Romans 10:13 “‘Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.’ How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in?”

That is a quote of the Old Testament prophet Joel. It states one clear truth, and implies another one. To call on the name of the Lord is to speak to this God, to pray to him, to worship him, as your own. The person who calls on the name of the Lord isn’t saying his meal time or bed time prayers merely out of family custom. She isn’t bowing her head in prayer or singing God’s praises at church as a matter of conformity. She is not faking it to fit in with the rest of the group and avoid unwanted attention. These people genuinely claim this God as their own, know him, have become his people, and bring him the concerns and appreciation of their hearts in word and song.

This is clear and explicit: Such people, every one of them, will be saved. This is also clear, if only implied: Everyone else will be lost. There is no consolation prize for following the wrong god. There is no participation trophy for claiming no god at all. “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved” is an important truth only if the opposite is equally as true. Paul’s words want to light a fire of urgency under us about our own condition–am I calling on the name of the Lord?–and our concern for billions of lost souls who face an unspeakable fate if something doesn’t change.

So a question naturally follows: “How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in?” “How can unbelievers call on God?” The question is rhetorical and the answer is clear: “They can’t.”

Unbelievers can go to church and mouth the words everyone else is saying. Twice in my ministry I caught men who openly admitted they had no faith confessing the Apostle’s Creed with the rest of the congregation. They were not members, and I knew that the reason they sometimes came was to please family members. But since they were saying the words with us, “I believe in God the Father Almighty…I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord…” I asked them about it. Maybe something had changed. I think it struck both men for the first time that these words were more than some formula we say. They mean something. At the time I asked, they both stopped saying the creed with us when they attended.

I wasn’t trying to make them stop. I just wanted to know where they stood. Sadly, both were still lost. Today, one of them does call on the name of the Lord from the heart. Hearing God’s word so often changed him. He believes, and we can count him a brother in the faith.

The other, so far as I know, has never come to trust Jesus as his Savior. Whether or not one believes is no small matter. It makes a difference as big as heaven or hell.