Is confession a must for one to be saved? (Romans 10:9-10)

Question:

Is confession a must for one to be saved? (Romans 10:9-10)

Answer:

I request that you find some time and read the book of Romans from chapter 1 to 10, so that you understand what this confession is all about.

The question of CONFESS TO BE SAVED in Romans 10 is a very sensitive and one that drags us into deep theological waters. But I will try as much as I can to avoid all the technical complication of the matter and share what is useful to all of us (trained and untrained) here.

Romans 10:10 For man believes with his heart and so is justified, and he confesses with his lips and so is saved. (RSV)

Many Pentecostal preachers have always emphasized this scripture and guided new believers in confessing as part of the process to their salvation.

I have see this in sunday services that I nowadays attend and have also witnessed it on TV and Radio. Am not going to say what they do is wrong, or right. What am going to do is to briefly look at this text in the perspective of the book in which it is allocated, the theme of the book and the broad theological view of the writer who is none other than Paul.

After I have done that, I hope that you and I will make personal conclusions on the question of whether Romans 10:9-10 is abused or used right.

Romans 10:9-10 because, 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 man believes with his heart and so is justified, and confesses with his lips and so is saved

Now let’s look at the scripture literally. (You see in my little experience with these matters of the Bible, I have learnt to appreciate a simplistic approach to the word of God, there is power in such an approach).

The text is straight forward and this is what it says: Your *heart* and your mouth are instrumental for your salvation, and that is as far as verse 9 is concerned. However, verse 10 assigns different reward-oriennted task to each.

Look at what it says: For man believes with his heart and so is justified and confesses with his lips and so is saved

So it is:
HEART for JUSTIFICATION
and
MOUTH for SALVATION.

What this passage has literally done is to present  a formula of Justification and one for Salvation. And I think we should be fair and do justice to the text and not reconstruct it to assume that Paul used the Heart and the mouth, and Salvation and Justification  synonymously.

This is how sensitive the Bible and Biblical Theology is.

Now that we have looked at the verse plainly, let us attempt a look that extends its lens from that level. From the above view, one would assume that Paul is presenting two conditions for salvation (faith and confession) and not the usual ones we are accustomed which are (the grace of God and the faith of a sinner).

If we insist that one’s confession is part and parcel of both the process of salvation and the product of salvation then we risk to contradict Pauline contextual theology in its broad sense.

Secondly, it also exhibits that we are looking at the book of Romans in the lens of chapters and verses (a latter invention), not as a whole letter that addresses one thing after another given the mixed audience (Jewish converts and Gentile converts) in the church at Rome.

Whenever you read the NT, you need to keep in mind quite a number of things and the most basic is that you are reading a letter without verses and chapters. So to insist on the proof texting model of verse so and so says and therefore construct a doctrine for belief and practice is an abuse to the Bible.

That said: We at least know that: Confessing that Jesus is Lord is never mentioned in the NT and neither is it alluded to in the atonement order of the OT (from which the life, ministry, death/cross and resurrection of Jesus is based) as a means of gaining eternal life.

This should be put out of the way and then we remain with the task of finding out what Paul specifically is talking about. We can only do so by first establishing what he is not talking about. I have just confirmed that he is not talking about, and neither is he giving a formula on how we are saved. That he has established in Ephesians 2:8-10 and the formula is GOD’S GRACE and man’s divinely imbued faith to take on the finished product of God.

CONFESSION

When we talk about confession in the Bible, there are many scenarios that necessitate the practice and I have to admit some I can recall, others I cannot. However, I will point out the outstanding ones that have a clue close to what we are wrestling with here.

Matthew 10:31-32: Fear not, therefore; you are of more value than many sparrows. So everyone who acknowledges me before men, I also will acknowledge before my Father who is in heaven

The word for ‘acknowledges‘ is a translation for the Greek word Homologeo which is ‘Confess‘.

We all agree that salvation for eternal destinies is not a business of positive confession where you speak well of Jesus and automatically Jesus speaks positively about you in heaven and you are saved. We all know, that in Mathew 7:21 many confess the name but still Jesus denies them eternal life.

