Chapter 10
10:1-4- Paul continues his flow of thought from the end of chapter 9 here in chapter 10. He further explains his comments in 9:30-33. What we see here and in ch. 11, is that there is still hope for the Jewish people. Paul is not in the business of praying pointless or futile prayers (unlike the emotions he may feel such as in 9:3, which illustrates his ultimately futile emotional yearning, not a genuine prayer).
Verse 2 strikes me as a tragic thought and dwelling on this fact can bring one to an understanding of just how and why Paul had such a bleeding heart for his people. They had such a zeal for God; a passionate desire to serve and worship Him, but ultimately it was in vain and would not save them! To reject Christ is to reject the One who sent Him (Luke 10:16). If anyone, Paul could empathize with this as he was very much the same! Paul says of himself in Gal. 1:14, “and I was advancing in Judaism beyond many of my contemporaries among my countrymen, being more extremely zealous for my ancestral traditions.” And in Acts 22:3, “I studied under Gamaliel and was thoroughly trained in the law of our ancestors. I was just as zealous for God as any of you are today” (NIV). Understanding how he used to be only made him yearn for his contemporaries to accept their Messiah as he had. The Jews knew God’s standard since God had revealed it to them in the Law. We know, however, that we cannot be justified by keeping the Law externally. Even if it were possible, the Law does not deal with purifying our hearts. I’ll recall what Paul makes clear in 3:20-26 (see v.20 “Therefore no one will be declared righteous in God’s sight by the works of the law; rather, through the law we become conscious of our sin.”-NIV). In those verses, Paul gives the solution; that is the righteousness of God being revealed in Christ Jesus and justification by faith in Him (for Christ fulfilled the Law as we could not do and not only that, but became the perfect sacrificial atonement for our sins against an infinite and holy God).
Paul is again emphasizing this in these first few verses in ch. 10. The Jews are continuing to trust in the Law to save them and make them right before God while simultaneously rejecting the real solution God has foreordained. Thinking that we can “keep the Law good enough” to justify us before God is ultimately the height of hubris and the epitome of human pride. It is to say, as Paul points out in verse 3, that we can be righteous enough by our own strength in keeping the Law. Grant Osborne writes, “Instead of doing it God’s way and allowing him to work his salvation in them, they tried to stand in their own righteousness, the righteousness of the law. As a result, they did not submit to God’s righteousness, which was no longer connected to the law but now depended on Christ.” Consider the Pharisee and the tax collector in Luke 18. We see pride (what God rejects) over and against humility (what God draws near to). The folly of the Pharisee was thinking he was righteous enough and had no need of repenting (after all, he followed the Law externally to a ‘T’).
The very irony is that thinking he was keeping the Law perfectly actually exposes the sinfulness of his heart! The tax collector did not presume upon his own righteousness, but admitted he was a sinner and humbly came to God with a contrite heart for mercy. The same could be said for the Gentiles coming to Christ at Paul’s preaching. Christ had indeed put an end to the Law as a means of acquiring right standing before God (verse 4). This, as Paul once again qualifies, only applies to “everyone who believes.” Faith in Christ, that He is Lord, and in His “once for all” sacrifice of sins is what justifies us before God, not working to keep the Law. We will never be able to work hard enough to attain the righteousness of God. Only Jesus has done it, and He did it on our behalf. What Paul is not saying here is that the Law no longer has any value. In 7:12-14 Paul describes it as holy, righteous, good and spiritual. As it is part of Holy Scripture, it is “useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness,” as Paul says in 2 Tim. 3:16. Grant Osborne states: “So Christ has not abolished the law (cf. Mt. 5:17-20) but has replaced it as the standard for righteousness. In this sense he has culminated the law as the focal point of its purpose.”
10:5-8- In these verses, Paul contrasts two kinds of righteousness (similar to what he does in Gal. 3:10-13). Paul refers to Lev. 18:5 in verse 5, “Keep my decrees and laws, for the person who obeys them will live by them.” Simply put, if a person is able to keep the Law, they will attain life! However, as Paul has made clear in ch. 1-3, no one will have eternal life as no one is capable of living up to this standard by their own merit. “But,” Paul says, righteousness that is attained through faith in Christ is contrary to human merit. This is Paul’s reason for quoting Deut. 30:12-14 in verses 6-8. It was not human merit that brought the incarnate Christ down from heaven nor brought about the resurrection of Christ.
