“The word of faith which we preach,” Part 2 (Rom. 10:8-13)

First Council of Nicea, by Vasily Surikov (Image from WikiMedia Commons)

In the early fourth century, a presbyter of the famous church in Alexandria by the name of Arius introduced a dangerous heresy into the church.  Arius believed that the Son of God was a created being: greater than any other created being, to be sure, but created, nevertheless.  One of the things he and his followers would say is that “There was a time when the Son of God was not.”  His heresy was overwhelmingly condemned at the Council of Nicaea in AD 325, and then again in AD 381 at the Council of Constantinople.  However, it took a long time before the church was no longer in danger of completely succumbing to the heresy.  Arius therefore has been called by one scholar, “the greatest heretic in antiquity.”[1]

Then, in the late 16th century a man by the name of Faustus Socinus began to teach anew the doctrine that Jesus was not of the same substance with, and was not therefore eternally co-equal and co-eternal with, God the Father.  He, like Arius, denied the true deity of Christ.  His followers, the Socinians, spread their pernicious influence throughout Poland and from there to many other places in post-Reformation Europe.  Such was the tenacity of this teaching that a hundred years later in England, the great Puritan John Owen felt compelled to write a book against Socinianism in order to guard the faith of believers against that heresy.[2]

Fast forward to the 1870s and you will find a man by the name of Charles Taze Russell starting a movement which in the early 20th century became known as the Jehovah’s Witnesses.  This religious sect (I won’t call it Christian because it isn’t) also denies the true deity of Jesus Christ.  They are in many respects the modern descendants of Arius and his ilk.

So you see that the true church of Jesus Christ can never rest from a vigilant watchfulness against wolves that will come in and spread damnable heresies.  Heresy that is defeated doesn’t just go away.  It is like the serpentine hydra of ancient Greek mythology: cut off one head and two grow in its place.  

Why am I saying this?  I’m saying it because we are a church that is orthodox in the sense of “little-o orthodoxy.”  We embrace the teaching of the ancient church.  We believe in the full deity of Jesus Christ.  We believe, as the Nicaean Creed puts it, “in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Only Begotten Son of God, born of the Father before all ages. God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, consubstantial with the Father; through him all things were made.”  This is in our articles of faith, part of the constitution of this church.  There, we confess this truth:

“We believe that Jesus Christ is the eternal Son of God, who, when the fullness of time had come, took upon Himself man’s nature, with all the essential properties and common infirmities of it, yet without sin, being conceived by the Holy Spirit in the womb of the Virgin Mary, and so was born of the tribe of Judah, of the seed of Abraham and David according to the Scriptures. Therefore in Him two whole, perfect, and distinct natures were inseparably joined together in one person, without conversion, composition, or confusion. This person is very God and very man, yet one Christ, the only mediator between God and man.”

The problem is that we can assume that the next generation that arises after us will just believe the truths that we believe.  But we must not assume that.  We have to keep reminding ourselves of it and why we believe it.  We must continue to teach it to ourselves and to our children, in the church and in the home.  And this is not just true of the deity of Christ, but of every Biblical doctrine.  

A few years ago, you will recall that I preached a series here on the doctrines of grace, the five points of what are sometimes called Calvinism.  These are the bread and butter of many ministers that we know.  But when I preached this in a church down South, a deacon came up to me and told me that he didn’t hear sermons on these themes very much anymore.  That in some sense was shocking to me.  It was also sad, because it doesn’t take long before we forget the things we’re not reminded of.

This is the reason why in the law God commanded the children of Israel to keep God’s word ringing in their ears: “And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart: And thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up. And thou shalt bind them for a sign upon thine hand, and they shall be as frontlets between thine eyes” (Deut. 6:6-8).  Why?  Because of the danger of forgetfulness: “Then beware lest thou forget the Lord, which brought thee forth out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage” (12).

So when we are looking at Romans 10:9 and we read that Paul says that saving faith confesses that Jesus is Lord we must not just breeze over this.  What does it mean that Jesus is Lord?  It is the confession that he is co-equal and co-eternal with the Father and the Spirit.  It is a statement regarding the deity of Christ.  And Paul is saying that you cannot be a Christian apart from this confession.  This is where we ended last time, and I think it is important that as we begin today, we start here and emphasize again just how important this is for us.

