Romans 10:9-10

That if you confess with your mouth, "Jesus is Lord," and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you confess and are saved.

V9-10 – The word of faith is this: Confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead to be saved. What a great couplet of verses! “Confess” is a powerful word. It literally means “to agree with another.” In this case, when a person confesses that Jesus is Lord, he or she is agreeing with God the Father that what He said about His Son is true. See 1 John 5:9-12.

Since the time of Christ, believers have been demanded to denounce Christ as King and confess allegiance to the king of the land. Failure to do so meant death. In Scotland in the 1700’s, a woman and her mother were captured by loyalists to the king. They were taken to the ocean and strung on crosses that were stuck in the sand during low tide. The mother was placed 20 feet farther out than the woman. They were then given the opportunity the confess loyalty to the king of Scotland rather than Christ. And as the tide came in, and as the mother was taking her last few breathes before the water covered her over, the loyalists mocked the woman and asked her what she saw. She replied, “I see Christ and victory over the grave.” Moments later, the waters covered her over as well. During Reformation times, Confessions of Faith were drafted to unify believers in the truth of Scripture. The Belgic Confession of Faith, the Westminster Confession of Faith, and the London Baptist Confession of Faith are three such confessions. It would do us well to familiarize ourselves with the theology of these confessions, as they have much to offer as we strive for consistent theology in our day. What a powerful word Paul chooses in “confess.”

And what is it that must be confessed? “Jesus is Lord!” Paul uses this same language in Philippians 2:11. The context of the Old Testament he just quoted referred to the Lord, and Paul is now applying that to Jesus Christ. Isaiah 43:11 “I am the LORD, and apart from Me there is no savior.” 45:21 “Declare what is to be, present it—let them take counsel together. Who foretold this long ago, who declared it from the distant past? Was it not I, the LORD? And there is no God apart from Me, a righteous God and a Savior; there is none but Me.” So Paul is telling us that this Jesus whom we must confess is none other than the Creator God of the Universe, the Almighty, the Lord, Jehovah. He is the Savior. And the Savior is the Lord. There is no other. We cannot separate, as many liberal theologians do today, the Lord and Savior aspects of Jesus Christ. He is not one or the other. He is both.

A Christian by dictionary definition is one who professes to follow or confesses faith in Jesus Christ. But we also learn from Scripture that profession or confession does not mean possession. There’s more to it than mere confession. 2 Timothy 2:19 “Nevertheless, God’s solid foundation stands firm, sealed with this inscription: ‘The Lord knows those who are His,' and, ‘Everyone who confesses the name of the Lord must turn away from wickedness.’” Titus 1:16 “They claim to know God, but by their actions they deny Him. They are detestable, disobedient and unfit for doing anything good.” 1 John 2:3-4 “We know that we have come to know Him if we obey His commands. The man who says, ‘I know Him,’ but does not do what He commands is a liar, and the truth is not in him.” So genuine confession requires possession, and that’s basically what Paul is saying in these two verses. Confessing with the mouth is part of it, but belief from the heart is another. This confession that Jesus is Lord requires action, and that action only results from genuine belief from the heart.

Notice that the believing actually precedes the confessing (v10). Confession is the outward and audible expression of one’s inward faith. Many have an intellectual, head-knowledge concerning Christ, but this is not enough (see Acts 8:37 – the missing verse). God works in a person’s heart to bring them to salvation (Acts 16:14). When Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 12:3 that “no one can say, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ except by the Holy Spirit,” he is not saying that intellectual assent cannot be achieved by unbelievers. He is saying that a genuine confession, which requires more than lip-service, cannot be made by unbelievers. Everyone who truly believes will confess Christ.

However not everyone who confesses Christ is a true believer. Matthew 7:21-23 “Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only 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 drive out demons and perform many miracles?’ Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from Me, you evildoers!’” The gospel must be obeyed from the heart. Notice again Paul’s prayer in Romans 6:17 “Thanks be to God that, though you used to be slaves to sin, you wholeheartedly obeyed the form of teaching to which you were entrusted.” It is from the heart that our actions become realities. Luke 6:45 “The good man brings good things out of the good stored up in his heart, and the evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in his heart. For out of the overflow of his heart his mouth speaks.” Matthew 15:19 “Out of the heart come evil thoughts [and deeds], murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander.”

So we confess that Jesus is Lord and believe in our heart that what? God raised Him from the dead. Belief in the bodily resurrection of Christ is essential for salvation. Our faith is in a living Savior. Romans 4:25 “Christ was raised for our justification.” 1 Corinthians 15:12-14 “But if it is preached that Christ has been raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? If there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith.” Again, what a great pair of verses here in Romans 10:9-10!