Day 10 — The Starting Point: Who Jesus Is, and What He Has Done
Today’s Passage: Romans 10:8-13, and John 10:27-30
Paul is writing a letter to Christians in Rome, a city he has never visited. In the middle of it he turns to his own people, the Jews, and writes about them with real grief. They have a zeal for God, he says, but they are trying to build a standing with God out of their own record, and so they have not taken the standing He offers as a gift.
Then, instead of arguing further, he borrows the words of Moses. Moses had told Israel that God’s word was not out of reach, not up in the sky, not over the sea, but close: in their mouth and in their heart. Paul takes that sentence and lays it over the message about Jesus. Six verses later he has said, as plainly as it can be said, how a person answers.
This is the last of these ten days. The others have been about who Jesus is and what He has done. This one is about how a person answers, and then about what holds them afterwards.
As you read, hold this: Everyone who calls on the Lord is saved, and everyone He saves He holds.
Context Two sentences behind the passage
The words Paul quotes in verse 8 come from Deuteronomy 30, spoken by Moses at the end of his life to people standing on the edge of the land they had been promised. The commandment was not in heaven, he told them, so that someone would have to go up and fetch it, and not beyond the sea, so that someone would have to cross for it. It was already near them. The other sentence is in verse 9, and in the first century it was dangerous. Kyrios, the word translated Lord, was the title the empire used for Caesar, and it was the word the Greek Old Testament used in place of God’s own covenant name. To say “Jesus is Lord” out loud in Rome was to say something about Jesus that the state kept for the emperor and the Scriptures kept for God.
Romans 10:8-9 (BSB)
⁸ But what does it say? “The word is near you; it is in your mouth and in your heart,” that is, the word of faith we are proclaiming: ⁹ that if you confess with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.
The word is near you. Nothing has to be fetched. There is no climb, no voyage, no qualifying period, no waiting until a person is cleaned up enough to be presentable. The message has already come as close as the mouth and the heart of whoever is hearing it.
Then verse 9 gives the two halves of one turning. Jesus is Lord is not a compliment paid to a good teacher. It is a handing over: agreeing that He has the right to run a life, and stopping the attempt to run it yourself. God raised Him from the dead is the claim these ten days have circled, that He died under Pontius Pilate in the place of guilty people and came out of the grave in a body on the third day. Believing that is not believing a nice idea. It is believing an event.
Mouth and heart are not two steps in a process. They are the same turning, seen from outside and from inside.
Word study "confess" — *homologeō* (Romans 10:9)
Greek: ὁμολογέω (homologeō), pronounced ho-mo-lo-GEH-oh. Strong’s G3670.
The word is built from two others: homos, meaning same, and legō, meaning say. To confess is to say the same thing. In ordinary use it meant agreeing to the terms of a contract, or stating your position where others could hear it. The English word has picked up the smell of a police station, as though confessing were mainly owning up to a crime. Here it is simpler and larger: saying out loud the same thing God has already said about His Son.
Romans 10:10-11 (BSB)
¹⁰ For with your heart you believe and are justified, and with your mouth you confess and are saved. ¹¹ It is just as the Scripture says: “Anyone who believes in Him will never be put to shame.”
Paul says it twice, once from each side, because he does not want either half taken alone. A belief no one ever hears about is not what he is describing, and words with nothing behind them are not either.
Justified is a courtroom word. It does not mean improved or excused. It means declared to be in the right, and the declaration stands because of what Christ has done, not because of a change in the record of the person standing there.
Verse 11 answers a quieter fear than punishment: the fear of reaching out and being humiliated for it, of turning to God and finding it was not really meant for someone like you. Anyone who believes in Him will never be put to shame. No one who comes is ever made a fool of for coming.
Romans 10:12-13 (BSB)
¹² For there is no difference between Jew and Greek: The same Lord is Lord of all, and gives richly to all who call on Him, ¹³ for, “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.”
Jew and Greek were the two halves the world was sorted into, and everyone knew which half they were in. Paul is not saying the difference does not exist. He is saying it does not count at this door. The same Lord is Lord of both, and what He gives He gives richly, which is a word for open hands rather than grudging ones.
Then the line that closes it: Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. Not the respectable. Not those with a religious background. Not those who have made progress first. Everyone who calls. There is no one standing outside that sentence.
What calling on Him is
Two things are happening, and they cannot be separated. One is turning: stopping the long project of going your own way, and being honest with God about it instead of defending it. The other is receiving: taking Christ as Lord and Saviour, resting the whole weight of your case on His death and resurrection rather than on anything in yourself. Turning without receiving is only regret. Receiving without turning is only agreement.
What it rests on is His blood and His kindness. It does not rest on performance, on church attendance, on being baptised, on having a religious family, or on getting the words right.
That last one matters, because there is no prayer here to repeat. God is not listening for a formula. A person can say perfect words and mean nothing whatever by them, and someone who has genuinely turned may barely have words at all, getting no further than the tax collector in Jesus’ story, who would not lift his eyes and said only, “God, have mercy on me, a sinner.”
So the saying is left to you, in your own words, out loud or under your breath. A few honest starting places: telling God that you believe He raised Jesus from the dead and that you are handing your life over to Him. Telling Him what you have done and that you are finished making a case for yourself. Or, if you are not there, telling Him exactly that, and asking Him to make Himself known. None of those sentences is beneath His notice.
John 10:27-28 (BSB)
²⁷ My sheep listen to My voice; I know them, and they follow Me. ²⁸ I give them eternal life, and they will never perish. No one can snatch them out of My hand.
These are Jesus’ own words, spoken in Jerusalem in winter, when people gathered round Him in the temple courts and asked Him to tell them plainly who He was.
He does not say His sheep hold on well, or follow closely enough, or keep their footing. Every verb about safety belongs to Him. I know them. I give them eternal life. They will never perish, and no one can take them out of His hand.
John 10:29-30 (BSB)
²⁹ My Father who has given them to Me is greater than all. No one can snatch them out of My Father’s hand. ³⁰ I and the Father are one.”
He says it twice, with a second hand around the first. Then He tells you why either hand is worth anything: I and the Father are one. The people listening understood that sentence perfectly, and picked up stones over it.
So to anyone who has turned to Christ: the keeping is His work, not the strength of your grip on Him. You are held in His hand and in the Father’s, and no one and nothing will take you out. Those who are truly His are His forever. That is not a reward for doing well afterwards. He said it before anyone had done anything at all.
Where to go from here
This app is not a church, and reading it has never saved anyone. It cannot know you, sit with you, or teach you over years, and it would be dishonest to let it look as though it could.
So it points away from itself, at three ordinary things. Find a local church where the Bible is actually opened and taught, go, and tell someone there where you are. Get a Bible of your own and start reading in one of the Gospels. And if there is one person you know who believes this, tell them what you have read.
Study notes No one turned away
Jesus once put both halves of this day in a single sentence.
"Everyone the Father gives Me will come to Me, and the one who comes to Me I will never drive away." John 6:37 (BSB)
The door and the keeping in one line, and both of them His doing.
Everyone who calls on the Lord is saved, and everyone He saves He holds.
Today’s Decision
Today I will talk to God in my own words, out loud if I can, and tell Him plainly where I actually stand with Him.