10:9 Because if
you confess the Lord Jesus with your mouth and believe in your heart that God
raised him from the dead, you shall be saved.
Because if you confess, etc.
Behold the glory of faith and its reward. Faith’s glory: if you believe that
the Lord is Jesus, i.e., Savior, and that he has risen. And its reward: eternal
salvation.
Because—it should be near, because
if you confess—when anyone attacks
the Lord Jesus—not the works of the law; confessing that he has
risen, or that he is Lord and Jesus, i.e., Savior
raised him—or lifted him up
10:10 For it is believed in the heart unto
justice, and confession is made in the mouth unto salvation.
it is believed in
the heart. A person can do
other things unwillingly, but to believe cannot be done except willingly. confession.
To confess means to say that is in the heart; otherwise it is speaking but not
confessing. That which is in the heart ought to be in the mouth because the
mouth is in the face, i.e., in the seat of shame. Not without reason do we make
the sign of the cross: it is so that a Christian may not be ashamed of
disgraces Christ suffered. It was Peter’s sin to deny by his mouth what he
believed in his heart. For why did he wash away with tears of having denied with
his mouth if it were enough for salvation that he held it in his heart? For
truth must both be believed and spoken.
For it is
believed in the heart unto justice—believing
gives salvation because it gives justice, which is the cause of salvation; in other
words, a person is justified through the faith of his heart, i.e., from being ungodly
he becomes godly.
confession—which is added to faith, as in the martyrs
in the mouth—after faith of the heart; otherwise it is of no
benefit.
unto salvation—not only unto justice (The Glossa Ordinaria on
Romans [trans. Michael Scott Woodard; TEAMS Commentary Series; Kalamazoo,
Mich.: Western Michigan University, 2011], 159)
