Purpose
The purpose of this article is to examine Romans 10:9, and look at if this passage is teaching that anyone without specific knowledge of Jesus is condemned to hell.
We have also discussed this same topic in our study on John 3:16-21. We recommend reading that study first.
Understanding Romans 10
Romans 10:9
because if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.
This is not an inflexible prescriptive statement for the only way to receive salvation. What we mean is that it’s not the single rule that you must do in order to be saved (in order to receive the forgiveness of sins, righteousness, and eternal life).
First note that there are two clauses within this statement:
- Confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord
- Believe in your heart that God (the Father) raised Him from the dead
So what does this mean? Does this mean that if you don’t verbally state Christ is Lord you will never be saved? Certainly not! It means that if you do these two things, then you will be saved. It does not say that “you must” do them, but “if” you do them. If you do them, you will be saved.
This fits perfectly with the scriptural understanding of the gospel. You must recognize your sin, and humbly seek the Lord and call upon His name. You must hear and learn from Him and walk in faithfulness to His word.
Believe in your heart
Let us first look at the second clause, “believe in your heart that God (the Father) raised Him (Christ) from the dead". Paul here is pointing us back to faith. It is faith in God and His power and His promises. God promised that, by faith to Him and His word, He would forgive us, and raise us to eternal life. By trusting in the testimony that He raised Christ from the dead, we know that He will raise us from the dead.
1 Peter 1:20-21
For He was foreknown before the foundation of the world, but has appeared in these last times for the sake of you who through Him you trust in God, who raised Him from the dead and gave Him glory, so that your faith and hope are in God.
Through Christ’s appearance and fulfilment of prophecy, and through His death and resurrection, we see that God keeps His promises, and through Christ we have the definitive testimony to trust in God who raised Jesus from the dead and gave Christ glory, so now our faith and hope are in God.
It’s not about facts. We are not saved by specific facts; we are saved by faith in God, His word, and His promises. It is a fact that God raised Jesus from the dead, but we have not seen have we? No, we put faith in the testimony of the Spirit that God did indeed raise Christ from the dead, and He will indeed raise us from the dead. It is about our faith!
Belief in Christ testifies of your genuine faith
Now let us go back to the first clause, that “IF” we “confess” with our mouths that Jesus is Lord… to confess is defined as: to assent, i.e. agree, covenant, acknowledge
It is translated as:
- to say the same thing as another, i.e. to agree with, assent
- to concede (i.e. not to refuse, not to deny, to declare)
Is this saying that we must verbally acknowledge Jesus as Lord, and there is no other possible way to receive salvation? No, the text is not saying that at all.
The text is stating that IF we acknowledge that Jesus is Lord, then we are expressing faith that He is the Lord God. Our confession shows our genuine faith in God. Jesus is the Lord, and He was raised from the dead. If we believe in our hearts that God raised Him from the dead, then we provide a testament to our faith in the truth.
Is it because of specific knowledge? No. It is because of our faith in what the Spirit of God is testifying to us! It is because we are living by our faith in God by acknowledging our faith with our mouth.
This is not teaching that you must verbally speak of Jesus, but is speaking to living out our faith in our actions. Our actions/works don’t save us, but they do show that we truly have faith (i.e. believe in our heart) in God and His word.
Confessing/Acknowledging
Matthew 10:32-33
“Whoever, then, acknowledges me before people, I will acknowledge before my Father in heaven. But whoever denies me before people, I will deny him also before my Father in heaven.
This word here, “acknowledge” is the same word as confess in Rom.10:9. Christ is saying if you declare and acknowledge Him before people, you are showing and providing testimony of your genuine faithfulness to Him. You are showing that the truth is already in you when you confess Christ as Lord (John 3:21; John 18:38).
The Father and the Son are one. Everyone that has heard and learned (i.e. believed and acted upon) the truth from the Father will come to the Son (John 6:45), for their testimony is from the same Spirit of truth. God’s kingdom is not divided and anyone trusting in the Spirit is trusting in both the Father, and the Son (Mark 3:20-30).
