“Confessing Faith Saves” (Romans 10:5-13)
Series: Unexpected Truths”
Pastor Nate Walther
13th Sunday of Pentecost (08/23/2026)
Confession feels like a dirty word. Maybe it conjures up images of a child squirming before mom or dad with something broken in the background. Maybe you think about that feeling in your stomach when you know you’re going to have to admit something to your spouse. Maybe it’s even the kind of thing that can drive people away from church: they don’t like to confess their sins, it makes them feel bad, so they don’t come. Why, then, do we have confession? It’s because God simply tells us in his Word today that CONFESSING FAITH SAVES. Confession is not the negative thing we often make it out to be. It’s a positive thing that gets at the heart of God’s plans for us.
In today’s sermon text from Romans, the Apostle Paul approaches this topic from the question of righteousness. What makes us right in the sight of God that we might be saved? He lists two possibilities. Verse 5 explains the first: there is “righteousness that comes by law”, which means you have to do all the things the law says to be righteous, as the remainder of the verse explains. So how about that one? Would you bank your salvation on it? Keeping God’s law all the time? When he’s not just some cop where you can speed up again once you’re out of sight on the interstate?… Of course not! That’s why it’s a good thing God has revealed a second possibility in verse 6: “righteousness that comes by faith,” which doesn’t require any heroic deeds, as the following verses demonstrate. It doesn’t mean going to places we cannot reach (like heaven, verse 6), or coming back from places we cannot come back from (like the grave, verse 7). All it requires is faith. And let’s make sure we define it correctly. This is faith that is about more than a feeling. This is faith based on something concrete and real.
As an example of it, Paul describes faith that is grounded in God’s Word (verse 8). That means it is ultimately accessible to all people—regardless of who they are or what they have done or any limitation—because anyone can pick up a Bible and read it. Then, Paul additionally describes such faith going hand-in-hand with confession (verse 9). The thing about confession is: there’s actually something real there to identify and, therefore, confess!… But it’s not just sin. Paul ultimately directs our attention to the message of Christ. This is about confessing what Jesus did for our sin. Jesus, who brought heaven down to us as the son of God. Jesus, who conquered death for us as a son of man. And that’s why Paul concludes these verses (10-13) by making it clear that everyone who confesses Christ and calls upon him will be saved.
So… confession. It’s true that there’s a “negative” side to confession. Take the positive things we just heard. How can we be saved unless there is something we need to be saved from? How can Jesus rescue us from death unless there’s something to kill us? And today, even as we talk about the most basic topic of faith, we see such sin clearly. 1) We see it when people turn faith into an empty label, almost like a good luck charm. As long as they can claim faith—as long as they’re on the membership roster at some church, somewhere—they may assume God is OK with things. But they don’t really worry about what God says. They don’t worry about doing what he says is right, or believing truths he says are important in the Bible. Do you realize that God condemns this viewpoint here? It’s still about righteousness that comes by faith – you don’t just throw out what is right and embrace the opposite! And faith still confesses the truth – it depends on real, quantifiable things! But if faith becomes little more than a feeling? It’s great when it feels great. It’s not when it doesn’t. And if that’s all your faith is—not based on anything real, right or true—it will fail you when you need it most… 2) By the way, that’s not the only pitfall. Faith can become an empty label just as much in the opposite way, when people makes faith all about heroic deeds that ultimately reel salvation in. Yes, they would agree that God saves them “by faith”. But don’t you have to be good enough? God wouldn’t let some bad sinner into heaven, you have to clear some bar! Except, where will it end? No matter how high you climb, you still haven’t reached heaven, even if you clear every other human obstacle in the process. And then you’ll still die, there’s still something inside of us that kills us and puts an end to the life God intended to last forever… Which of these two pitfalls do you struggle with? Do you go back and forth between the two?… In our sermon text, God describes all needing to be saved from this sin. So confess it! We need to confess our sin!! Not confessing it will not change the fact that this is a problem!!!
