From Guilt to Glory: Reveling in God's Salvation
Expository Studies in Romans
Volume Two
By Ray C. Stedman
Unless otherwise identified, all Scripture references are from the Holy Bible: New lnternational Version, copyright 1973, 1978 by the lnternational Bible Society. Scripture quotations marked RSV are from the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright 1946,1952, copyright 1971,1973, Division of Christian Education, National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA. Used by permission. Scripture quotations marked KJV are from the King James Version.
Cover design by Phil Maylon and Judy Quinn
Photograph by Russ Keller
FROM GUILT TO GLORY
@Ray c. Stedman
Published by Discovery Publishing,
Palo Alto, California
Printed in the United States of America
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written consent of Discovery Publishing. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Stedman, Ray C.
From guilt to glory.
Reprint Originally published: Multnomah Press @ 1978
Portland, Oregon 97266
1. Bible. N.r.-Romans-sermons. 2 Sermons,
American. 1. Title
ISBN 0-88080-124-2 (v. 2)
CONTENTS
4. Have They Not Heard? (10:14-21)
5. There's Hope Ahead (11:1-24)
6. Our Great and Glorious God (11:25-12:1)
10. God's Strange Servants (13:1-7)
11. The Night Is Nearly Over (13:8-14)
12. On Trying to Change Others (14:1-12)
13. The Right to Yield (14:13-23)
14. Our Great Example (15:1-13)
15. An Adequate Ministry (15:14-33)
16. All in the Family (16:1-24)
17. The Great Mystery (16:25-27)
(Romans 9:1-13)
Make your way into Romans 9, and you see the apostle Paul tackling some of the toughest questions ever asked about God's actions. Here Paul faces squarely some of the most bitter accusations man has brought against God.
In the first major division of this letter, chapters 1-8, Paul explained the gospel of God's grace, the full plan of redemption. Now in the second division, chapters 9-11, he seems to be starting all over again. But this time his purpose is not to explain the gospel but to exhibit it. These three chapters are an exhibition of the grace that takes man from terrible guilt to matchless glory.
In a wax museum at San Francisco's Fishermen's Wharf you can see wax figures of famous people pictured in scenes from various historic moments. This kind of thing appeals to many, helping them grasp more clearly what those events were actually like.
This is what we have in chapters 9-11 of Romans. It is a demonstration--in terms of people--of how God works in human history, how he redeems and saves.
A Sad and Sober Story
The apostle has already declared man helpless to save himself. While we have power to choose, our choices do not cover all possibilities; God's will is worked out behind it all. We do not understand this, so Paul turns the spotlight on Israel to demonstrate just how God works.
The story of Israel is sad and sobering. This nation always thought of itself as having an inside track with God. Israel was the people of God, the chosen nation, close to God, with advantages no other nation enjoyed. Yet Paul begins this section by declaring this nation to be far, far away from God. Despite the possibilities they might have enjoyed, they are a long way from doing so. Paul is not angry over this fact, nor does he come on with accusations. He begins by describing the personal anguish it causes him:
I speak the truth in Christ--I am not lying, my conscience confirms it in the Holy Spirit--I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart. For I could wish that I myself were cursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my brothers, those of my own race, the people of Israel (9:1-4).
To the Jews of his day the apostle sounded like an enemy. As he preached and taught the riches in Christ Jesus and focused on the Messiah, he became in the eyes of the Jews an enemy. This has remained true of the nation of Israel until today. They still see Paul this way. If a Jew reads the letter to the Romans, he probably regards it as a gigantic put-down to the whole nation. Paul's ministry everywhere stirred up the antagonism of the Jews.
And yet Paul is not their enemy, as he himself makes clear. He is their loving, hurting friend. To say what he does breaks his heart. The hurt is real. Paul tells us these are not crocodile tears he is shedding.
