All then that believe, though uncircumcised, might claim him as father, assured that righteousness will be reckoned to them too. Depend upon him without fear as to your present and eternal salvation. Because they were sons of Abraham. (1-3) Israels refusal to submit to the righteousness of God. If the good news of God goes out to man, entirely blotting out the difference between a Jew and a Gentile, what becomes of His special promises to Abraham and to his seed? God pronounces against the unrighteousness of such; for if the knowledge, however exact, of God's revealed mind was accompanied by no renewal of the heart, if it was without life towards God, all must be vain. But this one is a special little angel. Which we preach - Which is proclaimed by the apostles, and made known to Jews and Gentiles. It might be more or less any man's lot to learn. in your mouth -- --when you confess Him. Isaiah says: "I was found of them who sought me not; I was made manifest unto them that asked not after me." This phrase, , "the word of faith", may be seen in the Jewish writings z; and this shows what word is here meant, even the Gospel so called, because it contains doctrines which are to be believed upon the testimony of God, and particularly the doctrine of justification by the righteousness of Christ received by faith; and because it proposes Christ as the object of faith, and encourages souls to believe in him for life and salvation; and is also the means of begetting and implanting faith in the heart, and without it the preaching of it is of no avail: and it is further described by the ministration of it. They grasped the meaning of this offer all right, when it came to them unexpectedly and unsought." Yes, but this is another principle. Saul of Tarsus was a notorious persecutor of Christians before Jesus confronted him on the road to Damascus (Acts 9:1-20). It could not therefore be the source or means of his righteousness. I now plunge into my text. Therefore I cast about me, and I considered what subject he would wish me to preach from if he were sitting behind me this morning as he was last Lord's-day. Isaiah was very bold, and he said, I was found of them that sought me not; I was made manifest unto them that ask not after me. 8 But what saith it? Notice that Paul describes Gods word as the word (a definite article occurs in the Greek text). The resurrection was an essential of Christian belief. "At any rate he is a saved soul," we hear. (2.) Moses saith, "I will provoke you to jealousy by them that are no people," etc. For belief with the heart is the way to a right relationship with God, and confession with the mouth is the way to salvation, For scripture says, "Every one who believes in him will not be put to shame," for there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; for the same Lord is Lord over all, and he has ample resources for all who call upon him. Perhaps thou wouldst be ashamed to say it with thy lips; but do not say it at all; do not say that the way to heaven is hard, or mysterious, or in any degree apart from the simple act of believing. For instance, if a man signs a contract without having read the conditions, he cannot complain if afterwards he finds out that the conditions are very different from what he thought they were. Christ's work of redemption deserves that God should act as He does in the gospel. Choose a verse from 'Romans 10' to begin your 'Verse-by-Verse' study of God's Word using the more than 100 commentaries available on StudyLight.org. No, He has already come and brought salvation down from heaven to men. They are really rebelling against God's path of righteousness, having established now their own righteousness by works, as Paul here declares. What He does is to pierce and penetrate the man's conscience. The believer in Jesus shall be saved because he is a believer; and Christ's veracity is staked thereon: "Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me hath everlasting life. Finally he comes to two other witnesses; as from the Psalms, so now from the law and the prophets. I thank God he could say that of my religion: it did this for my dear friend it made him a happy man, whose pleasure it was to please others: and now he has passed away in full sunlight into a still brighter noon. Having received, having heard, having known the grace of God through Jesus Christ, we are now obligated to let the world know of that same grace.I have a very good friend, Keith Erickson, whom I love in the Lord. Romans 10:14-17. 10:5-8: For Moses writeth that the man that doeth the righteousness which is of the law shall live thereby. i. Basically the scheme is this--in the previous passage Paul has been saying that the way to God is not that of works and of legalism, but of faith and trust. When we drift away from it, we become confused, and we begin dividing, bickering and fighting among ourselves. Jesus had come and died; Jesus had been a propitiatory sacrifice; Jesus had borne the judgment of God because of the sins He bore. Observe, the gospel is not simply remission of sins, nor is it only peace with God, but "the power of God unto salvation." So that this was no other than what Moses and the prophets said should be, Ro 10:20, and the chapter is closed, Ro 10:21, with another passage out of the same prophet in the next verse, showing the rejection of Christ and his Gospel by the Jews, and which justifies their being cast off by him, of which the apostle treats largely in the next chapter. They tried him with their various attainments, depressions, anxieties, quibbles, and questions; but still the huckster would not budge. You must believe in your heart; and even that belief is not enough without accompanying action: confess with your mouth. And she takes advantage of it and gives me a bad time, because she is totally independent when it comes to Grandpa.She loves to play her little independent games. God is gracious, but holy; He is faithful, but righteous. No prayers, or tears, are wanted to bring him