As we quit the passage, let us mark and cherish its insistence upon "_confession_," "_confession with the mouth that Jesus is Lord_." This specially he connects with "_salvation_," with the believer's preservation to eternal glory. "_Faith_" is "_unto righteousness_"; "_confession_" is "_unto salvation_." Why is this? Is faith after all not enough for our union with the Lord, and for our safety in Him? Must we bring in something else, to be a more or less meritorious makeweight in the scale? If this is what he means, he is gainsaying the whole argument of the Epistle on its main theme. No; it is eternally true that we are justified, that we are accepted, that we are incorporated, that we are kept, through faith only; that is, that Christ is all for all things in our salvation, and our part and work in the matter is to receive and hold Him in _an empty_ hand. But then this empty hand, holding Him, receives life and power from Him. The man is vivified by his Rescuer. He is rescued that he may live, and that he may serve as living. He cannot truly serve without loyalty to his Lord. He cannot be truly loyal while he hides his relation to Him. In some articulate way he must "_confess Him_"; or he is not treading the path where the Shepherd walks before the sheep. The "_confession with the mouth_" here in view is, surely, nothing less than the believer's open loyalty to Christ. It is no mere recitation of even the sacred catholic Creed; which may be recited as by an automaton. It is the witness of the whole man to Christ, as his own discovered Life and Lord. And thus it means in effect the path of faithfulness along which the Saviour actually leads to glory those who are justified by faith. That no slackened emphasis on faith is to be felt here is clear from ver. 11. There, in the summary and close of the passage, nothing but faith is named; "whosoever _believeth on Him_." It is as if he would correct even the slightest disquieting surmise that our repose upon the Lord has to be secured by something other than Himself, through some means more complex than taking Him at His word. Here, as much as anywhere in the Epistle, this is the message; "from faith to faith." The "confession with the mouth" is not a different something added to this faith; it is its issue, its manifestation, its embodiment. "I believed; _therefore have I spoken_" (Psal. cxvi. 10).