“…that if you confess with your mouth the Lord Yeshua and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.” Romans 10:9-10

That’s it? Just confess with your mouth? This interpretation didn’t line up with the radical living that I saw in the book of Acts. Peter demanded repentance (Acts 2).  Paul demanded that the pagan turn from his idols (Acts 14). All the disciples save John died as martyrs. Most of the people I knew while growing up in Virginia had at one time uttered the words “Jesus is Lord,“—yet were not living anything like New Testament believers. Were they saved? What was Paul talking about?

However, that was before I understood the Roman mindset of what it meant to confess someone as Lord. Paul, being a Roman citizen himself, knew that the Romans would see this in the light in which it was meant…which is quite radical.

Whenever a Roman citizen declared, “Caesar is Lord,” he was confessing his ultimate loyalty to Rome. He was not merely saying words, he was saying that there was none greater than Rome, and his life was committed to serving the Roman world. If someone refused to honor Caesar as god and confess him as Lord, he was risking his very life. 

It becomes clear that what can be viewed as a weak statement through the lens of western culture where words are cheap, was actually the exact opposite. When Paul says that we must confess, “Yeshua is Lord,” he is not referring to something we do at an altar in a congregation or even in the privacy of our own home. It is something that we proclaim boldly to the world, as part of “taking membership,” along with immersion, into the worldwide body of believers.

Furthermore, his use of the phrase “Yeshua is Lord,” was most likely chosen by Paul to make it certain to the would-be believer that Caesar is no longer (Lord). Unlike so many who use this very verse to make it easy to enter the kingdom, the Roman man would have understood that Paul was demanding that he risk his very life to enter the kingdom. 

In closing, Romans 10:9-10 has been grossly misused into convincing prospective believers that they can receive salvation by simply repeating some words. It is no wonder that in modern, western evangelistic campaigns more than ninety percent of those who make public professions of faith fall away in the first year. The Expositors Bible Commentary says it well:
 
… in this passage, Paul is speaking of the objective lordship of Christ, which is the very cornerstone for faith, something without which no one could be saved.            

Yeshua is Lord! Amen