Furthermore, the Gospel of John written for the precise purpose of clarifying the condition for receiving eternal life (as it is stated in John 20:30-31) nowhere states that one’s eternal destiny is determined by MOUTH CONFESSION. In one of the discourses of John in this gospel, he actually gives us a demonstration of this matter in these words:

Nevertheless among the chief rulers also many believed on him; but because of the Pharisees they did not confess him, lest they should be put out of the synagogue: (John 12:42).

These were people who believed in the heart but who couldn’t shout it out for security and survival purposes.

If we insist on mouth confession as a criteria for salvation, we stand a risk of explaining whether the sick who can’t utter a word and the dumb and deaf are not fully saved.

It is at this point that I would like to warn all those who use this verse in Romans 10:9-10 as a procedure for salvation that they should stop abusing the text. Next, I will briefly tell you what Paul contextually is talking about.

To find Paul’s meaning in Romans 10:9-10, a brief investigation of the book of Romans is needed. From chapter 1 to chapter 10 there are three favorite terms Paul uses, which are:

~DIKAIOSUNE (Justification)

~SOTERIA (salvation)

~SOZO (save/survival)

We (Theologians) have again and again taught about this term (dikaiosune) and for Paul, it is a legal or forensic term referring to the imputed righteousness the believer receives at the moment of faith.

If you look at the book of Romans from the point of Romans 1:16, Paul has discussed justification (dikaiosune) in great detail. In Romans chapter 3 to 5, he concludes it with the blessings as stated in Romans 5:1-11.

From chapters 6-8, Paul continues with his  discourse however in these chapter he adds another word to dikaiosune which is Soteria.

The first Pauline use of the term in the book of Romans is in 1:16, and Paul goes mute about soteria until he gets to chapter 5:10-11. Lastly, he uses the term again in chapter 8:24.

In all these incidences, the term Soteria – which we know as salvation – is a result or a fruit of Dikaiosune (God’s righteousness/justification) as discussed in Romans chapters 3-5.

After Paul has addressed this issue pertaining salvation for both the Jewish and Gentile converts in the same church at Rome, from chapter 9-11 he turns his attention to the Jews and addresses their case.

Jewish believers since the time of Jesus to the time of Paul still struggled with the idea of declaring in public (more so if that public was Jewish oriented) that they were followers of Jesus of Nazareth.

As John 12:42 exhibited earlier, this could cost you not only your reputation in Jewish communities, but it also entailed evil that could take your life as well.

So the Pauline use of the term homologeo (confess) in relation with the term Sozo (save/survive) here has nothing to do with the Salvation (soteria) which we already dealt with in chapters 1-8 of the book, but rather an encouragement to the Jewish believer that you can still be saved and still survive if you confessed that Jesus is Lord. Given that they (given their Judaism background) intrinsically considered it blasphemous to Yahweh to call Jesus of Nazareth the LORD.

In fact, I picked interest in answering this question because it applies to my situation. Ever since I left the SDA Church, I have friends who stayed in and who actually know the Theology of the church is wrong but because they want to be saved from the evil and wrath of this church, they keep quiet and share their honest belief in closed areas and inboxes. This is the importance of the confession that Paul argues will come with salvation (sozo).

The salvation of Romans 10:9-10 borders on what we generally call hostility survival rather than the real salvation (soteria) as a result of the dikaiosune of God.

What we can conclude with here is to argue from the contextual fact that Paul is addressing Israelites in the church and those outside who would dare listen, to be confident enough and always make a public confession of their belief and he argues there is deliverance in it for the Lord whom they call upon will not let them down.

Therefore, whenever Christians have missed this context and have instead stressed the need for an unbeliever to confess Christ publicly in order to get to heaven, the truth of the free gift (dikaiosune) of eternal life is abused.

God bless you. I income Truth, Reason, and Faith

Am Pr. I.T.WHITE
The Gospel Hawker