In leading someone to Christ, there’s the thought among well-meaning Christians that all the led person has to do is confess that Jesus is Lord and Savior. Their thinking is based on Romans 10: 9, 10— “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. For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you confess and are saved.”

It seems to me that confessing with the mouth to be saved is putting the cart before the horse. The means to salvation is by God’s grace through faith. The latter part of verse 10 confirms this: “For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified.” It is belief. It is faith in Jesus that causes one to be credited with and covered by Christ’s righteousness. Only faith justifies one as innocent and therefore saved before God.

Verse 10, ending with “It is your mouth that you confess and are saved,” is simply an oral evidence that one is a believer from the heart. The oral confession is the fruit attached to the vine of faith that identifies one as having already been saved.

To urge someone to simply say that Jesus is their Lord, or that Jesus is desired to be his or her Lord, skips over the faith pre-requisite. The same is true for declaring that one is saved by Romans 10: 13’s “Whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.” That this is speaking of those already saved is clarified in vs. 14. It says, “How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in?”

Faith, belief in the heart, must come first. It is the beginning step to receiving God’s gift of salvation.