You are a whosoever, and if you call upon the name of the Lord, you shall be saved.”

Another man, elbowing his way through the crowd, pushed up to Peter and said, “I am the Roman soldier who took the spear and thrust it into his heart and out came blood and water. Do you think there is hope for me?”

“Yes,” said Peter, “there is a nearer way of reaching his heart than that: Whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved” (Pith & Point in Story and Saying).

Yes, it is true, Whosoever, Whosoever, Whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. Who will call tonight? Who will awaken to the fact that you need salvation, that you are a poor, vile, lost, worthless, miserable, hell-deserving sinner? Who will let God put into his heart a real desire to be saved tonight, to be saved not merely from the unpleasant consequences of sin but also to be saved from sin itself? Who will right now throw away all confidence in anyone else or in anything else and everything else as a way of salvation, except the crucified and risen Son of God? Who will put faith enough in Jesus Christ tonight and Jesus Christ’s ability to save him? Who will just call upon Him, even though it is with very feeble expectation of being heard? Salvation stands waiting at the door to enter the heart and life of every unsaved man, woman, and child here tonight. All you have to do to open the door wide for salvation is just to call upon the name of the Lord Jesus. Will you do it right now?

 

Chapter 5 of ‘How to be Saved and How to be Lost’ by Reuben A. Torrey

I think you might like this book – “How to Be Saved and How to Be Lost: The Way of Salvation and the Way of Condemnation Made as Plain as Day [Updated and Annotated]” by Reuben A. Torrey, S. Wilkinson.

 

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