Romans 10:5–13
Earlier, Paul told us that Jesus is the “end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes” (Romans 10:4). Here he explains how.
Paul first recalls Levitical law: “You shall therefore keep my statutes and my rules; if a person does them, he shall live by them: I am the Lord” (Leviticus 18:5). We remember that Paul has already told us that “the righteous shall live by faith” (Romans 1:17). Paul is not simply inventing that; he is quoting from Habakkuk 2:4. The Law holds out life to the one who does it. But Paul has already spent this letter demonstrating our problem: none of us has established righteousness through obedience to the Law.
Look at how he builds his argument. “But the righteousness based on faith says, ‘Do not say in your heart, "Who will ascend into heaven?"’ (that is, to bring Christ down)” (Romans 10:6). We don’t spend our effort to bring Christ down to earth; He Himself came down. “Or ‘Who will descend into the abyss?’ (that is, to bring Christ up from the dead)” (Romans 10:7). Not only does Jesus come down to us, He completes the sacrifice that brings us salvation and is raised from the dead by the power of the Father.
Then Paul goes from allusion to direct quotation. “But what does it say? ‘The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart’ (that is, the word of faith that we proclaim)” (Romans 10:8). Paul is quoting from Deuteronomy 30:14.
Jesus fulfills the Law (Matthew 5:17). Just as Deuteronomy says that the Israelites could not say the Law was far away, Christ came to be with us. Jesus came near to us, bore our sin, died for us, and was raised from the dead. The saving work has been accomplished, and now the word of faith is near us, in our mouths and in our hearts. Jesus came to do what the Law could never do (Romans 8:3).
Then Paul finishes with the phrase, “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” (Romans 10:9). Paul has not spent the last nine chapters telling us how we are sinful and cannot save ourselves, and that God Himself does the saving work, for us to now understand this as some sort of spell we can cast. Paul is not saying that if we say the right words, we will be saved. We can tell this by the very next verse, which flips the script: “for with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved” (Romans 10:10). This confession comes from a believing heart. God promised that He would give His people a new heart (Ezekiel 36:26), and what the heart believes, the mouth confesses.
Then Paul closes with a callback from his earlier argument: “there is no distinction.” In Romans 3:22–23, there is no distinction in that all have sinned. In Romans 10:12, there is no distinction in that we all have one Lord: Jesus Christ.
There is no distinction among the guilty. There are not distinct saviors, only one. Whoever believes will not be put to shame. Whoever calls upon the Lord will be saved (Joel 2:32).
Because Christ has come near.
-steve