We noted last time that when Paul quotes from Isa. 28:16 in verse 11 and from Joel 2:32 in verse 13, both those OT references have to do with people putting their trust in the God of the Hebrews, Yahweh.  Paul applies those references without any hesitancy or embarrassment to Jesus, which would be blasphemous if Jesus were not the God-man, and as God, fully God.  The long and short of it all is this: Paul believed Jesus to be Yahweh, and this is what he is saying when he says that Jesus is Lord.[3] There is not just this one instance but repeatedly through the NT, OT passages that refer to Jehovah are applied directly to Jesus Christ.  Besides the ones we see here in Romans 10, we have the following examples: Ps. 45:6 in Heb. 8:1; Ps. 78:17-18 in Eph. 4:8-10; Ps. 110:1 in Mt. 22:44 by Christ himself; Ps. 102:25-27 in Heb. 1:10-12.  This alone ought to convince anyone that the apostle Paul and the rest of the NT authors really did believe that Jesus was truly God as well as truly man.  John’s words in the opening of his gospel do not represent a later development but the confession of the church from the very start: “In the beginning was the Word (Jesus), and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”

But he is not only God.  He was (and is) also fully human.  The earliest heresies actually focused on denying this part of the equation.  It’s why the apostle John would have to write, “Hereby know ye the Spirit of God: Every spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God: and every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God: and this is that spirit of antichrist, whereof ye have heard that it should come; and even now already is it in the world” (1 John 4:2-3).

The Lord of heaven and earth came to earth and became a man: “And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory, glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth” (Jn. 1:14).  As man, the Second Adam, he lived and he died, was buried, and rose from the dead.  Why does Paul focus so much in verses 9-10 on the resurrection?  It is because if Christ had not risen from the dead, we could have had no confidence that he was truly Lord.  But it is precisely because he is the Lord that death could not rule over him.  He had to be man in order to die, but he had to be God in order to triumph over sin, death, hell, and the grave for us.  Redemption hinges on the fact that Jesus was truly man and truly God: man to take our place at the bar of God’s justice, and God to take the infinite punishment that we deserved and atone for our sins.  Resurrection is the testimony that this redemption is finished and our sins can be forgiven.  And resurrection is the testimony that “God hath made the same Jesus, whom ye have crucified, both Lord and Christ” (Acts 2:36).

Now with this before us, this faith in Jesus as the risen Lord of all, I want to continue to look at the “message which we preach” (8).  We have been looking at this in terms of law (5), gospel (6-8), response (9-10), and promise (11-13).  Last time, we stopped in the middle of our consideration of the response to the gospel in verses 9 and 10.  So today we want to pick this up.  Today, I want to look at verses 9-13, the response of faith and the promise to faith.

The profession of faith

As we consider the response of faith to the good news of the gospel, we note here that our faith is a confessing faith, or a professing faith. I want us to note how this professing faith relates to salvation, regeneration, and baptism.  The question that I’m asking here is this: What does it mean when one makes this confession, when on puts their faith in Jesus as Lord?  In particular, what does it mean as that faith relates to salvation, regeneration, and baptism?

First of all, let’s consider how faith and confession relate to salvation.  They clearly do because Paul says so: “That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.”  If you believe in Christ and confess him you will be saved.  

This answers the question: what must I do to be saved?  How do I know that I am saved?  This is the question that the Philippian jailor asked of Paul and Silas: “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?  And they said, Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved, and thy house” (Acts 16:30-31).

Now the salvation under consideration here is justification, as it is in the entire context.  Paul says that we believe unto righteousness (Rom. 10:10): that’s justification before God.  He has said that Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to all who believe (4).  He is simply repeating that here.  In fact, as we have seen from the very beginning of this letter, it is all about how sinners are made right with God.  We are made righteous before God, that is to say, we are justified before God, by receiving the righteousness of Christ by faith (cf. 1:16-17; 3:21-22; 5:1).

And this is surely the most important question we could ask!  How does a man become right with God?  The answer of the Bible, and this answer of the gospel, and the answer of Paul in Romans 10 is that it is not by relying on our own good works but through faith in Christ. 

