This is the last of the passages reached for by those who would argue that baptism is not necessary. And it deserves a careful answer, because it is the strongest of the remaining proof texts.
The passage is Romans 10:9–13:
“If you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved; for with the heart a person believes, resulting in righteousness, and with the mouth he confesses, resulting in salvation. For the Scripture says, ‘Whoever believes in Him will not be disappointed.’ For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; for the same Lord is Lord of all, abounding in riches for all who call on Him; for ‘Whoever will call on the name of the Lord will be saved.’“
Read in isolation, this passage sounds like a complete plan of salvation. Confess with your mouth. Believe in your heart. Call on the name of the Lord. No water. No baptism. Just faith expressed in words. If this were all Scripture said on the matter, the case would be closed.
But Scripture does not say only this. And the same man who wrote Romans 10 also wrote Romans 6.
Before we turn to the passage itself, we must be honest about the man who wrote it. The apostle Paul wrote Romans — and he also wrote every passage we examined in Part One. Romans 6: buried with Christ through baptism into death, raised to walk in newness of life. Galatians 3:27: all who were baptized into Christ have clothed themselves with Christ. Colossians 2:12: buried with Him in baptism, raised with Him through faith. Ephesians 4:5: one Lord, one faith, one baptism. Titus 3:5: saved by the washing of regeneration. And 1 Corinthians 12:13: by one Spirit we were all baptized into one body.
Paul wrote every one of those sentences. He did not contradict himself. Any reading of Romans 10:9–13 that sets it against Paul’s own teaching elsewhere is a reading that makes Paul incoherent — and Scripture does not require us to make Paul incoherent. So the question is not which Paul to believe. The question is: what is Paul actually answering in Romans 10, and how does that answer fit with everything else he wrote?
The Question Paul Is Actually Answering
Read the chapter from the beginning, and Paul’s question becomes unmistakable. Romans 9, 10, and 11 form a single sustained argument about one problem: why did most of Israel fail to be saved, even though they had the Law, the prophets, the covenants, and the promises?
Paul opens Romans 10 with the answer:
“Brethren, my heart’s desire and my prayer to God for them is for their salvation. For I testify about them that they have a zeal for God, but not in accordance with knowledge. For not knowing about God’s righteousness and seeking to establish their own, they did not subject themselves to the righteousness of God. For Christ is the end of the Law for righteousness to everyone who believes.”
— Romans 10:1–4
Israel had zeal. Israel had knowledge of the Law. What Israel did not have was a willingness to subject themselves to the righteousness of God — the righteousness that comes by faith in Christ. They would not confess Jesus as Lord. That is the failure Romans 10 is diagnosing.
And when Paul then says, “If you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved” (Romans 10:9), he is naming precisely the two things unbelieving Israel refused to do. They would not confess Jesus as Lord with their mouths. They would not believe in their hearts that He had been raised from the dead. Paul’s answer targets the specific failure.
Romans 10 is not a complete catalog of every element required for salvation. It is Paul’s diagnosis of the particular thing Israel was missing. Chapter 8 of this book already established the principle: the places in Scripture where someone asks how to be saved emphasize different aspects of one response, because the asker’s situation is different. Pentecost believers already had faith in God; they needed repentance and baptism. The Philippian jailer had no faith in Christ; he needed to be told to believe. And unbelieving Israel had all the Old Testament scaffolding and was refusing to confess Jesus; Paul names the confession and the belief, because that is where their resistance lay.
Paul did not write Romans 10 to tell the Gentile church, “You do not need baptism.” He wrote it to tell a Roman congregation why their Jewish neighbors were being left outside.
Calling on the Name of the Lord
But the real hinge of the passage — the detail that turns the whole objection from argument against baptism into argument for it — is the phrase Paul quotes in verse 13.
“Whoever will call on the name of the Lord will be saved.”
— Romans 10:13
Paul is quoting Joel 2:32. It is not his phrase; it is an Old Testament promise. Whoever calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. And Paul’s argument in context is simply this: the promise is open — Jew and Greek alike, anyone who calls, will be saved.
So what does “calling on the name of the Lord” mean in the apostolic vocabulary? It does not mean reciting a prayer. It does not mean speaking a formula. And we do not have to speculate about it — because the same apostle who wrote Romans 10 lived through this moment personally. Paul himself was once told to call on the name of the Lord. And we have the record of exactly how he did it.
Ananias came to Saul of Tarsus in Damascus. Saul had seen the risen Lord. He had believed. He had fasted and prayed for three days. And Ananias said to him:
“Now why do you delay? Get up and be baptized, and wash away your sins, calling on His name.”
— Acts 22:16
There it is. The same phrase. The same vocabulary. The exact action that Joel prophesied and that Paul quotes in Romans 10:13 — “calling on the name of the Lord” — is named by Ananias as something that happens when Saul gets up and is baptized. Not before. Not instead of. In the act of.
Saul did not call on the name of the Lord by whispering a prayer on the road. Saul did not call on the name of the Lord during three days of fasting in Damascus. Saul called on the name of the Lord when he got up and was baptized and had his sins washed away. That is how Paul himself experienced the promise of Joel 2:32. And when Paul quotes that same promise in Romans 10:13, he is quoting the phrase that describes his own conversion — the phrase that Ananias used to send him into the water.
A man who writes “Whoever will call on the name of the Lord will be saved” in one letter, and in another account tells how he himself was told to call on the name of the Lord by being baptized and washing away his sins, is not writing two different gospels. He is writing one. Romans 10:13 and Acts 22:16 are the same apostle, the same promise, and the same means of obedience.
Romans 10 names confession and belief because Israel refused to confess and believe. It names calling on the name of the Lord because that is the Old Testament promise Paul is leaning on. And when we follow that promise back to how Paul himself was told to fulfill it, we find ourselves standing beside a basin of water in Damascus, listening to Ananias say, “Why do you delay?”
The passage does not undo Peter at Pentecost. It does not undo Ananias with Saul. It does not undo Paul in Romans 6, Colossians 2, or Titus 3. It does not undo a single conversion in the book of Acts. Read with the rest of what its author wrote — and with the rest of what its author lived — Romans 10:9–13 confirms exactly what every other page of this book has already shown.
The promise is for everyone who calls. The way Saul was told to call was to be baptized.