down: he has already come and is near at hand. If you crawl on your knees for five miles to kiss the statue you can be spared several days of purgatory. The feet speak of activity, motion, and progress, and those who are active and moving in the work of preaching the gospel have beautiful feet. Alas! a. Pauls intent here is to use the same words to express the same idea about the gospel instead of the law. Yes indeed: Their sound has gone out to all the earth, You cannot believe in him unless you hear about him. (4-8) The contrast between Gods righteousness and our attempts at righteousness. And there (for such was the point) it was the complete condemnation of this evil thing, the nature in its present state, so as, nevertheless, to set the believer as before God's judgment free from itself as well as its consequences. The scope of the apostle in this part of the chapter is to show the vast difference between the righteousness of the law and the righteousness of faith, and the great pre-eminence of the righteousness of faith above that of the law; that he might induce and persuade the Jews to believe in Christ, aggravate the folly and sin of those that refused, and justify God in the rejection of such refusers. The whole passage Romans 9:1-33; Romans 10:1-21; Romans 11:1-36 is a condemnation of the Jewish attitude to religion. Moses said, "That the man which doeth those things shall live by them." But unto Israel he said, All day long I have stretched forth my hand unto a disobedient and gainsaying people ( Romans 10:20-21 ). Hence it is essentially founded on the gift not only of a Saviour who would interpose, in the mercy of God, to bear our sins, but of One who is already revealed, and the work done and accepted, and this known in the fact that God Himself has interposed to raise Him from among the dead a bright and momentous thing to press on souls, as indeed we find the apostles insisting on it throughout the Acts. It is true God gave them that law for which they were so zealous; but they might have known that, by the appearance of the promised Messiah, an end was put to it. Calling for mischief or injury to fall upon a person. "Always remember to keep your voice down," said another. . This is as certain and clear as the utterance of that dreadful roll of thunder which has just now left on your minds the thought, "He that doeth these things shall live by them.". The righteousness of the law is an impossibility for all who have sinned even once, and the truth is all responsible men have sinned more than one time. b. I was found by those who did not seek Me: It is strange that Israel, for the most part, rejected their own Messiah. Horribly offensive as sin is to God, and inexcusable in the creature, it is sin which has given occasion to the astonishing display of divine righteousness in justifying believers. Whosoever believed should not be ashamed; whosoever called should be saved. Now God must have reality in the man himself. Thereby is identification with His death. It is the paradox of the human situation that God is in control and yet the human will is free. It is our duty truly and earnestly to desire the salvation of our own. The apostle refers to Isaiah to show that God would "lay in Zion a stumbling-stone." This is the key word of early Christianity. Not only God, but also our fellow men, must know what side we are on. The soul of prayer is the heart's desire. Plug in, Turn on and Be En light ened! The law has not come to an end in the sense of no longer reflecting Gods standard or no longer showing us our need for a Savior. Now, if it was righteous in God (and who will gainsay it?) Click on the different category headings to find out more. 10 For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation. This might seem an exaggeration: the gospel had not been carried throughout all the earth, not even to all the lands that were known to the inhabitants of the Graeco-Roman world. Though Israel heard, they did not exercise saving faith in Christ making them (and us) all the more responsible. This is what Moses saith: hear it and be humbled. It is a holy balancing pole: we can walk the narrowest line with this in our hands, and fear no fall. Yes, God has chosen and elected and predestined. The word Kurios was and is the touchstone of faith.. Paul wants the Jews to be saved, but they cannot be saved while trying to create their own righteousness through law-keeping. Paul allegorizes that passage. (i) There is the ignorance which comes from neglect of knowledge. The tenour of it is, Do, and live. It is God who now makes known a righteousness to man, instead of looking for any from man. Click to enable/disable Google reCaptcha. "No, I am not." There is evil at work, and grace does not close the eye to danger; at the same time it is never under the pressure of the enemy, and there is the fullest confidence that the God of peace will break the power of Satan under the feet of the saints shortly. This Good News is readily available to anyone who will receive it freely from God through Christ. But thus the way is now clear for bringing the Jew into the discussion. If I had a sense of sin as deep as that of lost souls in hell, I could hope that I should be saved." 