However, when we say that we are saved and justified by faith, we don’t mean that faith is the ground of our salvation, but that it is the instrument of justification.  In a similar way, confession is not something we do to merit salvation; it is simply the visible sign of our justification.  Faith does not save us; Christ does.  Faith is simply the hand that receives the gift.  It is the window through which we see Christ. You don’t look at the window; you look through it. And confession is the response to the gift.  It is not the quality of our faith or confession that saves us.  It is the object of faith that saves us.  It is not the righteousness of the act of faith that justifies; it is righteousness of Christ which is received by faith that justifies.  

We have to say it that way because we can easily turn faith into a work and inadvertently begin to have faith in our faith. And that turns us inward instead of looking to Jesus the author and the finisher of our faith.  The thing that we rely on is not anything in ourselves, including our faith; it is Christ, and Christ alone!

Both faith and confession are inextricably connected to salvation, not as ground but as instrument of and response to it.  But because of this, it is right to say that faith is necessary for salvation.  We must believe to be saved.  There is no salvation apart from faith in Christ.  The church has no right to tell anyone that they might be saved apart from faith in Christ.  The message is invariably this: Believe on the Lord Jesus and you shall be saved.   If you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.  This is what Paul has said throughout this epistle: “Now it was not written for his [Abraham’s] sake alone, that it was imputed to him; But for us also, to whom it shall be imputed, if we believe on him that raised up Jesus our Lord from the dead; Who was delivered for our offences, and was raised again for our justification” (4:23-25).

The second thing I want to notice with you is how faith and confession relate to regeneration. By “regeneration” I mean the sovereign work of grace by which God enables us to believe by changing our hearts and giving us new life. Now it is true that Paul does not explicitly mention regeneration here. However, it is implied. Notice what Paul says here: he says that if we believe “from the heart.”  This is no empty faith.  As you know, “heart” in the Bible is not just the center of our feelings, but the center of everything.  It is the cockpit of the human soul.  It is the center of our affections and thoughts and will.  This is not, therefore, a bare intellectual embrace of certain doctrines.  This is a faith that comes from a heart that has been changed by the Holy Spirit.  This is a faith that is sweetened by and tempered by and shaped by all the fruits of the Spirit: “the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance: against such there is no law” (Gal. 5:22-23).  Now my point here is not so much which comes first: faith or regeneration.  I believe that we are regenerated and then faith is the fruit of regeneration.  But the point I want to make is that faith is connected to regeneration, to the new birth, and that it is therefore unthinkable to imagine saving faith as if it were a bare intellectual acknowledgement of certain truths.  It of course involves that, but it is much more than that.  Faith embraces not only the mind, but also the affections and the will.  Hence a faith that confesses that Jesus is Lord doesn’t just acknowledge him to be such; it submits to him, obeys him, follows him, and confesses him.

The same thing is true with confession.  Paul is not implying that as long as someone mouths the words “I believe in Jesus,” or says a canned prayer at the end of a service because they have been psychologically manipulated to do so, that they are saved.  The devils will say that Jesus is Lord.  Did you know that?  They confess Jesus in that way!  We read in the first chapter of the gospel of Mark: “And there was in their synagogue a man with an unclean spirit; and he cried out, Saying, Let us alone; what have we to do with thee, thou Jesus of Nazareth? art thou come to destroy us? I know thee who thou art, the Holy One of God” (Mk. 1:23-24).  But are they saved?  Of course not. 

Think about what Paul says to the Corinthians.  He writes, “Ye know that [when you were unconverted] ye were Gentiles, carried away unto these dumb idols, even as ye were led. Wherefore I give you to understand, that no man speaking by the Spirit of God calleth Jesus accursed: and that no man can say that Jesus is the Lord, but by the Holy Ghost” (1 Cor. 12:2-3).  Of course he is not saying that it takes the Holy Spirit to physically utter the words “Jesus is Lord.”  No: he means that you cannot say it and really mean it apart from the work of the Holy Spirit in the heart.  Before they were saved they were following demonic idols; now they are following Jesus and confessing him as Lord.  What made the difference?  The Holy Spirit of course!  The work of God in the heart, regenerating it and giving them new life!