In other words, this plan of the redemption of man (to make man righteous before God) was done completely by God. It was an act of God that brought Christ, it was an act of God that raised Christ from the dead. We as fallen humans have taken no part in redeeming ourselves or making ourselves righteous. This text in Deuteronomy finds its ultimate fulfillment in Christ as Paul is pointing out. Osborne, again, provides good commentary on the summary of Paul’s intent of interpreting these Old Testament texts in light of Christ: “Human effort can no more produce the resurrection than it can the incarnation. Both are the result of the grace of God rather than the will of man, and so they can only be accepted by faith. The Messiah has already appeared, has died on the cross for sins and has been raised to exaltation with God. The work has already been accomplished by God, and human effort was not part of it. All we are asked to do is accept God’s gift by faith.”
10:9- These verses are what many point to when someone asks, “What must I do to be saved?” I think we are so far removed from the time in which Paul lived, that we may not fully grasp the weight of what Paul is asserting in verse 9. To confess “kyrios Iēsous” or “Jesus is Lord” is to agree wholeheartedly that Jesus is God! The Greek word for Lord (kyrios) is used over 6,000 times in the Septuagint (Greek translation of the Old Testament- LXX) to refer to the God of Israel (Yahweh). This word can also be used as a title of honor and respect, such as a servant would address their master. This is the case in a verse like Matt. 10:24, “A disciple is not above his teacher, nor a slave above his master (kyrios).” But that is not the context we see the word being used with the apostles in the epistles (cf. 1 Cor. 8:6, 1 Cor. 12:3, Phil. 2:9-11). To proclaim “Jesus is Lord” is not simply a title of respect, but to confess the full deity of Christ over and against the way pagan Romans would confess “Caesar is Lord” as was a mandatory sign of worship to the Roman emperor. This very refusal by Christians along with proclaiming “Jesus is Lord” was to deny idol worship of a human as a “god” and instead give all due worship unto the true and living God.“Thomas answered and said to Him, “My Lord and my God!” -John 20:28. Much in the same way that the confession of Israel was “The Lord is our God, the Lord is one!” (Deut. 6:4), the Christian creed was thus expanded to include the full deity of Jesus; the Lord Christ! “yet for us there is but one God, the Father, from whom are all things and we exist for Him; and one Lord, Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we exist through Him.” -1 Cor. 8:6
Therefore, Kenneth Wuest says: “Thus to confess Jesus as Lord includes a heart belief in His deity, incarnation, vicarious atonement and bodily resurrection.”
A.T. Robertson adds, “No Jew would do this who had not really trusted Christ, for Kurios in the LXX is used of God. No Gentile would do it who had not ceased worshipping the emperor as Kurios. The word Kurios was and is the touchstone of faith.”
And C.E.B.Cranfield rightly states: “For Paul, the confession that Jesus is Lord meant the acknowledgement that Jesus shares the name and the nature, the holiness, the authority, power, majesty, and eternity of the one and only true God.”
This confession of Christ as Lord means to surrender to His very lordship. In other words, Christ Jesus is now who we live to serve, not ourselves or any other idol in our life. It is impossible to know Jesus as Savior of your life without knowing Him as Lord of your life. Robert Mounce simply articulates this concept by stating: “Primarily it means that Jesus’ authority is absolute, unlimited, and universal. Those who come to Christ by faith are acknowledging that they have placed themselves entirely and without reserve under the authority to carry out without hesitation whatever he may choose for them to do.” And Osborne also notes: “To know Jesus as Savior begins the process of knowing Him more and more as Lord. Without lordship, there is no saviorhood. Belief is intimately connected to Jesus’ lordship.”
