Romans 10:11

For the scripture saith, Whosoever believeth on him shall not be put to shame.

This verse is the occasion for the "faith only" advocates to repeat the doctrine they have imported into the book of Romans. For example, Moule said:

There, in the summary and close of the passage, nothing but faith is mentioned. It is as if he would correct even the slightest disquieting surmise that our repose upon the Lord is to be secured by something other than Himself, through some means more complex than taking him at his word. The "confession with the mouth" is not a different something added to faith; it is its issue, its manifestation.[10]

But, of course, "confession with the mouth" is something different from faith and is extravagantly more than enough to prevent its being dismissed, as Moule dismissed it, as a "disquieting surmise." Disquieting surmise indeed! If faith and confession are the same thing, why (?) is it written that

Even of the rulers many believed on him; but because of the Pharisees they did not confess him, lest they should be put out of the synagogue: for they loved the glory that is of men more than the glory that is of God (John 12:42,43).

Thus, when faith and confession are viewed as two distinct preconditions of salvation, there is no surmise at all; there is no guesswork or speculation. Paul viewed them as distinct conditions and here mentioned them separately, even putting confession first, which he would not have done if it had been merely something that went along with faith, and making exactly the same statement concerning one that he made of the other. (See under Romans 10:9-10.)

Paul's naming but one of the preconditions of salvation in Romans 10:11 is not a denial of the others, but is a synecdoche, a figure of speech in which one of a group of related things is intended to stand for all of them, as, for example, when one speaks of an automobile as a motor. Paul's naming faith in this verse does not exclude repentance, confession and baptism any more than it excludes the blood of Christ, the latter not being mentioned either in this place. There are not merely a few, but a hundred instances in the New Testament where this use of the science of language is employed; and there is not any excuse for the overlooking of it by intelligent people. The apostle Peter wrote that "baptism doth also now save us" (1 Peter 3:21 KJV); does that exclude faith, repentance and confession? Luke wrote, "To the Gentiles also hath God granted repentance unto life" (Acts 11:18); does that exclude faith, confession and baptism?

Repeated mention in this commentary has been made of faith, repentance, confession and baptism as the divinely imposed preconditions of justification; and in this verse faith is an abbreviated reference to all of them, a form of synecdoche often found in the Bible. It was by the device of ignoring the synecdoche that Satan himself assailed the Lord Jesus Christ in the temptation, in which Satan presented a verse of Scripture which if taken alone, as Satan tried to induce, would have made it all right for Christ to jump off the temple; but the Lord foiled the tempter by saying, "It is also written, etc." (Matthew 4:7). They who dare to take this verse as an exclusion of other God-commanded actions leading "unto" salvation would be well advised to consider what is "also written."

Verse 11 is thus Paul's way of saying that a Christian (a believing, penitent, confessed, baptized member of the body of Christ) shall not be put to shame. The mention of shame indicates that Paul was still thinking of the confession mentioned a moment before, and of what Jesus said of the confession, thus:

For whosoever shall be ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, the Son of man also shall be ashamed of him, when he cometh in the glory of his Father with the holy angels (Mark 8:38).