Like many American Christians, Romans 10:9 became a very familiar verse to me growing up:
For 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.
Romans 10:9
Oftentimes this verse is used to summarize key requirements of the gospel or of saving faith, as if Christianity could in some way be boiled down to the components of this verse. In particular, I have heard it said that the statement “Jesus is Lord” is a summary of the whole Christian message. A lot would lean, if this were the case, on the sense of Lord in this context.
Now I usually heard this verse associated with the so-called Lordship Salvation controversies in fundamentalist and dispensational circles. This is quite unfortunate. In this context, the emphasis of Lord is placed on the idea of Jesus as master or ruler or king. None of these would be untrue, but I find it increasingly unlikely that that is the correct understanding in the context of Paul’s argument in Romans.
Throughout Romans 10 Paul interacts with the latter chapters of Deuteronomy. The Old Testament significance of Lord, and particularly that of Deuteronomy, is therefore important to Paul’s intentions in Romans 10:9. The main passage in Deuteronomy to consider in this context would be:
For this commandment which I have commanded you this day is neither too wonderful nor far. It is not in heaven, so that one would say, “Who will go up to heaven for us to take it for us that we might hear it and do it?” Nor is it across the sea, so that one would say, “Who will cross over the crossing of the sea for us to take it for us that we might hear it and do it?” For the word is very near to you–in your mouth and in your heart to do it.
See I have set before you this day life and good and death and evil. What I have commanded you this day is to love YHWH your God, to walk in his ways, and to keep his commandments and his statutes and his judgments, that you might be enlarged and that YHWH your God might bless you in the land which you are going into to inherit. But if your heart turns and you do not take care to drive out other gods but worship them and serve them, I declare to you this day that you will surely perish. Your days will not be long upon the ground that your are crossing into to inherit. I call the heavens and the earth as witnesses this day that life and death I have set before you, blessing and cursing. May you choose blessing that you and your seed might live, by loving YHWH your God, listening to his voice, and clinging to him, for he is your life and the one who lengthens your days of dwelling upon the ground which YHWH swore to your fathers Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, to give to them.
Deuteronomy 30:12–20
You might notice that you don’t see the word Lord anywhere in this passage as translated. This is, of course, formally correct translating from Hebrew into English. But were you to look in an English translation, you would find LORD written in each place I have written YHWH. As many readers will already know, when the Hebrew Bible was translated into Greek (that is, into the Septuagint) in the centuries before Christ, the Greek word for Lord was used in place of the divine name YHWH. This translation persists in most English translations today. Notably, the Septuagint was a major source for educated Greek readers such as Paul at the time of Christ and thereafter. There is good evidence New Testament authors had access to it, and very likely they often quoted from it. This Septuagint tradition likely forms the connection for Paul to refer to Jesus as Lord.
Deuteronomy 30:12–20 is clearly alluded to and expressly quoted in Romans 10:5–8, the immediate verses preceding Romans 10:9. Since this passage refers to YHWH, and since Paul interprets Christ as the one bringing the law near to his readers (that is, by completing it and fulfilling its righteousness), a serious argument to understand “Jesus is Lord” as “Jesus is YHWH” begins to form. In the verses that follow, Paul quotes from Isaiah in verse 11–another Old Testament quotation suggests a strong connection to Old Testament theology which via the Septuagint would nuance Lord as a reference to the divine name YHWH. While in verse 12, Paul says that the “same Lord is Lord of all,” which sounds like a reference to Lord as ruler or king, immediately in verse 13 he says, “everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved,” quoting Joel 2:32, which reads:
So it will be that all who call on the name of YHWH will escape,
Joel 2:32 (3:5 in the Masoretic Text)
For on mount Zion and in Jerusalem will be a means of escape, just as YHWH said, and among the survivors which YHWH called.
This verse again nuances the idea of Lord as YHWH in Paul’s reasoning. Indeed, the motif of salvation strengthens the argument that verse 9 should refer to Jesus as YHWH. In Joel, YHWH is the provider of salvation. In Romans, Jesus is the provider of salvation.
Something is lost, then, when an overarching emphasis on contemporary theological issues (i.e. Lordship salvation controversies) and an over-reliance on Greek lexicons (which would simply define κύριος as Lord, owner, one who is in charge) is used to control the exegesis of a text, especially a New Testament text. New Testament writers draw on Old Testament theology to the point of dependence, and unfamiliarity with the text they cite, historical events they allude to, theological developments they assume, texts they used, and translation influences they received hide key theological insights from modern English readers.
This issue doesn’t only affect the reading of Romans 10:9. Another text I heard frequently quoted either when discussing Romans 10:9 or in Lordship salvation related conversations was Philippians 2:9–11:
Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
Philippians 2:9–11 (ESV)
And while this is a great passage that in discussing Christ’s exaltation certainly has nuances of Christ’s royal position of ruling, this is certainly not primarily about asserting Jesus’ authority of Lordship over the individual lives of each believer, but rather is a direct allusion and fulfillment of Isaiah 45.
Turn unto me and be saved, all you ends of the earth,
Isaiah 45:22–25
For I am God and there is no other,
By myself I have sworn.
A righteous word comes out of my mouth and it will not return.
For to me every every knee will bow and every tongue swear.*
Surely in YHWH, one says, do I have righteousness and strength,
Unto him one comes, and all who are angry with him are put to shame.
All the seed of Israel are justified by and praise YHWH.
*this is translated as confess in the Septuagint, which matches what we see in Philippians.
Again, the context here associated Jesus as Lord with the idea that Jesus is YHWH. Paul’s reference to Isaiah 45 underscores the identity of Jesus as the God of Israel in the Hebrew Bible come down to earth in the form of a man. While distinguishing between Jesus and the Father and ascribing to both the royal honor that is their due, the real essence of Jesus’ exaltation is not fundamentally his restoration to royal rule or lordship but to the equality with God that he always had before the incarnation (cf. Phil 2: 6).
Hence again something is lost in the emphasis on Lordship over the lives of individual believers. Rather than seeing Paul’s arguments as importing the full Old Testament theology of the character of YHWH and his acts in history, the prophecies of deeds that he would do for Israel, and the wonders of the incarnation and exaltation, this sort of Lordship-centric interpretation reduces the theological kaleidoscope to a narrow (albeit important) ethical lens on the Christian life.
Fundamentally underlying both these examples is the question of how to approach the New Testament. At this point in my life, with the training I’ve received and the studying I’ve done, I in many ways do approach the New Testament in terms best captured in the joking remarks of Old Testament professors: “The New Testament is the appendix to the Bible.” Or as I believe Goldingay said, The New Testament is a collection of footnotes to the Hebrew Bible.1 Such an approach cannot be read as a minimization of the importance of even the novelty of content in the New Testament. It can only be seen as taking revelation and the doctrine of progressive revelation seriously. No one really knows a novel by picking it up and reading the last 20%. That last 20% is absolutely key to understanding the whole, but it is only 20% of the whole. By word count, the New Testament is not much more than 20% of the Bible, and we would be well served to remember that practically in interpretation.
1 John Goldingay, Old Testament Theology, Volume I: Israel’s Gospel (Grand Rapids: IVP Academic, 2003), 24.
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