How Shall They Hear?
Romans Chapter 10
The End of the Law
Chapter 10 is the second of three chapters which are almost entirely devoted to the status of the nation of Israel. In the previous chapter, Paul begins by expressing his heart-felt anguish over the Jewish rejection of the gospel and ends by directly dealing with the failure of legal approach to salvation. In the present chapter, he repeats the desire of his heart for his fellow Jews, and with the support of many Old Testament passages, elaborates on the necessary ruin of those who believe that salvation is a thing to be obtained, and not a gift of grace.
In verses 1-4, Paul describes the Israelites as earnest people who are zealous for God. These are admirable qualities, but we do well to be reminded that good intentions and even good work are not enough. The people of whom Paul spoke had put their good intentions above the will of the Lord; they rejected the righteousness of God and tried to obtain a righteousness of their own through faith, not in the mercy of God, but in the law.
To those who put such trust in the law, Paul presents Christ as the end of the law. This is not in contradiction of his earlier confession that the law is holy, righteous, and good (7:12) but in agreement with the testimony of Jesus himself that he was the fulfillment of the law. In Matthew 5:17-20, Jesus says that not even the smallest marks in the Law and the Prophets will pass away “until all is accomplished.” In the same passage, however, he tells us that we must have a righteousness that exceeds that of the Pharisees, who were the epitome of those whom Paul commended for their zeal for God. In the rest of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus proceeds to reinterpret the law with regard to murder, adultery, divorce, justice, and other major points of the law. In each case, the Pharisees and teachers of the law had developed careful and elaborate procedures by which the law could be kept, but Jesus pointed out that they had become devoted to the letter of the law and abandoned its spirit.
Believe and Confess
In verses 5-13, Paul again compares the rule of the law with the righteousness that comes by faith. In the first of many Old Testament references in this chapter, Paul quotes a passage from Leviticus that presents the law in relation to life. In Leviticus 18:1-5, the Lord commands the people to live, not as the people of Egypt, where they used to live, and not as the people of Canaan, where they were going, but in accordance with the law of God. Paul might also have chosen the passage in Deuteronomy 6:1-3, where the Lord explains that his commandments are provision for our health and long life.
In a way, the Jews had taken the commandments as a way of life, but they had also taken them as a means of salvation; they had come to believe that their own efforts in attention to the law could bring them life. To those who believed that salvation could be accomplished, Paul evoked the beautiful passage from Deuteronomy (30:11-20) which was sure to be well-known to all the Jews. In this passage, the Lord clearly presents salvation as a thing not to be achieved (by ascending to heaven or crossing the sea) but a thing very near to us, a word that the Lord has already put in our mouths. The law is of the Lord as a guide to life, but the Lord himself is the source of our life.
Paul explains that this word is the very gospel he was preaching, that if we believe with our hearts and confess with our mouths that Jesus is Lord, we will be saved. Though the Greek root of our modern Western separation of head and heart was emerging even in the time of Paul, it was the Jewish idea that both emotion and reason were of the heart. The belief of which Paul speaks is neither a cool, detached, completely intellectual understanding that has no heart-felt meaning, nor a blind emotional condition that has no reason, but a belief that is from our center; it is a belief that reunites our very souls with the soul of their Creator.
But if we must believe internally, we must also confess externally. “Whoever acknowledges me before men, I will also acknowledge him before my Father in heaven. But whoever disowns me before men, I will disown before my Father in heaven.” (Matthew 10:32, 33 NIV) But it would be a mistake which draws us into the same trap that snared the religious people of whom Jesus and Paul spoke to begin to define and delineate just how this confession must be made or how the acknowledgement is shown. While I am reluctant to say that anything contrary to the service of our Lord is in our nature, it certainly seems that we all have a propensity to this sort of legalism. We are like the disciple who responded to the command of Jesus to love his neighbor by asking “and who is my neighbor?” (Luke 10:29) If we are to confess with our mouths, we want to know just what form this confession should take. Perhaps we not only want to know so that we can make the correct confession, but also so we can tell if others confess correctly.
In the Gospel of John, Jesus makes this statement in a different way, one which is perhaps less open to a legalistic interpretation. In John 14:21, Jesus says “Whoever has my commands and obeys them is the one who loves me. He who loves me will be loved by the Father, and I too will love him and show myself to him.” (NIV) In this verse, Jesus speaks of keepings his commands, which we might think of as a checklist – do this, this, and this, and you will be saved – as identical with loving him. In the more extended passage in John, Jesus first says that the one who obeys his commands is the one who loves him, and then that the one who loves him is the one who obeys his commands; that is, they are one in the same. To love Jesus is to obey his commands; to obey his commands is to love him.
The Same Lord
Paul goes on to say that this salvation by faith is available to all. The statement that there is no difference between Jew and Gentile must have been staggering to those who heard it. The Jews knew themselves to be the chosen people. Paul begins the previous chapter with a long list of benefits from the Lord which were theirs alone. They had a special relationship with the Lord. They began to believe that they had this relationship because they were special.
Paul quotes two Old Testament scriptures in support of his claim. The first, from Isaiah 28:16, he has already quoted at the end of the previous chapter. The second is from Joel 2:32, and it is a passage which is also quoted by Peter on the day of Pentecost (Acts 2:16). But whether the Jews would accept either of these passages as applying to the Gentiles, and with him conclude that all humanity is the same, there is no way that anyone can refute the other side of Paul’s argument: that there is only one Lord who is Lord over all. The same Lord who so graciously offers us salvation offers that salvation to everyone. The Jews believed that the Gentiles were beyond salvation, and we may feel the same way towards various people of our day, some we know and some we do not, but the gift is not ours to give or to retain.
How Shall They Hear?
One of the reasons the writings of Paul are so challenging is that they treat with such gravity issues which today are little known to us. We are not great students of the law in the way the Scribes and Pharisees were. We know almost nothing of ritual sacrifice or cleanliness. Nor do we, in general, place such important on tradition. In short, we do not know what it was like to be a Jew.
But, there is another challenge in reading Paul, and that is that his thinking is very agile. He can at one moment be expounding upon deep, theological truth, and at the next on solid, everyday advice. When one of his points brings another to mind, it is immediately included in his discourse. Perhaps this is an aspect of his mind, or an artifact of the way in which he dictated his letters, or it may be that there is simply a difference in the letter-writing of his day, and the sort of writing we expect from a modern reference book.
Whatever the case, in verses 14-15, Paul detours from his treatment of the status of the Jews to a subject which is always on his heart, the mission of the spread of the gospel. Paul knew himself to be an Apostle, which means “one who is sent” and it is in this thought that the passage reaches its zenith. “How shall they preach unless they are sent?” (NIV) However, it is not only, and not most importantly, a passage that is intended to support his own calling as an apostle, but one that cries out to the need of those who have not heard and accepted the good news of Jesus Christ.
I Have Held Out My Hands
In the closing verses of the chapter (verses 16-21) Paul uses even more Old Testament citations to point out that the Jews of his day had heard the call of God and rejected it. To those Jews, Paul says that God in his sovereignty has made himself known, not to those whom they expected, but to those of his own choosing. Even to those who reject him, he continues to hold out his hands.
Paul begins the chapter, not in condemnation of the Jews, but in fervent desire and prayer for their salvation. The Lord is patient with those who reject him, and offers his grace to all who would believe. Do we share this earnest desire that all should be saved? How shall they hear?