This is why true faith is a repentant faith.  It comes from a changed heart.  It comes from a heart that is no longer in love with sin.  It hates sin even as it clings to Christ. You may wonder why, in some places in the book of Acts that faith is emphasized and in others repentance is.  The truth of the matter is that you are not going to have true faith in Christ apart from meaningful repentance.  God commands all men everywhere to repent – and that means you and me (cf. Acts 17:30)!  At the same time, neither are you going to meaningfully repent apart from true faith in Jesus. It is why Paul characterizes his whole ministry in such terms: “repentance toward God and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ” (Acts 20:21).  To be saved means that your whole life is now devoted to Christ.  You confess that you belong to him and it is the greatest privilege in the world to say with Paul, “whose I am and whom I serve.”

Finally, by considering the confession of faith, I would like us to consider how faith and confession relate to baptism.  Now Paul does not explicitly mention baptism here, but is not baptism a part of our confession of Christ?  Is this not what it means to be baptized in the name of Jesus?  Confession in itself does not impart salvation, true.  Neither does baptism. But it is the inevitable response of someone who is saved, is it not?  How could we possibly say that someone is saved who refuses to confess Christ?  We cannot.  Our Lord himself put it this way: “Whosoever therefore shall confess me before men, him will I confess also before my Father which is in heaven. But whosoever shall deny me before men, him will I also deny before my Father which is in heaven” (Mt. 10:32-33).

Think of it this way.  Christ commands all his followers to be baptized.  It is a command, not a suggestion.  Don’t call yourself a Christian if you’re not baptized!  How can you call him Lord and not do what he says?  In the NT, baptism is a part of that complex of events that we call conversion. I don’t think any apostle would consider a person converted unless they were baptized. It’s why when the people responded to Peter’s sermon on the Day of Pentecost that he told them to repent and be baptized!  It was the only appropriate response to the fact that the ascended Jesus is Lord.  It is still the only appropriate response to the message of the gospel for those who believe. 

The promise to faith

Now we’ve seen that the fundamental promise to those who believe comes to us in these astounding and amazing words: “Thou shalt be saved” (Rom. 10:9).  Can you think of anything better that could be said to you?  This is infinitely better than someone telling you that you will never have to worry about finances or health or job security again.  This is the promise of eternal life!  And this is the words of an inspired apostle.  Which is the same thing as saying, this is the word of God to us.  God says to us that if we believe in the risen Lord Jesus we will be saved.  Talk about winning the jackpot!  How could a priest telling you, “Te absolvo” be any better?  

We are weak. But thank God, he knows this.  He knows our frame, that we are dust.  And so he surrounds the promise with other promises.  He gives us hope by supporting us with helps.  And that is what we see here.  What we have in verses 11-13 are three supports to the promise of salvation to those who believe.  Let me put it like this.  It is the promise of no disappointment (11), the promise of no distinction (12), and the promise of no damnation (13).  It is a threefold cord that is not easily broken.

No disappointment: “For the scripture saith, Whosoever believeth on him shall not be ashamed” (11). In the previous verses, we have noted that God has promised salvation to those who believe.  What Paul does in verse 11 is to ground that promise in the promise of Isaiah 28:16.  This is not something Paul himself is making up.  It has always been the way of faith.  

Note the “shall not be ashamed.”  In the Isaiah passage (28:16) that Paul is quoting, it is rendered, “shall not make haste.”  This is probably a reference to the frantic and anxious lifestyle of those who are trusting in things other than the true God. (This makes me think of a flustered Barney Fife in The Andy Griffth Show!) In Isaiah’s day, this was Egypt for the Jews.  Egypt failed them, and they were ashamed.  But those who trust in the Lord can really be still and rest in him, because we will never be disappointed.  

One may ask, “Not disappointed in what sense?”  There are many Christians who are disappointed for many reasons.  Well, it means that none of God’s promises to us will fall to the ground.  He has not promised to give us the American Dream.  He has not promised to fulfill all the dreams we might have about ourselves.  But what he has promised is far, far better.  He has promised grace, and such grace that even when we are weak we can be strong.  Can the world give you something like that?  He has promised that he will never leave us or forsake us.  He has promised us an eternal inheritance that can never be taken away.  Paul himself models for us what it looks like to take this promise seriously.  What does someone who believes this say?  He says this: “For the which cause I also suffer these things: nevertheless I am not ashamed: for I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed unto him against that day” (2 Tim. 1:12).

