Confessing Christ, with Lips and Life: A Reflection on Romans 10.5-15

Over the past few years, one of the recurring themes here has been the nature of ‘faith’. I’ve promoted the idea that ‘faith’ is not primarily about intellectual assent to propositions (i.e., ‘belief’), but about living well in reciprocal relationships with God, each other, and the rest of creation. Or perhaps better, what we believe and how we live must be, in the New Testament’s understanding, inherently and unbreakably linked, two sides of the same coin. But, at least on the surface, today’s Epistle reading seems to be oppose this perspective, saying: “If you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved” (Romans 10.9). This seems pretty close to the classic Evangelical Protestant idea that we are made right with God by virtue of accepting Jesus as Lord and believing in his saving death on the cross. Today I’d like to explore this theme once again by putting this passage in the context of the broader argument of Romans, looking at some linguistic evidence, and comparing it with other passages on the same theme.

First, since we’ve taken a few weeks off from the lectionary’s journey through Romans, let’s remind ourselves of what Paul is arguing and see how this passage fits into it. Once again, the thesis of the whole letter is found in 1.16-17:

[T]he gospel … is the power of God for salvation to everyone who has faith [who believes? who is faithful?], to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed through faith for faith; as it is written, ‘The one who is righteous will live by faith.

The whole letter is Paul’s attempt to convince the Jewish and Gentile Christians in Rome that their two communities, as different as they may be, are actually one in Christ and they have shared from the very beginning the same basis for relationship with God: namely a faithful response to God’s gracious initiative. His basic argument goes like this: Both Jews and Gentiles are equally in need of salvation (1.18-3.20). And, from the very beginning, salvation has been about faith(fulness): The ancient exemplar for this faith relationship is Abraham (chapter 4), and in more recent times established once and for all in Jesus, who is like a ‘second Adam’, offering humanity a new chance to begin, by trusting in him, spiritually dying with him, and finding new life also in him (chapters 5-6). The Law was therefore never the basis of salvation in Judaism, but a guide for how to live a godly life that did nothing to alleviate the real problem, which is our enslavement to our instincts towards self-protection, self-gratification, and self-aggrandizement (chapter 7). What we need is to be freed from this slavery, a freedom which is granted in Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit (chapter 8). In chapter 9, Paul turns to the tricky (for him) issue of how to understand the rejection of Jesus by the majority of the Jewish community in light of their status as God’s chosen people. He suggests that those who rejected Jesus were legalists and therefore had become blind to God’s grace. Chapter 10 starts with Paul stating his hope and trust that eventually all Jews will come to understand that it is faith, not law, upon which righteousness is established.

At this point we can’t not address the seemingly pointed comments here about Judaism. After two thousand years marked by extensive and shameful antisemitism, and with the benefit of hindsight and inter-faith dialogue and improved understandings of Judaism, Paul’s words here feel more than a little gross. I’ll say a few things about this: First, Judaism in Paul’s time was a very diverse phenomenon and so any type of sweeping assessment like the one Paul gives here would be partial at best. It seems what’s happened here is that Paul has read his own story of legalism into the whole tradition. (It happens: Augustine did pretty much the same with sexuality and Martin Luther did the same with his own legalism.) Second, it’s important to remember that at the time Paul was writing, he was not talking about trying to convert a religious ‘other’, but talking about what he thought were needed reforms within his own tradition. The question he’s struggling to answer is how an event he is convinced was supposed to unite all humanity within the broad Jewish story ended up causing a rift within Judaism itself. So he’s not hoping for conversion here but for the reunification of Judaism, albeit under a revolutionary new understanding of it in which Gentiles were welcomed with open arms and without needing to conform to the cultural and religious markers of Judaism. And, third, even if it was not representative of first century Judaism, Paul’s complaints about legalism are very well-founded. Legalism by any name — fundamentalism, moralism, liturgicalism, and so on — runs completely counter to the way of Jesus. To this day, it represents a dangerous challenge to the genuine life of faith.

All this has been context-setting for today’s passage, 10.5-15. It begins like this:

Moses writes concerning the righteousness that comes from the law, that ‘the person who does these things will live by them.’ But the righteousness that comes from faith says, ‘Do not say in your heart, “Who will ascend into heaven?”’ (that is, to bring Christ down) ‘or “Who will descend into the abyss?”’ (that is, to bring Christ up from the dead). But what does it say? ‘The word is near you, on your lips and in your heart’ (that is, the word of faith that we proclaim). (10.5-8)

This sounds very weird until we realize Paul is riffing off of Deuteronomy 30.11-16, where Moses reminds the people of the Law and exhorts them to choose wisely how they relate to it:

Surely, this commandment that I am commanding you today is not too hard for you, nor is it too far away. It is not in heaven, that you should say, ‘Who will go up to heaven for us, and get it for us so that we may hear it and observe it?’ Neither is it beyond the sea, that you should say, ‘Who will cross to the other side of the sea for us, and get it for us so that we may hear it and observe it?’ No, the word is very near to you; it is in your mouth and in your heart for you to observe. See, I have set before you today life and prosperity, death and adversity. If you obey the commandments of the Lord your God that I am commanding you today, by loving the Lord your God, walking in his ways, and observing his commandments, decrees, and ordinances, then you shall live and become numerous, and the Lord your God will bless you in the land that you are entering to possess.