This is no phony protest, like some who say, 'Tm only telling you this because I love you" and then proceed to cut you to pieces. "No," Paul says, "my conscience supports me in this, and the Holy Spirit himself confirms the genuineness of my anguish. It is deep and lasting." He describes it as "great sorrow and unceasing anguish. "
To Trade Places in Hell
If you love someone whose trend in life is away from Christ and the things of God, anguish and grief are always present in your heart. You may be enjoying yourself outwardly, and you may be at peace in many ways, but hurt is there like a deep knot.
The moment your thoughts go back to that person you feel it again. I don't think anything is more devastating and more deeply felt than love and concern for someone drifting into destruction, danger, despair, perhaps even death, especially when you feel helpless to do anything about it.
This was the apostle's position. His anguish was so deep that he says if it were possible (fortunately it wasn't) he would be willing to take their place in hell, if only they could find Christ! Such commitment is rare.
We find Moses saying something similar in Exodus 32. He came down from the mountain and found the people dancing around the golden calf, conducting themselves in riotous ways, and he intervened with God on their behalf.
"Lord, if it be possible, blot this sin from their lives," he said. "But if not, blot me out of your book." That touches me. I would be willing, gladly, to give up the rest of my earthly life if it meant my loved ones would be in glory.
But I can't think of anyone for whom I would give up my hope for eternity. Yet this is what the apostle feels. He knows it isn't possible, but he says, "If I could, I would."
What a lesson here on how to approach someone you want to help! If it is someone who isn't eager to receive what you have to say, you must never come on--Paul never does--with accusations, or bitter words or denunciations, or even by focusing on the issues that separate you.
Perhaps you've heard of the man who said to a friend, "I hear you dismissed your pastor. What was wrong?"
The friend answered, "Well, he kept telling us we were going to hell. "
"What does the new pastor say?"
"He keeps saying we're going to hell, too."
"So what's the difference?"
"Well," the friend said, "when the first one said it, he sounded like he was glad; but when the new man says it, he sounds like it's breaking his heart."
This is what Paul is saying here. To tell the Romans these things about Israel breaks his heart.
Part of the reason for this anguish is explained in what Paul says next. He recognizes the tremendous possibilities the Jews had, but failed to take advantage of.
Theirs is the adoption as sons; theirs the divine glory, the covenants, the receiving of the law, the temple worship and the promises. Theirs are the patriarchs, and from them is traced the human ancestry of Christ, who is God over all, forever praised! Amen (9:4-5).
I am reminded of a young man with whom I shared a ministry many years ago in Southern California. He had a brilliant mind, a powerful personality, keen insights into the Scriptures, and a convincing effectiveness in what he said. He is now a broken man, having drifted from the faith--an alcoholic, perhaps dying. What sorrow this brought to my heart when I heard of it, as I thought of the great possibilities now wasted.
This is how the apostle feels about the advantages Israel wasted. He lists eight of them.
First, they were chosen as the people of God. Scripture makes it plain God singled out this nation--the descendants of Abraham through Jacob's twelve sons as his people. He said, "Behold, Israel is my son." He dealt with them as his specially chosen people. Gentiles have not always understood this and many times resent it. Someone has put their feeling this way:
How odd
of God
to choose
the Jews!
But God really did choose them. Their position was different from any other nation of their day, and Paul acknowledges it.
Second, to the Jews was given the divine glory. By this Paul means the Tekamah, the bright cloud that followed Israel through the wilderness and later abode in the Holy of Holies in the tabernacle to mark God's presence among his people.
Centuries later when the temple was built by King Solomon, the cloud of glory again came and filled the Holy of Holies. The people knew God had recognized his ties with this remarkable people and was living among them. To them, indeed, "belonged the glory."
Third, the Jews had the covenants, those remarkable agreements God made with Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses and David, in which God irrevocably committed himself to do certain things for this nation. God took the initiative to make these covenants with this strange and wonderful people.
Fourth, the Jews had the law. This was their dearest and greatest treasure, and still is. The book In the Beginning by contemporary Jewish writer Chaim Potok describes how the Jews love the Torah, the scrolls of the law. They have a. service set aside in which men of the congregation take the scrolls and dance with them. Potok records how one of the young lads says to himself, "I wonder if the Goyim (Gentiles) ever feel this way about the Word of God?" Yes, the law was their greatest treasure.
