Carl loved Romans 10:9–10 and hoped that these two biblical verses would be opened for you at his funeral. So, that is what I hope to do.

Paul’s letter to the Romans is one of the thirteen letters written by the apostle Paul within the twenty or thirty years following the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. No serious scholar that I’m aware of doubts that in the writings of the apostle Paul we have a witness from the first generation of Christians written while the eyewitnesses of Jesus Christ were still living.

If you read all thirteen of Paul’s letters in the New Testament, you will be confronted with a choice: This man is either a bald-faced liar, or a lunatic, or a rational and truthful spokesman commissioned by the risen Christ. One of the reasons I’m a Christian is that I cannot in good conscience regard the man that I know from these thirteen letters as a liar or a lunatic. His humility, his love, his suffering, his reasonableness, his coherent arguments, his wisdom, and his insight bear witness to an authenticity I cannot deny. I am convinced he tells the truth about Jesus Christ.

Unraveling Atheism

The reason I mention this is that Carl was a very rational person. He needed sound reasons for believing things, not just impressions. He wrote,

My atheism started to unravel a bit when my wife was suddenly converted in the fall of 1984. About a year later, after a lively discussion, she quoted Herbert Spencer: “There is one thing that will keep a man in everlasting ignorance; rejection prior to investigation.”

He got the point and read the Bible cover to cover in about three months. You can read the rest of his testimony on how God brought him to Christian faith on page 269 in his book Parables of the Deer — which, by the way, is a clear, thorough, rational explanation of all the main issues in Christianity and the Bible. It is a remarkable book.

I know that Carl would want me to say to you, “There is one thing that will keep you in everlasting ignorance: the rejection of Christianity without a serious investigation.” Many thoughtful people through the centuries have considered Paul’s letter to the Romans the greatest letter ever written. No other letter has had a greater effect on more people than this letter. It deals with the greatest realities in the universe. And Carl loved to think about the greatest realities in the universe. He was a very profound thinker and writer. In his book, he uses his experience of hunting and photographing deer to illustrate the most profound realities in the world.

The two verses that he hoped would be explained and celebrated at his funeral are Romans 10:9–10. Carl writes in his book on page 44,

What is this good news that we should seek with greater fervor than a buck seeks a doe? It is that God has revealed himself in the person of Jesus, who died to satisfy the wrath of God against every person who has ever sinned (from the most heinous to the seemingly most trivial sin) if, and only if, they confess Jesus as their Lord, and believe God raised Jesus from the dead (Romans 10:9). To those who believe, God grants them to live eternally with Jesus in incomprehensible joy. But to those who do not profess faith in Jesus, God condemns them to unending and incomprehensible conscious torment in hell.

Believe and Confess

So, in honor of Carl’s love for this passage in the Bible, let’s linger for just a few minutes over the beauty and the greatness and truth of these words in Romans 10:9–10:

If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved.

There are stupendous realities in these two verses that are worthy of literary craft. Carl loved to linger and see things where others just blew by and missed them. Linger here for a moment. Paul has made the effort here to write great truth with great craft. These two verses form a chiasm:

[A] If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord
     [B] and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.
     [B] For with the heart one believes and is justified,
[A] and with the mouth one confesses and is saved.

When Paul writes this way — when he builds a chiasm — he is repeating a sequence in reverse order. Confessing Christ and believing Christ is repeated in reverse order: believing Christ and confessing Christ. Watch it:

[Confess:] If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord
     [Believe:] and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.
     [Believe:] For with the heart one believes and is justified,
[Confess:] and with the mouth one confesses and is saved.

So, Paul has placed the outward act of confessing with the lips the lordship of Christ as the outward bookends of his statement. And he has placed the inner heart-reality of believing — believing in the heart — inside those bookends. This means Paul is capturing in his literary form the spiritual reality that he’s talking about.

In other words, Paul would say, “This really matters. I am trying to get your attention with the meaning of my words and the form of my words. And what I’m trying to emphasize is that what you make of Christ in your innermost being, your heart, really matters. And what you make of Christ outwardly with your mouth really matters. If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.”

Saved from Wrath

It matters because salvation really matters. What does salvation refer to? When Paul says in verse 10, “With the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved,” he connects us back to Romans 5, where he shows the connection between being justified (declared just in the courtroom of God) and being saved. Romans 5:9 says, “Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God.”

The greatest problem that Carl had to overcome, and that we have to overcome, is that we have sinned against God, and our guilt puts us under his just wrath — his judgment. The best news in all the world is that God himself intervened, and by the death and resurrection of his Son, Jesus, the punishment we deserved was endured by him. He took our place.

So, when we are united to him by believing in our hearts, we are justified (verse 10: “with the heart one believes and is justified”) — that is, we are counted as just and righteous before God, for Jesus’s sake. And that means we will not come into judgment but be saved from God’s wrath by God himself.

Raised with Christ

What does that mean for Carl now? And what would it mean for us if we join Carl in confessing with our mouths that Jesus is Lord and believing in our hearts that God raised him from the dead? The reason God raised Jesus from the dead was to make crystal clear that Jesus’s death was successful in blotting out the sins of his people and to secure eternal resurrection life for all those who believe.

Today, Carl is alive in the presence of the risen Christ. Paul said this in his letter to the Philippians:

For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain. If I am to live in the flesh, that means fruitful labor for me. Yet which I shall choose I cannot tell. I am hard pressed between the two. My desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better. (Philippians 1:21–23)

That is what it means for Carl to believe that Jesus rose from the dead. It also means that when Jesus comes, Carl’s body will be raised from the dead, and the saving work of Christ will be complete.

Behold! I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed. For this perishable body must put on the imperishable, and this mortal body must put on immortality. When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written:

“Death is swallowed up in victory.”

“O death, where is your victory?
     O death, where is your sting?”

The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain. (1 Corinthians 15:51–58)

I thank God that he saved Carl Schmuland and that he brought him into my life. Carl was a runner of marathons. So, it is fitting to close with Paul’s last words:

I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race [marathon], I have kept the faith. Henceforth there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will award to me on that day, and not only to me but also to all who have loved his appearing. (2 Timothy 4:7–8)

That great salvation is for all of us if we will “confess with our mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in our heart that God raised him from the dead.”