Romans 10:10: Evident Faith

Introduction:

It is claimed that Christianity is the biggest religion in the world with over 1 billion adherents, only just beating Islam. I think that there is a lot less than that. People included in those statistics are those who are baptised as infants in any Christian church including the Roman Catholic and it includes all the cults who call themselves Christian. Not to mention that cultural Christians and those who may have made some sort of confession of faith as a child and have never gone on to live the Christian life. How many say that they are Christians but give no proof of life? We have been looking at what Paul seeks to teach us about faith. We have seen faith as a principle in contradistinction from law, we have seen that faith has a specific intellectual content is not an aimless dependence, and we have seen that faith is from the heart and includes humility, repentance and trust. Today as we continue with Romans 10:10 we will see that faith evidences itself. Today we want to explore the Spirit wrought nature of faith, and the fact that faith does indeed manifest itself in proof of life. We have looked at heart faith now we turn to the second part of Romans 10 to explore what Paul means by confessing with the mouth.

Romans 10:10, ‘For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved.’

Let me begin with two clarifying statements about what Paul does not mean. Given the fact that true faith is a heart faith that includes, humility, contrition, repentance and trust in Christ the confession of faith that Paul is speaking about here is not a minimalistic formula or a magic way of making Christians through saying words. Secondly, Paul is not outlining a commandment that we obey and by our obedience we please God and earn justification. There are those that have tried to see this verse as outlining a duty that needs to be obeyed and upon the offering of obedience we are saved. This is to deny the principle of faith as a receiving act and not a giving act, and an act of depending upon Christ’s deeds not my own.

What does Paul mean by, ‘and with the mouth one confesses and is saved?’