Fifth, the Jews had the temple worship. God had carefully and meticulously described how the people should conduct themselves in his presence. He told them the kinds of offerings to bring and the ritual to carry out. He designed beautiful ways of reminding them of all he had taught them. The Jews had the temple itself, one of the most beautiful buildings ever built. It was the glory of Israel, still standing in our Lord's day and while Paul wrote this letter.
Sixth, the Jews had the promises. These are still to be found in the pages of the Old Testament--promises of a time when the Jews would lead the nations of the world. From the Jews would come a universal reign, a world King, and Jerusalem would be the center of the earth. Government would flow from Jerusalem throughout the whole earth. These promises are still there, and God means to fulfill them.
Seventh, the Jews had the patriarchs, those tremendous men whose names are household words all over the world--Abraham, Moses, David, and others. Americans think we are blessed in having leaders like Washington, Jefferson, and Lincoln, but even they are not as widely known as these great names from Israel.
Finally, the supreme blessing was that Jesus himself, the Messiah, came from Israel. From the Jews is traced Christ's human ancestry. Paul does not say Christ belonged exclusively to Israel, but that he came from them. He belongs to the world because, as the apostle adds, "He is God over all, to be praised forever!" This is one of the clearest and most definite statements from the apostle's pen of the deity of Jesus. Some manuscripts suggest this is to be translated as a closing doxology: "God be blessed and praised forever." But the most ancient texts agree that the apostle wrote, "Christ is God over all, blessed and praised forever!"
Approaching Crisis
And yet with all these fantastic advantages, with their remarkable achievements and possibilities, the Jews of Paul's day were violently anti-Christian. They could not stand the idea of Jesus as their Messiah. Paul could see evidence, even at this early date, of the approaching crisis between the Jews and Romans that would result in Jerusalem's destruction and judgment upon the nation. They would be scattered throughout the world for centuries.
This letter was written about 53 A.D. Already events were moving to bring about a final confrontation in 70 A.D., when Roman armies would surround Jerusalem and break through its walls, destroy the temple, and take the Jews captive or drive them out into all the nations of the world--fulfilling the word of the Jesus they had rejected.
Now Paul raises a question that lies at the heart of this chapter: Since Israel has proved faithless, does this mean God also was faithless? Has God failed? Is he unable to save those he wants to save? This question is still relevant today, for many people wonder if God really can save someone he calls. Paul answers with a great statement trumpeting God's faithfulness--but in terms we struggle with.
I want to warn you, you'll have a difficult time with the ninth chapter of Romans. Way back in the prophet Isaiah's day, God said to Isaiah, "For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways. . . . For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts" (Isaiah 55:8-9 RSV). Whatever else those words might mean, they certainly imply God sometimes acts in ways we don't understand, ways that seem absolutely contrary to how we think he should act.
Surely this is a major problem we face in seeking to understand God. At times I have been bewildered and baffled by God's behavior. I could see clearly how to work out certain problems--but God seemed unable to catch on. Even when I told him the simple steps (as I saw them) that would lead to a solution, he persisted instead in working it out by going into deeply involved relationships and circumstances with no apparent bearing on the problem. I am confronted, finally, with the truth of Isaiah's words. God is beyond me. This is the attitude we must have as we go through this chapter.
No Natural Advantages
Paul begins by showing us some of the principles by which God carries out his great work. The first is this: When God grants great opportunities and special privileges to people, this is no certain indication he guarantees to save them. Notice how Paul establishes his argument. First, he says, salvation is never based on natural advantages:
It is not as though God's word had failed. For not all who are descended from Israel are Israel. Nor because they are his descendants are they all Abraham's children (9:6-7).
Two patriarchs are mentioned here, Abraham and Jacob (for Israel, of course, is another name for Jacob). After Jacob wrestled with the angel God renamed him Israel, for Israel means "A prevailed with God." God made Jacob, the usurper, into a conqueror. But his descendants are not necessarily involved in Jacob's promises. Even those who are physical descendants of Abraham, the greatest of the patriarchs, are not all included in God's salvation and reckoned as Abraham's true children.