No distinction.  Now Paul has put this word “Whosoever believeth” in verse 11.  This may cause one to ask exactly who is this “whosoever.”  That is answered in verse 12: “For there is no difference between the Jew and the Greek: for the same Lord over all is rich unto all that call upon him.”   The promise is not limited to Jews but is open to all who believe, regardless of background or nationality.  God is rich unto all who call upon him! 

Again, I love that word “rich.”  God is “rich unto all that call upon him.”  Do you believe that?  God not only hears the prayers of those who put their faith in Jesus, but he is rich toward them.  He is generous to us.  Have you not experienced this, believer?  Can you not say with Paul that God has been rich toward you?  Can you not say, with David,

I sought the Lord, and he heard me, and delivered me from all my fears. They looked unto him, and were lightened: and their faces were not ashamed. This poor man cried, and the Lord heard him, and saved him out of all his troubles. The angel of the Lord encampeth round about them that fear him, and delivereth them. O taste and see that the Lord is good: blessed is the man that trusteth in him. O fear the Lord, ye his saints: for there is no want to them that fear him” (Ps. 34:4-9).

We’ve seen this word already.  I remind you of it from chapter 9: “And that he might make known the riches of his glory on the vessels of mercy, which he had afore prepared unto glory” (24).  Riches of what?  Riches of his glory!  Or, as Paul will put it to the Ephesians: “That in the ages to come he might shew the exceeding riches of his grace in his kindness toward us through Christ Jesus” (2:7).  God is not a miser towards his children.  He is generous: “For the Lord God is a sun and shield: the Lord will give grace and glory: no good thing will he withhold from them that walk uprightly. O Lord of hosts, blessed is the man that trusteth in thee” (Ps. 84:11-12).

No damnation: “For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved” (13). Here, the apostle picks up on prayer as the expression of true faith: all who ask God to save them will be saved.  This verse grounds the “call on the name of the Lord” of verse 12, and reinforces the promise of salvation to all who believe.

This is such a wonderful verse and a gracious support for fainting saints.  A good friend of mine struggled for many years with the assurance of his salvation.  No matter what he did or did not do, he was constantly concerned about whether or not he had been truly saved.  Then, he told me, one day he read this verse.  He reasoned, “I have called on the name of the Lord, and this verse tells me that all who do so will be saved.”  It was the means by which the Holy Spirit sealed the hope of eternal life on his heart.

I say again what I have said in the past: God wants his children to have the assurance of their salvation.  It is not sinful or presumptuous to have it.  At the same time, we want to recognize that you don’t have to have assurance to be saved.  Thank God, many a doubting saint has made it to heaven. It’s Christ who saves us, and his hold on us, not our hold on him!  But, praise God, part of the generosity of our Father is that he is not only rich towards us, but wants us to know it.  

This chapter in one respect is so helpful to that end.  The Christian hope does not hang upon our efforts.  It’s not a call to climb our way into heaven or to descend into the depths of hell to win our salvation.  It’s a call, a summons, to see Jesus as the author and the finisher of our faith.  It’s a call to place our faith in Jesus as Lord, as risen from the dead, as victorious over the devil and all his works.  And it’s a promise that all who do so will be saved and have eternal life that can never be taken away.  Praise God for his good gospel to us through Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior.  Praise God for the promise: “If you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.”

[1]  Alexander MacKay, quoted here: https://thecripplegate.com/death-of-historys-worst-heretic/ 

[2] The Doctrine of the Holy Trinity Explained and Vindicated, by John Owen, originally published in 1669.

[3] You may wonder why in the Old Testament in the KJV (and other versions as well), sometimes you have the term “Lord” and sometimes “LORD.”  The first term usually translated the Hebrew word “Adonai” which means “sovereign,” or “lord.”  The second term, LORD, usually translated the Tetragrammaton, the four-letter Hebrew word YHWH for the God of the covenant, Yahweh, as it is sometimes transliterated, or Jehovah (see Ps. 110:1 for a comparison).   The reason why Yahweh is translated as LORD is that the Jews would not pronounce the divine name, believing it to be blasphemous to do so.  So when they came to it, they would say “Adonai” (Lord) instead of “Yahweh” (and actually because they did not pronounce it, and because ancient Hebrew didn’t have vowels, we really can’t be sure to this day how YHWH is pronounced).  Most translators follow a similar convention and translate it as LORD, only using all caps to help us know that this is the covenant name of God, rather than a generic name for deity, like Adonai or Elohim.