Romans 10:9: A Minimal Confession?

Romans 10:9 is often misused as a kind of minimal confession of the Christian faith. Anyone who says that Jesus is Lord and acknowledges believing that He rose from the dead is then supposed to be automatically recognized as a brother or sister. On that basis, it is argued that doctrinal differences are of secondary importance and form no obstacle to spiritual fellowship.

But Paul does not use this verse in that way at all. In fact, anyone who carefully reads what he writes here discovers that this very verse contains several fundamental truths over which there is great division today.

God Raised Him from Among the Dead

Most striking, first of all, is that Paul does not say one must believe that Jesus rose. That is, of course, true, but it is not what the text says. Paul writes that one should believe in the heart that God raised Him from among the dead. This wording is not incidental. Throughout his letters, Paul emphasizes that God is the One who acts. God raised Christ. God exalted Him. God bestowed on Him the name above every name. God made Him Lord.

Traditional Christendom regards Jesus as God, but Paul does the opposite here. The faith of which he speaks is not that Jesus raised Himself from among the dead, but that God raised Him from among the dead. For Paul, this distinction is apparently so fundamental that he counts it as part of the heart of the evangel.

Was Christ Really Dead?

There is something else as well. When Paul says that God raised Him from among the dead, this presupposes that Christ was truly dead. That may seem self-evident, but within traditional orthodoxy it is more complicated. It teaches that Christ continued consciously alive during the three days leading up to His resurrection. Some place Him in paradise, others in the realm of the dead, but in either case He was not truly dead.

A great deal is at stake here. The resurrection derives its significance from the reality of death. God did not raise someone who had meanwhile continued living elsewhere. God raised a dead man. If Christ simply continued living during those three days, even if in paradise or the realm of the dead, then there was no resurrection from among the dead, but at most a return from another sphere of life.

Jesus Is Lord… of All

The second half of Romans 10:9 is also often detached from its content. People read about confessing Jesus as Lord and understand this as a general acknowledgment of His authority. But Paul immediately develops this thought further. Only a few verses later, in Romans 10:12, he writes that the same Lord is “Lord of all” and rich for all who invoke Him.

This immediately gives the confession a universal scope. The word “lord” (Gr. kurios) means owner, possessor. The confession that Jesus is Lord implies that He is “Lord of all,” both of the dead and of the living (Rom. 14:9).

This connects directly with Paul’s further teaching that ultimately every knee should be bowing and every tongue should be acclaiming that Jesus Christ is Lord (Phil. 2:9–11). Strikingly, Paul immediately adds that this universal acclaim will be “for the glory of God, the Father.” Once again, he distinguishes between God and Jesus Christ. The Father is God. Jesus Christ is the Lord whom God raised and exalted.

No License for Doctrinal Indifference

It is therefore remarkable that Romans 10:9, of all verses, is used to downplay fundamental doctrinal differences. Paul does exactly the opposite. In this verse, he summarizes several truths that directly concern the fact that Jesus is not God, the reality of death and therefore also the meaning of the resurrection, and the universal significance of Jesus as Lord of all.

Nor did Paul intend this verse as an all-encompassing criterion for spiritual fellowship. The same Paul who wrote Romans 10:9 warns the Galatians about a different evangel – which is an evangel in name only – and he even pronounces an anathema upon it (Gal. 1:6–10). There is no indication that they failed to acknowledge Jesus as Lord. Nor is there any denial of the resurrection. Yet Paul does not hesitate to identify their message as a distortion of the evangel and pronounce the curse upon it.

He also warns the Corinthians about “another Jesus” and “a different evangel.” And Paul names Hymenaeus and Philetus because they strayed concerning the resurrection, and he tells Timothy to withdraw himself from such teachings (2 Tim. 2:18–21).

For Paul, it was not sufficient for someone to utter certain words or appeal to Christ. The question is always whether one is holding to “sound teaching … in accord with the evangel of the glory of the happy God, with which I was entrusted,” as the apostle impresses upon Timothy in 1 Timothy 1:11 (Titus 1:9; 2 Tim. 4:3).

Anyone who uses Romans 10:9 as an umbrella under which fundamental doctrinal differences become matters of secondary importance is putting words into Paul’s mouth. Paul does not call us to look into the hearts of others to determine whether or not they believe, for that is not given to a human being. But he does call us to hold to sound teaching and uphold it. That remains the only reliable criterion today.

Associate or Distance Ourselves?

In his final letter, Paul goes even further. In 2 Timothy 4:3, he announces that the era will come when people will no longer tolerate sound teaching, but will heap up teachers who say what they like to hear.

Strikingly, Paul is not warning here about a few outsiders or a small minority departing from the truth. He speaks of a development that would affect Christendom as a whole. Error would not become a fringe phenomenon; sound teaching itself would! The time would come when it would no longer be tolerated.

The conclusion, then, cannot be that we should seek fellowship with everyone who confesses with the mouth that Jesus is Lord. Paul nowhere calls for unity with “a different evangel,” “another Jesus,” or teachings that undermine the truth of the evangel. His call is precisely to hold to the sound teaching and distance ourselves from what conflicts with it. Neither the majority nor sheer numbers form the standard, but the truth entrusted to him as an apostle.

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