Therefore, we can conclude that salvation is never based on natural advantages. It is not inherited. Your family may be Christian but that does not make you a Christian. You may have great opportunities for obtaining Bible knowledge, and perhaps you have taken advantage of them--but that does not make you a Christian. These special privileges are not the basis for God's redemption. This is the first thing we must understand. Ancestry does not guarantee redemption.
Rather, God's salvation is always based on a divine promise:
On the contrary, "It is through Isaac that your offspring will be reckoned," In other words, it is not the natural children who are God's children, but it is the children of promise who are regarded as Abraham's offspring. For this was how the promise was stated: "At the appointed time I [God] will return, and Sarah will have a son" (9:7-9).
This takes us back to the eighteenth chapter of Genesis, where God in effect said to Abraham and Sarah, "I will come back, and Sarah, whose womb has been barren all her life--who has never had a child, who is now ninety years old, and who, from a natural point of view, couldn't possibly have a child--is going to have a baby." It was a biological miracle, and this was God's promise. It involved his own supernatural activity. His promise is based on what he does, not on what men do.
Ishmael was Abraham's oldest son, thirteen years older than Isaac. By his rights as the firstborn son he should have inherited the promise God made to Abraham. But instead, Isaac inherited this promise. Ishmael stands forever as a symbol of the futility of expecting God to honor our ideas of how he is to act. Do you remember how Ishmael was born? Sarah said to Abraham one day, "Do you expect God to do everything? He has promised you a son, but you are getting old. Time's wasting. Surely, God doesn't expect you to leave it all up to him!" So she suggested he take her Egyptian servant as a concubine. He did, and she conceived and bore a son. Abraham brought Ishmael before God and said, "God, here is my son, Ishmael. Will you fulfill your promises to him?" God said, "No, I won't. He is not the one, I have promised a son to Sarah and that son shall inherit the blessing of Abraham."
Find the Promise
This is an important principle in Scripture. I meet many people who think they know what God ought to do. They misread the promises about prayer, for instance, and think if they pray for what they want, God has to grant it. But this account teaches that God is committed to do only what he has promised to do. If you want God to act on your behalf, find a promise he has given, and claim it in strict compliance to the conditions he has declared.
Many "faith healers" teach that God promises to heal all physical ailments. They tell people to "claim" healing from God. If we would just claim what God has promised, they say, God will do it. I have been studying the Scriptures for forty years or more, and I can't find that promise. God has never, anywhere, promised to heal all physical illnesses. He does heal, and often he will heal in response to the requests of his children--but he has never promised he will. We are wrong when we try to claim from God something he never promised. This is why anything expected from God must rest upon a promise he has already given. Otherwise it is wholly his grace that supplies an answer to our requests. That is the second principle here.
Now we come to the third principle, which is even more difficult to handle:
Not only that, but Rebecca's children had one and the same father, our father Isaac. Yet, before the twins were born or had done anything good or bad--in order that God's purpose in election might stand: not by works but by him who calls--she was told, "The older will serve the younger" (9:10-12).
Remember Rebecca? She was Isaac's wife. He found her through Abraham's servant, who had been sent to find God's choice for him. Before their twin sons were born God told Rebecca the elder would serve the younger. This was a remarkable statement, and Paul confirms it with a quotation from Malachi 1:2-3.
Just as it is written, "Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated."
Many have struggled over those words. But all the apostle is saying is that, first, ancestry does not make any difference (these boys had the same father); and second, what they will do in their lives--including the choices they make--ultimately will not make any difference. Before they were able to make choices either good or bad, God said to their mother, "The elder shall serve the younger. " By this he implied not only a difference in the two nations descended from Jacob and Esau, but also a difference involving the personal destinies of these two men.
This is clear from history's record. Jacob forever stands for the faith God honors and wants men to have. Jacob was a scheming, weak character--not very lovable. Esau on the other hand was a rugged individualist--much more admirable than Jacob. But through the course of their lives, Jacob was brought to faith, and Esau was not.
