…if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved. For the Scripture says, “Everyone who believes in him will not be put to shame.” For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; for the same Lord is Lord of all, bestowing his riches on all who call on him. For “everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved” (Romans 10.9-13).

COMMENT:

Paul’s statement about belief and confession are mutually interpreting. Jesus was established as Lord by being raised to that office in God’s raising him from the dead. Jesus was installed as Lord and King by his resurrection.

While it is easy to think of Jesus as Lord as a matter of his authority over us (and that is true as far as it goes) the more prominent feature of this confession and belief is that Jesus has received Lordship on behalf of the human race. God created humanity for dominion (Genesis 1) and in Christ they get that dominion. This, for example, is the presupposition in Romans 6 about why we are no longer slaves to sin–we have been given lordship and thus are no longer ruled by sin:

How can we who died to sin still live in it? Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.

For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin. For one who has died has been set free (literally: “justified”) from sin. Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. For the death he died he died to sin, once for all, but the life he lives he lives to God. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.

Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, to make you obey its passions. Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments for righteousness. For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace.

And Paul, in Romans 5 has already defined “life” as reign and explicitly stated that we rule in Christ the king:

For if, because of one man’s trespass, death reigned through that one man, much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man Jesus Christ.

So just to emphasize the point, rather than contrasting “death reigned” to “life now reigns” he rather says that we “reign in life.”

To say “Jesus is Lord” is a lot like saying, “My older brother is the mayor of this town.” Or: “My uncle owns this factory.” Jesus has been made a human king not for the sake of raw authority but to bring back from frustration and fulfill the purpose of the human race to rule all creation.

To take the lesson from C. S. Lewis’ The Narnia Chronicles: Yes Jesus is high king, but Christians are like Edmund and Lucy.