The second part that is attached to this is “believing in your heart that God raised Him from the dead.” This is central and “the fundamental article to the Christian faith” as Matthew Henry states. This is a natural prerequisite for making Jesus Lord of one’s life. It is impossible to make a dead man Lord over anyone’s life. “You will be saved.” This begs the question; saved from what? As Paul has already made clear in the opening chapters of Romans (and throughout the letter), we will be saved from the righteous wrath of God against all wickedness and evil on the Day of Judgement (2:5-6, 5:9, cf. 1 Thess. 1:9-10).
Excursus: (Jesus’ Bodily Resurrection)
As Paul says in 1 Cor. 15:14-17, “and if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is vain, your faith also is vain. Moreover we are even found to be false witnesses of God, because we testified against God that He raised Christ, whom He did not raise, if in fact the dead are not raised. For if the dead are not raised, not even Christ has been raised; and if Christ has not been raised, your faith is worthless; you are still in your sins.” Indeed, Paul would be a liar because as he already taught in Rom. 8:11, “But if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who dwells in you.” The proof Jesus is Lord is as Paul says in the opening chapter of this letter, “who was declared the Son of God with power by the resurrection from the dead, according to the Spirit of holiness, Jesus Christ our Lord,” (1:4)
In John 2:18-22, for example, we see Jesus predicting His own death and bodily resurrection: “The Jews then said to Him, “What sign do You show us as your authority for doing these things?” Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” The Jews then said, “It took forty-six years to build this temple, and will You raise it up in three days?” But He was speaking of the temple of His body. So when He was raised from the dead, His disciples remembered that He said this; and they believed the Scripture and the word which Jesus had spoken.” In John 20:21, we see that Thomas both saw and touched the risen Lord’s body (to include His nail pierced hands and spear punctured side). And in Luke 24:39, Jesus says, “See My hands and My feet, that it is I Myself; touch Me and see, for a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.” And a couple verses later in Luke 24:42-43, we read that he was given fish to eat. To deny the bodily resurrection is to call Jesus Himself a liar as well as the ones He sent to proclaim His message (the apostles). “The one who listens to you listens to Me, and the one who rejects you rejects Me; and he who rejects Me rejects the One who sent Me.” -Luke 10:16.
There is no room for denial of the bodily resurrection as this is the clear testimony of Scripture, thus the true and reliable word of God. To deny this is to call God a liar and to stand over His clear testimony as judge. To do so is to deny God. As Paul says in 3:4, “Rather, let God be found true, though every man be found a liar.” This is not to say that a genuine Christian might not have doubt in areas of their faith from time to time (who hasn’t experienced trails and fiery arrows from the enemy that shakes faith)? Mark 9:24 is a comforting verse to the believer who struggles at times, but this is different from outright rejection and denial of the testimony of Scripture (thus the Holy Spirit) that Jesus has been bodily raised from the dead!
10:10-13- Paul is emphasizing faith in the heart and confession with the mouth because he is expounding on Deut. 30:14 which he cited in verse 8. Paul restates, but flips the order in verse 10. A belief in the heart leads to a confession of Christ as Lord. To the sobering reality of this truth, Albert Barnes writes: “That a profession of religion is, by Paul, made as really indispensable to salvation as believing. According to him it is connected with salvation as really as faith is with justification; and this accords with all the declarations of the Lord Jesus; Matthew 10:32; Matthew 25:34-46; Luke 12:8. There can be no religion where there is not a willingness to confess the Lord Jesus. There is no true repentance where we are not willing to confess our faults. There is no true attachment to a father or mother or friend, unless we are willing on all proper occasions to avow it. And so there can be no true religion where there is too much pride, or vanity, or love of the world, or fear of shame to confess it.”
Paul quotes Isa. 28:16 in verse 11. He makes use of this timeless truth of Scripture and uses it along with Joel 2:32 in verse 13 to support his claim in verse 12. That is, salvation is found in one God for all people, regardless of race or nationality. In the same way that Paul stresses the universal guilt wrought by sin for both Jew and Gentile in 3:22-23, here Paul is stressing that both Jew and Gentile alike can be saved by faith. The gospel call is universal in that sense. This was as true in the Old Testament as it is now as Paul demonstrates with these OT quotes. Rahab, a Gentile prostitute, called on the name of the Lord and was saved and given a place of honor in the lineage of Christ. Ruth turned from her pagan homeland to serve the God of Israel and similarly was given a place in the lineage of Christ. Gentiles were welcome to come to the temple of the Lord to pray and worship God as we see in 1 Kings 8:41-43. This is an Old Testament truth that finds its complete fulfillment in Christ.
