Chiasm in Romans 10

Romans 10:9-10 has a neat chiastic structure:

A. If you confess

B. With your mouth the Lord Jesus

C. And believe

D. in your heart that God raised Him

E. you will be saved

D’. For with the heart

C’. One believes unto righteousness

B’. And with the mouth

A’. Confession is made.

E’. unto salvation

A few comments on this.

The structure is a slightly modified chiasm, with “salvation” coming at the middle and again at the end. Just like life: We are saved on the third day by believing and confessing Jesus, and we are finally saved on the seventh day.

The distinction of righteousness and salvation is important, and I think best understood in terms of NT Wright’s view on justification. Justification is the final judgment brought forward, and thus includes a promise of future deliverance from wrath. Justification is by faith; when we believe in the heart that God raised Jesus, then we are already declared right, already marked by faith as one who will-be-saved. But salvation and deliverance from wrath depend on mouth-confession of the faith in the heart. Belief in the heart is not sufficient for deliverance from wrath; that heart conviction must take form in words of the mouth.

It seems best to “preterize” the verse: The salvation that Paul looks forward to is specifically deliverance from the tribulation that is coming on the world in the first century. As Revelation makes clear, deliverance in this situation comes to those who are “witnesses” who confess the Lord Jesus even to death. The saints who are victorious in the tribulation and who reign with Christ are the saints who keep the Word of God and the testimony of Jesus.