This is why at the end of Christ’s message about the kingdom not being divided He gave us the words about the blasphemy of the Spirit. The Spirit that teaches us about the Father, who we believe in, is the same Spirit that teaches of Christ. No one who trusts in the Father will deny the Son, and likewise all who acknowledge the Son acknowledge the Father also (1 John 2:23; 1 John 4:2).
Your faith in the testimony of Jesus as being the Son of God shows that God is in you, and that you are in God (1 John 4:15). It shows that you are listening to the Spirit’s testimony of the Word. To deny the Spirit’s testimony (of either the Father or the Son) is to blaspheme the Spirit and be cut off and under condemnation, for you reject the only testimony that can lead you to eternal life.
Hebrew 13:15-16
Through Him (Christ) then let us continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of our lips, acknowledging his name. And do not neglect to do good and to share what you have, for God is pleased with such sacrifices.
Again, here we have the same word for ‘confess’ from Romans 10:9 (acknowledge). We are offering a sacrifice to God by acknowledging Christ on our lips. This doesn’t save us, but it shows that we presently have faith in God and His word and His testimony that He provided to us through Christ’s coming, dying, and being raised.
God raised the Son, and He has promised to raise us too if we trust in Him and His word! We are to submit our will to the testimony of the Spirit, repent of our sin, and humbly follow God in faith and faithfulness. By walking in faithfulness to His word (which the writer here says is both acknowledging the Son and by doing good and sharing what we have), we offer sacrifices to God.
These sacrifices don’t save us (that would be works), but they show that our faith in God is authentic and alive as opposed to “dead faith” that has no works. We are obeying in faith the first and greatest commandment, the gospel that saves us.
It’s faith in God and faithfulness to His word
John 12:42
Nevertheless, even among the rulers many believed in him, but because of the Pharisees they would not confess Jesus to be the Christ, so that they would not be put out of the synagogue.
These rulers believed in the fact of who Christ was. They mentally believed it. But they did not have faith in God and faithfulness to His word. If they had faith in the Father and His word, then they would have ‘confessed’ that Jesus was indeed the Messiah. They refused to walk in faithfulness to the testimony of the Spirit; they hardened their hearts.
2 John 1:7
For many deceivers have gone out into the world, those who do not acknowledge Jesus Christ as coming in the flesh. This is the deceiver and the antichrist.
Anyone that will not acknowledge through the sacrifice of their lips that Jesus is the Messiah from God and that He indeed came, is a deceiver. They have not heard and learned to the Spirit’s testimony of the Son. They prove they are not of the truth. They are following a different God and different gospel.
You can confess, but not believe
Mark 7:6
He said to them, “Isaiah prophesied correctly about you hypocrites, as it is written: ‘This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me.
Titus 1:16
They profess to know God, but by their deeds they deny Him, being detestable and disobedient and worthless for any good deed.
Remember Paul provided two conditions in Romans 10:9; confess with your lips and believe in your heart. It’s possible to honor God with your lips, but not actually believe Him and His word in your heart.
This again points us to the fact that acknowledging Jesus as Lord is by living your life in faithfulness to what you believe in your heart. This is why Paul says that you can perform the work of ‘confession’, but it’s really about your heart. If you believe in the Word of God that He has sown into your heart, and walk by faithfulness to that Word, then your deeds will produce sacrifices pleasing to God.
Summary
Our Lord is holy, kind, impartial, merciful, patient, and full of love. He has spoken to all of us, revealing who He is and what He has done for us. He has given each of us the knowledge of our sin and what our future judgment will bring should we be without reconciliation. He takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked, and desires that all repent and call upon His name. Our Lord saves us based on our faith in Him, and by our faith He includes us in Christ, forgiving us and covering us through His work on the cross.
For those who have called upon the name of the Lord without knowing Jesus, we can give them confirmation of their faith and salvation by preaching and proclaiming Jesus Christ. Those who have heard and learned from the Father, and are walking and practicing the truth in faith, will recognize the Lord Jesus and show their faith was wrought in God.