2018 David Guzik No distribution beyond personal use without permission. Cottrell cites Leon Morris in summary: "The righteousness of faith does not demand that we be supermen; it does not set some impossible task before us. What gives glory to God like this? And that word is the message of faith which we proclaim. In the Fourth Book of Maccabees there is an amazing incident. Now what is this word of faith? It is in our mouth--we are reading it daily; it is in our heart--we are, or should be, thinking of it daily. Finally, Paul insists that, all through history, God has been stretching out hands of appeal to Israel, and Israel has always been disobedient and perverse. Romans is a book about God. Here was the very truth that every Jew, as such, denied. "He resisted," says the writer, "even to the agonies of death, for the law's sake.". May you experience the joys of His power, of His presence, of His glory, as God day by day showers you with His goodness and with His love. The meaning is, the doctrine is not difficult to be understood and embraced. A proud conceit of their own righteousness: Going about to establish their own--a righteousness of their own devising, and of their own working out, by the merit of their works, and by their observance of the ceremonial law. The same was true of the gospel. The word of God is to be close to the heart of every Christian. Chapter Summary Paul's heart is broken for his people, Israel. Have done with every other confidence. And what led to the call of Abraham, of whom we hear much in the epistle to the Romans as elsewhere, was the departure of man into idolatry. One reported to me the other day a word which cheered me much. But God has established the way through Jesus Christ. The word of faith - The doctrine which requires faith, that is, the gospel; compare 1 Timothy 4:6. Of these only a remnant would be saved. He is consistent with Himself when He is justifying sinners, or, more strictly, all those who believe in Jesus. Thus the second man looks to excitements and feelings just as the first looked to works and self-denials. The gospel replies, if you did ascend to heaven what would you do there, without Christ, the anointed Savior? It is our rejecting the gifts our Lord offers in His Means of Grace. As far as persons are concerned, there is no hindrance; Jew or Gentile makes no difference, as is expressly said, "For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God; being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus: whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the [passing over or praeter-mission, not] remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God; to declare, I say, at this time his righteousness: that he might be just, and the justifier of him that believeth in Jesus" (verses 23-26). ** See No. First, We need not go to heaven, to search the records there, or to enquire into the secrets of the divine counsel. Unbelief is a non-submission to the righteousness of God, standing it out against the gospel proclamation of indemnity. For all this, as he presses further, there was the weightiest reason possible. We have all that we need to find salvation and be blessed by God. Moses had so often inculcated it, that it was understood and talked about by the people, so that there was no need to search in distant climes to obtain it. Christianity is belief plus confession; it involves witness before men. He has no longer to win God's favour; he need simply take the grace and love and mercy which he freely offers. They give us the basis of the first Christian creed. The expression means that righteousness which God can afford to display because of Christ's atonement. Verse 9 seems to be directly connected to Deuteronomy 30:14 (it may be helpful to read this verse a second time). "The word is near you; it is in your mouth and in your heart," that is, the message concerning faith that we proclaim: 9 If you declare with your mouth, "Jesus is Lord," and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. In the most solemn way he appeals to man with the demand, whether he thinks that God will look complacently on that which barely judges another, but which allows the practice of evil in the man himself (Romans 2:1-3). Not only was Abraham justified without law, but apart from that great sign of mortification of the flesh. In the end the soldiers so pitied him that they brought him dressed meat, which was not pork, and told him to eat it and say that he had eaten pork. Christ is come, and has changed all. There never was an hour since Israel's existence as a nation that God has not had His remnant of them. (14-15) The necessity of the preaching of the gospel. The "word of faith" means the message that righteousness comes by faith. It means we recognize that Jesus is God, that He is the Messiah, and that His work on the cross is the only way of salvation for mankind. Thus the latter portion of the chapter is not doctrine exactly, but the proof of the difficulties of a soul who has not realised death to the law by the body of Christ. Romans 10:17, ESV: So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ. What were the principles of it? But he meets their proud exclusiveness in another way. Because these cookies are strictly necessary to deliver the website, refusing them will have impact how our site functions. He is not studying an historical personage, however great; he is living with a real presence. Or, Who shall descend into the deep? Directions for our behaviour, as members of civil society, Rom. This it was before it was his prayer. If in Isaac only, it is a question of the seed, not that was born, but that was called. These cookies are strictly necessary to provide you with services available through our website and to use some of its features. I hope that brethren in Christ will bear with me if I press on them the importance of taking good heed to it that their souls are thoroughly grounded in this, the proper place of the Christian by Christ's death and resurrection. What does experience say about believing in Christ! It is exquisite the delicate love with which he singles out distinctive features in each of the saints, men and women, that come before him. Back when Jay Leno was hosted the Tonight Show, he frequently did "man-on-the street" interviews. Hence the faithful derive from this passage remarkable consolation with regard to the certainty of the word; for they may no less safely rest on it, than on what is actually present. A real presence they did not exercise saving faith in Christ making them ( and who will receive freely... Keep your voice down, '' etc show, he has already come and is near at hand the truth!, Turn on and be humbled people, '' said another man, of... 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