There are hundreds, perhaps thousands, of believers who have a firm belief that they have the critical role in bringing people to the Way. There should be no dithering about the human role in salvation’s messaging. There is no doubt that God uses people to care for one another after they are saved. There are some who dare to insert themselves into the saving pipeline inappropriately. These are usually people who are not actually kingdom-bound. They make up their own pathways for salvation and harass and bully people who are coming to God by faith, even intimating that faith is dead until they can see how much of a disciple like them you can be. These are road blockers.

What is calling on the Lord?

The image below shows the text of Romans 10:13 in three panels, left, the KIng James Version, right, the English Stadard Version 2011, and below those two the UBS4 (the 4th revised edition of the Greek New Testament from the United Bible Society).

I have reproduced this sentence (a single verse) to show that preaching and teaching without connecting with the best sources is a deadly trap. Now I have never heard or read a cogent interpretation of the Roman 10:13, but the various translations ought to have made you want to look “under the hood”.

Let me throw two more translations (NET 2.1 and Holman Christian Standard Bible) into the mix for good measure to illustrate that the seventeenth century translation of the Bible into English, the King James Version (KJV), misses the mark by a wide margin. I must hasten to add that the KJV is in many other cases careful to deliver the integrity of the Greek and Hebrew texts.

For everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. Rom 10:13 (NET 2.1)

For everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. Rom 10:13 (Holman Christian Standard Bible)

How might people hear?

The KJV stands alone in treating the action of CALLING ON as a future tense. “Everyone who might call” becomes “Whosoever shall call”. I am certain that the individual assigned to translate Romans (a) did not consult his colleagues to translate epikalesetai (b) he thought he saw a future tense from the presence of the letter “s” and (c) if he prayed for the correct translation, God did not reply. The presence of the particle an gives away the verb that follows it is not an indicative, purting the action into the realm of probability or possibility. “Shall call” should be “may call”, or “might call”.

pas gar hos an epikalesetai to onoma kuriou sothesetai

Furthermore the verse that follows has three interrogative aorist subjunctives, call, believe, and hear. The three questions are How might they call, How might they believe, and How might they hear, APART FROM PREACHING. The aorist tenses indicate the type of action, not the time (e.g. past, present, future). Calling on the Lord is not a lengthy and misdirective process of indoctrination like the Pharisees had.

Kingdom-bound or just acting out some easy things?

“But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you shut the kingdom of heaven in people’s faces. For you neither enter yourselves nor allow those who would enter to go in. Matt 23:13

Some people have taken the position that it is insufficient for a person to simply call on the Lord and be saved. They insist, like the Pharisees, that Moses must get into the pipeline as God responds to the sinner. They insist, like the Pharisees, that patriarchal practices must get into the pipeline as God responds to the proselyte. What happens if a person calls? He will be saved (future, indicative passive tense).