A man once said to a noted Bible teacher, "I'm having trouble with this verse, 'Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated.' How could God ever say, 'Esau I hated'?"
The Bible teacher answered, "I have trouble with this verse too--but what bothers me is how God could ever say 'Jacob I loved'!" Read the life of Jacob and you will see why.
To Love Less
We must not read this word "hated" as though God actually detested Esau and treated him with contempt. This is what we often mean when we say we hate someone. Jesus used this same word when he said, "If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother, his wife and children, his brothers and sisters--yes, even his own life--he cannot be my disciple" (Luke 14:26). Clearly he is not saying we have to treat our mothers and fathers and wives and children and our own lives with contempt and disrespect. He means we are to give him preeminence over all others. Hatred, in this sense, means to love less. We are to love others less than we love him.
God did not hate Esau in any absolute sense. In fact he blessed him. He made of him a great nation. He gave him promises which he fulfilled to the letter. What these verses imply is that God set his heart on Jacob, to bring him to redemption, and all Jacob's followers would reflect the possibilities of that. As Paul has argued already, they were not all saved by this heritage, but Jacob would forever stand for what God wants men to be, and Esau would forever stand as a symbol of what he does not like.
Do you know where the final confrontation of Jacob and Esau is recorded in the Scriptures? It was when Jesus stood before Herod the king. Herod was an Demean, an Edomite, a descendant of Esau. Jesus was a descendant of Jacob. There, standing face to face, were Jacob and Esau! Herod has nothing but contempt for the King of the Jews, and Jesus will not open his mouth in Herod's presence. This is God's strange and mysterious way of dealing with humanity. Jacob and Esau represent contradictory lifestyles which can never merge.
Paul is teaching us here that God has a sovereign, elective principle which he carries out on his own terms. Here are those terms again:
First, salvation is never based on natural advantages. Never! What you are by background or inheritance does not enter into whether you are going to be redeemed.
Second, salvation is always based on a promise from God. This is why we are exhorted in the Scriptures to believe God's promises. In some mysterious way, redemption includes our necessity to be confronted with those promises and to give a willing and voluntary submission to them. Paul brings this up later in the chapter when he discusses the harmony (as far as we can understand it) between the free will of men and the sovereign choice of God.
Third, salvation never takes any notice of whether we are good or bad. Never! In behavior these children in Rebecca's womb were neither good nor bad, yet God chose Jacob and passed over Esau. Since in God's sight all children are born into a lost race, what difference could moral or immoral behavior make? These terms represent only human appraisals of outward behavior.
Now I want to ask you something: How do you react to what we have covered so far? Does something in you want to say, "God, this is unfair! It isn't right!"? Then relax, because you are normal. Something in all of us, called the flesh, reacts this way. Later in Romans 9 Paul handles this further, and we will face the issue squarely and find out all we can about God's apparent unfairness. But in the meantime, let us reverently accept that God is greater than we are. He knows more than we, he knows what he is doing, and everything he does is consistent with his character and his love. Whether we understand it or not, this is where it will all come out.
(Romans 9:14-33)
There was a time when almost everyone believed the earth was flat. It was a comfortable theory to live with--safe, easy to understand. Believing it did not make it true, but it made life easier to handle and more predictable. So as scientists began to say the earth was really round, contrary to the way it looked to everyone's eyes, and that it was spinning on its axis and floating in a great sea of space, people grew very upset.
Religious people especially were disturbed, for many believed with all their heart that the Bible taught the earth was flat. In fact, they would quote certain passages that seemed to indicate this. It was a long time before people began to realize the new evidence actually made God appear more wonderful and more powerful than he ever had before. People also began to discover certain verses and passages, overlooked before, that supported this new evidence. They could see how this new truth fit the context of biblical revelation.
Our problem when we come to a passage like Romans 9 is that many of us have grown up thinking God is flat--rather safe, easy to understand and predict, fitting comfortably into the pattern we have made for him. With God crammed into our little theological boxes, we find ourselves secure.
