“If you declare 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 profess your faith and are saved” (Romans 10:9-10).
There is a connection between what we believe and what we say. Jesus said, “A good man brings good things out of the good stored up in his heart, and an evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in his heart. For the mouth speaks what the heart is full of” (Luke 6:45). Salvation isn’t just a change in our words, it is more than that. It is a change that takes place in our hearts. We receive a new nature. Jesus dwells in us.
The result of that inner change is a change in the way we speak. While sometimes our talk can be frivolous, when it comes to Jesus our words reveal what we really think of Him. We can’t genuinely say, “He is Lord” until we make Him the Lord of our lives. When we make Him Lord we appropriate the power of His Resurrection personally. He rose from the dead whether we believe it or not. When we truly believe in Him we make Him Lord and we allow His resurrection power to change us. Our confession is an expression of that change.
As Jesus said, “the mouth speaks what the heart is full of.” When we believe in Jesus our hearts are filled with Him. His righteousness, His kindness, His love and His grace so fill our hearts that it changes the way we talk. When our hearts believe in Him we are changed on the inside and our mouths bear witness to what we’ve experienced. For those of us who believe, it is natural for us to confess, “He is Lord.” We are simply announcing our faith in what He has done for us.