But don’t stop there. Because although we do this every church services—although we make a big point of talking about sin in every Bible study and counseling session and in what we teach kids in our school—it’s never the last word. It wasn’t in our sermon text. That’s because the highlight of confession isn’t law but the gospel. Now we can see what makes Jesus so good. Jesus, who literally brought heaven down to us. Jesus, who brought God’s presence to people in a way they could endure their Maker face-to-face. Then he cleared the bar we could never clear. Even confession: though he had no sin of his own to confess, Jesus always perfectly confessed his Father in heaven before others. Then he went to the cross. Jesus suffered for every time we have failed to confess our sin or failed to confess God’s truth before others when the situation called for it. Then he went down to the depths. And Jesus defeated the gravest consequence that sin would ever wreak on our lives: death itself. It’s why Jesus could suddenly talk about the kingdom of God being near people when he was near them! And it’s near to us too. Jesus is the Word made flesh, and we find him in the Word as well, in this message of all that he does for us.
Finally, that’s what we confess. Faith is not some passive thing where you are just taking in a performance. It’s active and it claims something immense for oneself. But we don’t swing too far in the opposite direction. No strenuous heroics are required here, just standing on the already bold claims of Christ. It’s why we end each confession of sin with an announcement of Christ as Savior from sin, because that’s what makes that confession complete. It’s also why also why we confess our faith after the sermon, after hearing about the good things God has done for us. Fittingly, we even stand for these confessions. Think about that, the only other times we usually stand in the service are to honor Jesus himself: in the Gospel lesson which highlights his words and works, and in the Sacrament which gives us his very body and blood. Confession isn’t about being left with sin. Confession is about being left with Jesus who frees us from sin. So confess that! We need to confess our Savior from sin!! Not confessing it will not fix the problem!!!
So now, let me ask you this: what does this actually look like? I ask the question because the Apostle Paul isn’t describing Sunday morning worship in our sermon text. Rather, he’s describing Christian living and righteousness as a whole. Which means it’s not just about confession for one hour on a Sunday morning. Confession is for every hour of this life. What does that look like?… Take the example of Wisconsin sports teams. They matter to me. I care about them, probably more than I should. So what goes hand-in-hand with that? I talk about it! I confess it! (A few of you may have heard me talk about that 22-0 drubbing the Brewers gave the Marlins the other night!) That’s just it: if a sport or a hobby matters to you, you talk about it, you just can’t help it! So also, if faith matters more to us than sports or hobbies, than our jobs or even our families—all things we quickly and gladly talk about!—talk about faith too. Confess it… What if we normalized that? What if you’re struggling with a sin, so you went to your pastor and privately confessed it, all so that he could help you and personally assure you of forgiveness for that sin in Jesus? Or, what if you know you’ve messed up with your family, so you didn’t just hide it or ignore it – you confessed that sin to your spouse or to your children, and then you made a renewed effort to live in the righteousness to which God has called you? Or, what if you have a friend who’s caught up in a sin, or they’re struggling with some of the truly bad thing of this world, so you made a point to talk to them about how God addresses these topics in his Word?… If we don’t, it empties our faith and weakens it. If we do, we’re so much better off. Haven’t we all experienced it? Those times where the guilt is eating at you, yet you don’t want to confess your sin. But then it gets out into the open always, and you are forced to confess it! Except, that’s where somebody actually forgives that sin, and only then do we realize we’re finally move on. What better feeling in the world is there than that? It’s exactly what God has designed our faith to do! And it’s what he always offers us freely through the blood of his Son Jesus
Let me ask you again, does confession feel like a dirty word? I hope after hearing God’s Word today, we would all say, “No! We’re glad our church does this!” Because confession is a hallmark of saving faith. It’s faith’s fingerprint – faith’s indication that there is something real and consequential and transformative here. To be sure, it can be hard. But that doesn’t make it worth avoiding. Not when confession goes hand-in-hand with salvation, with righteousness, with all the good God wants to give us. That won’t come by holding on to our own sin. It will only come by letting go of sin, letting Christ take hold of it, and then holding onto him. That’s what confession is all about. Sin is the lesser part of it. And the moment we talk about sin, Jesus gets the last word. It’s why confession is only good. Amen.