What’s interesting to note is that in verse 13, Paul is connecting Joel 2:32 which states “whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved” (that is, whoever calls upon God/Yahweh, will be saved) directly to Jesus as the Lord who saves in verse 9. Here we have a glaring example of the deity of Christ as Paul attributes to Jesus that which should only be attributed to God. Namely, God’s deed of salvation for anyone who calls on Him!
“If you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord… you will be saved.” -Rom. 10:9
“everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved” -Joel 2:32 (ESV)
10:14-15- With all that being said, now comes the imperative, the logic of which is quite clear. One cannot call on the name of the Lord to be saved if one does not believe this good news of salvation, and one cannot believe in Christ if they’ve never heard of Him or what He has done to secure salvation for humanity! And without the proclamation of this good news by preaching it, how will anyone hear? This very proclamation was the thing that drove the disciples to live the lives they lived after Christ commissioned them. Paul sums up in rather passionate language in 2 Cor. 5:20, “Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were making an appeal through us; we beg you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.” The apostles were Jesus’ chosen agents to go out and spread the message of the gospel thereby instituting the Church. The foundation of the Church was laid by these “heralds” sent by Jesus (Eph. 2:20). Today, we continue the mission of parroting this beautiful message that has been revealed to all of humanity by way of God’s chosen instruments! Like the prophets of the Old Testament who were agents of God to announce His will, so too were the apostles and so too are those who believe the report that the apostles delivered! Gary V. Smith notes: “Human proclamation appears to be the means God has chosen to spread the news of his coming; thus every messenger of God’s salvation plays a fundamental role in the spreading of the good news that God reigns.”
This is the reason for Paul referencing Isa. 52:7 in verse 15. In the context of that verse, the messenger was proclaiming the “good news” of the Israelites returning from the land of exile. The time of punishment was over and salvation had come. While the immediate context is in reference to the nation of Israel in a specific moment in time, double meanings are all throughout Scripture and we know that the Old Testament finds its ultimate fulfillment in Christ. Not only do we know this as Christians after the fact, but there is good evidence that early Jewish use of Isa. 52:7 was understood to be eschatological in nature (prophetic of future events relating to the Messiah) particularly in the Jewish book “Psalms of Solomon” that was written around the 1st or 2nd century BC.
Mark A. Seifrid says of Paul’s use of this verse: “Clearly, Paul sees in Isa. 52:7 the promise of eschatological salvation, as did his contemporaries. Yet in this context it is the past event attested by Scripture that provides the warrant for the apostolic proclamation. Like Psalms of Solomon, Paul perceives a prophetic pattern of God’s dealing in the Scripture. Unlike most early Jewish use of the text, his interest is not directed to the salvation announced, which he or (less likely) his Greek OT omits; rather, his focus is on the ones sent to announce it. Paul does not need to identify the figure of Isa. 52:7 with the Messiah; rather, it is the apostolic mission which is the counterpart to the prophetic mission. Paul again uses the text typologically, finding in it a pattern of the eschatological work of God.”
10:16-17- In Isaiah’s day, not everyone believed despite hearing the report from God’s messengers. Paul, by way of quoting Isa. 53:1, shows that the same thing is happening in his day in regards to the gospel message he was proclaiming. To quote Osborne, “God had sent his message of redemption to Israel, but they rejected it. So once again, Israel is following the same pattern as before, rejection of the divinely commissioned message.”
In verse 17, we get the answer to the rhetorical questions in Vv. 14-15. Faith comes from hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ. That is, the good news about Jesus, the Savior who was crucified as the sacrifice for sins and rose from the dead and will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead! The message was what we see the apostles preach all throughout Acts, especially to the Jews in the first half of the book (see Acts 2:14-40, 3:12-26, 4:8-12, etc).
