Romans 10:10 English Standard Version (ESV) For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved.

Believing with the heart leads to justification. Confessing with the mouth leads to salvation. That is two different acts with two different outcomes.

Justification is a bookkeeping term in which debts are recorded in red. Most of us do not understand that we are indebted because of sin and that is why most of us did not associated justification with becoming debt free.

2 Corinthians 5:17-19 English Standard Version

¹⁷ Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. ¹⁸ All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; ¹⁹ that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation.

The process for taking the debt ledger from red to black, and cancelling out debt is called reconciliation. It is balancing the books.

Romans 6:23 English Standard Version (ESV) For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Our sins have earned us a death penalty. Faith in Christ has set us free from that death penalty.

That is a declared state of being for eternity. Salvation is different in that it is a life affirming condition that is renewed daily. Salvation starts the minute we repent of our sins, confess our condition and seek forgiveness. Since sin has not been removed from our lives we should confess those sins in order to obtain forgiveness while we need it

If we only care to be justified, we can obtain that. We will however have to live with the consequences of sin. Consequences of sin do not go away just because we are justified.

John 11:25-26 English Standard Version

²⁵ Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, ²⁶ and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this?”

In order to understand this is the oath that was given to justify mankind we must understand the plan and the process spoken to us by God the Father.

The first is that an oath is only as good as the ability of the oath giver to keep the promises of that oath. Considering the enormity of this oath to save us from death, the oath giver has to be God. Therefor one must believe that Jesus Christ is God, or at least the Son of God, One part of the Trinity of God. So things are not as simple as “it’s the good news”.

Secondly it is how we believe that matters.

Romans 10:9-10 English Standard Version

⁹ because, 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. ¹⁰ For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved.

We are justified if we believe with our hearts. That is not head knowledge, we cannot reason ourselves to believing Christ. We must take it to heart.

Thirdly and this point is also made in Romans 10:9 we have to confess Jesus Christ to be the Lord of our lives. God does not just wrangle us out of the heard, we must surrender to His Lordship and walk out of this life and into the next under our own power.

The does not mean we save ourselves. Justification and salvation are two different things.

See, it is never just as easy as saying it is the good news.