This comes from Moses’ farewell speech. His message is that they don’t need anyone to go up to holy mountains to speak with God, nor do they need someone to sail the seas on a quest for wisdom. God’s message for them couldn’t be any nearer to them. It is on their lips and in their heart. And as one would expect from the Deuteronomistic perspective, living according to this wisdom, which is manifest in the Law, will be rewarded with earthly blessings. Here in Romans 10, Paul repurposes this speech in light of what has happened to, in, and through Jesus. He affirms with Moses that the secret to living well is not far away at all. We don’t need to ascend to some mystical heights to find wisdom, for Wisdom has already come down and does not need to be sought again. We don’t need to descend into the depths (here, Paul plays on the long history in Judaism of using the water as a metaphor for Sheol, the place of the dead), because Christ has already died once and does not need to die again. Sheol has been harrowed; its gates have been smashed and its halls emptied. What has needed to be done for our salvation has been done. Everything we need is at and, ‘on our lips’ and ‘in our heart’. But of course for Paul the content of our heartfelt confession is specifically about Jesus:

For if you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For one believes with the heart and so is justified, and one confesses with the mouth and so is saved. The scripture says, ‘No one who believes in him will be put to shame.’ For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; the same Lord is Lord of all and is generous to all who call on him. For, ‘Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.’ (10.9-13)

On the surface this seems like a slam-dunk for the traditional Protestant perspective that emphasizes the act of coming to believe in Jesus in salvation. And yet, Jesus’ own words suggest we need to read this in a more nuanced way; for he said, “Not everyone who says to me, “Lord, Lord”, will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only one who does the will of my Father in heaven” (Matthew 7.21, cf. 25.11), and “Why do you call me “Lord, Lord”, and do not do what I tell you?” (Luke 6.46). The Matthew 7 statement introduces his teaching about the necessity of feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, and visiting the imprisoned. The similar wording in Matthew 25 is from the Parable of the Bridesmaids with its warning that those who aren’t prepared for Christ’s return will be left out in the cold. And Jesus’ complaint in Luke introduces his teaching comparing one who does not live by his example and teaching to a person who builds his house on a floodplain and without a foundation. So it’s clear from Jesus’ teaching that ‘believing’ and ‘confessing’ and ‘accepting Jesus as our Lord and Saviour’ is not enough: Words and belief must be lived out in action.

So how do we bring Paul and Jesus together here?

First, returning to how the passage fits into Paul’s broader argument, what Paul says here is in service of demonstrating that Jewish and Gentile Christians are welcomed into God’s family on the same terms, namely faith. So he may be focusing on the first side of that ‘coin’ of faith but that doesn’t mean the second side isn’t just as important. In fact, all of Paul’s letters were written to address situations where people weren’t living in ways consistent with their confession of faith — something he thought was incompatible with Christian life. Second, he’s making his point by repurposing this famous speech, establishing a strong continuity with the past, just as his earlier allusions to Abraham did. The whole point of Romans was to establish that the Gospel, including its welcome of the Gentiles, was an expansion of Judaism, not a contradiction of it. The Law is only a stumbling block to this if it’s understood legalistically, as the means of being made right with God. Third, we always need to remind ourselves that our English-language translations can mislead us if we forget that the belief/faith/faithfulness language always needs to be taken together. So the passage in question can equally be read (’literally’), as:

For if you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and are faithful in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For one is faithful with the heart and so is justified, and one confesses with the mouth and so is saved. The scripture says, ‘No one who is faithful to him will be put to shame.’ For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; the same Lord is Lord of all and is generous to all who call on him. For, ‘Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.’ (10.9-13)

This has a bit of a different spin. Whereas to our English ears, ‘confess with your lips’ and ‘believe in’ sound like they’re both referring to what I’ve called the ‘first side’ of the New Testament understanding of faith, if we change our translation of the second half to ‘trust’ or ‘be faithful to’ — which are, once again, core elements of the Greek root Paul uses — it’s more like Paul is building an argument than repeating himself, something like: ‘If you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and live that confession out faithfully in your life…’

And this is really the point. Paul is emphasizing that it is our faithful response to God’s grace that saves us, not any kind of legalism. But he’s not saying that that initial response and confession is all that matters. It is just the beginning, and if indeed it is genuine, it will be fulfilled in a life that is ever more conformed to the way and attitude of Jesus. Which is why Jesus could say, in apparent contradiction to Paul here, that not everyone who calls him will be saved.

This is important for all of us to remember. Believing in Jesus does not give us free rein in life devoid of responsibilities before God, each other, and the rest of creation. Quite the opposite. It establishes a life of mutual, loving responsibilities that we can choose to fulfill or ignore. One can believe in Jesus and still do horrible evil. One can believe in Jesus and still reject him through the way one lives.

Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved; but this is just the beginning.