10:18-19- Paul, in his usual style, uses the rhetorical question as a means of addressing a potential or anticipated objection. The closing verses of this chapter is Paul claiming and illustrating from Scripture that Israel had heard and chose not to believe, therefore having no excuse. Again, we see in the book of Acts that the gospel message was preached thoroughly to the Jews. For Paul’s part, we even see in Acts that it was his custom to go straight to the local synagogue first in each town he visited to preach Christ.
“Now when they had traveled through Amphipolis and Apollonia, they came to Thessalonica, where there was a synagogue of the Jews. And according to Paul’s custom, he went to them, and for three Sabbaths reasoned with them from the Scriptures,”-Acts 17:1-2
“And he entered the synagogue and continued speaking out boldly for three months, reasoning and persuading them about the kingdom of God.” -Acts 19:8
By Paul’s own confession in 1:16, this promise was “to the Jew first and also to the Greek.” He anchors his claim in verse 18 by citing Psalm 19:4. Essentially, the point Paul is making is that in the same way God has revealed himself through general revelation by way of His creation, the gospel is spreading like wildfire across the known world (to the ends of the earth). Just as man has no excuse to deny the existence of God due to His very creation (1:19-20), so too do they have no excuse as the message of the gospel has been proclaimed.
Verse 19 addresses a follow up objection as if to say, “Okay, I’ll grant you that ‘all have heard,’ but what if they don’t understand the message?” The NLT aims to translate the first half of v. 19 to better reflect the meaning of the original Greek: “But I ask, did the people of Israel really understand?” The point Paul makes by referring to Deut. 32:21 is as Robert Mounce says: “If unenlightened people outside the covenant could understand the gospel, then certainly a religiously gifted and highly favored group like the Jews had no grounds for claiming that it was beyond their understanding.” Pagan Gentiles, who had previously rejected God for idols and false gods, were now turning from those idols to serve the God of Israel through Jesus due to the preaching of the gospel (1 Thess. 1:9-10)! This proves that the Jews weren’t rejecting Christ because they had not heard or did not understand, but because of their willful unbelief/disobedience.
10:20-21- Here in these last two verses there is irony, beauty, and tragedy all wrapped up together. The very thing prophesied in Isa. 65:1 was happening in real time as Paul was penning this letter. People who had not previously worshiped God nor sought after Him (pagan Gentiles) were now returning to their Creator through Jesus. They were being redeemed, their sins forgiven and justified by the God who created them. This is the beauty. The tragedy is what we find in Paul’s use of Isa. 65:2 which was also being fulfilled. Despite God reaching out to save Israel, they refused to be saved! Everett Harrison writes: “In the following quotation from Isaiah (65:2) the paradoxical situation regarding Israel is set forth. God is the one who is seeking, reaching out to his people continually with a plea that Israel return to him in loving obedience, only to be rebuffed. So we may draw the conclusion that the spiritual condition of Israel does not come from a lack of opportunity to hear the gospel or a lack of understanding of its content, but must be traced to a stubborn and rebellious spirit such as cropped up in the days of Moses and the days of the prophets. It is the more grievous now because God has spoken his final word in his Son and has been rebuffed by those who should have been the most ready to respond.”
Bibliography (Works Cited):
-Grant R. Osborne: Romans, IVPNTC, 2004
-Kenneth S. Wuest: Word Studies in the Greek New Testament, Vol. 1 (Romans)
-A.T. Robertson: Word Pictures in the New Testament
-C.E.B. Cranfield: A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans: Vol. 2
-Robert H. Mounce: Romans, NAC, 1995
-Matthew Henry: Matthew Henry’s Commentary on the Whole Bible
-Albert Barnes: Barnes' Notes on the Whole Bible (Romans)
-Gary V. Smith: Isaiah 40-66, NAC, 2009
-Mark A. Seifrid: Commentary on the New Testament Use of the Old Testament (Beale and Carson), Romans
-Everett F. Harrison: The Expositor’s Bible Commentary, Vol. 10, Romans, 1976