We have already learned how easy it is to misread God's actions. As we look at history or contemporary events or at what the Bible itself records about God's actions, we easily think God intends to do what he actually does not. God operates in line with certain principles--his principles--three of which we have already seen in Romans 9. God does not grant salvation on the basis of natural privileges he has bestowed, nor does he redeem apart from his promise to do so, nor does he save anyone on the basis of human works.
The Right to Choose
So what is the basis on which God chooses? Paul's answer, which we take up now in the second half of Romans 9, is that God's choice is based upon his sovereign right to choose. God has a right to choose whom he will. This is the final resolution of the problem.
What then shall we say? Is God unjust? Not at all! For he says to Moses,
"I will have mercy on whom I have mercy,
and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion."
It does not, therefore, depend on man's desire or effort, but on God's mercy. For the Scripture says to Pharaoh: "I raised you up for this very purpose, that I might display my power in you and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth." Therefore God has mercy on whom he wants to have mercy, and he hardens whom he wants to harden (9:14-18).
You may not like it, but the ultimate reason for God's choice of anyone is simply that God chose him. He chooses whom he wants.
This is the thing about God men dislike the most. God is sovereign. He is neither responsible nor answerable to anyone. He is totally, absolutely sovereign. We don't like this, because to us sovereignty is always connected with tyranny. To trust anyone with this kind of power is to put ourselves in the hands of someone who might destroy us, and we instinctively fight it. We fight it in our national life, in our family life, and in our individual relationships. We do not trust anyone with absolute power over us. The Constitution of the United States is based on this concept that no one can be trusted with absolute power. We have checks and balances built into our government. We divide it into three parts, and pit one against the others so they all watch each other. We believe even the best of men can't be trusted with absolute power.
It is no wonder, therefore, that when we come to the Scriptures and confront a God with absolute power, we become uneasy and troubled. But if God had to give an answer to anyone, that being or person to whom God had to account would really be God. The very idea of God is that he is sovereign. He does what he pleases, what he wants to do. We must get rid of the idea that his sovereignty will destroy us. It will not, at all. As we will see before this is over, his sovereignty is our only hope!
Paul says here that God declares his own sovereignty. God said to Moses, "I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion." Moses was a great example of God's way of choosing someone to bless. Who was Moses that God should choose him? Moses was no one in himself. In fact, he was a murderer. On one occasion, in a fit of temper, he killed a man. Then instead of turning himself in for justice, he hid the body in the sand. He was a criminal and a fugitive from justice. For forty years he had been living in the desert, a nobody. No one had heard of him. But the Lord picked him up, made him his messenger, and gave him a name that became known throughout history. He set him in authority over the greatest kingdom the world at that time had ever seen, and used him in a remarkable way. Why? God chose to do so. He had the right to do it. Moses contributed nothing to his choice.
On the other hand, God also demonstrated his sovereignty with Pharaoh. He took a man no better than Moses (in fact, Scripture tells us God often places the basest of men in power; see Daniel 4:17) and put him on a throne and gave him authority over all of Egypt. When Moses confronted him, Pharaoh continued to resist God's will. God could have kept Pharaoh from resisting, but he didn't. He allowed him to do what all men do by nature--resist God. So Pharaoh held out against God in order, as this verse says, that God might demonstrate his power and attract the attention of men everywhere to his greatness.
That bothers us. We think anyone who boasts about his greatness, who tries constantly to get people to notice how great he is, is a conceited braggart. We don't like such people, largely because we are jealous of them. We want people to admire our greatness!
In our consistent tendency to think of God as nothing but an enlarged man, we attribute to him our own motives. When man seeks his own glory, he is destructive. To elevate himself he must necessarily put others down. But God--for the welfare and benefit of God's creatures--must demonstrate his greatness. The more they understand his goodness and greatness and glory, the richer their lives will be, and the more they will enjoy life. Jesus said, "This is eternal life, that they might know thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent" (John 17:3 KJV). So when God invites men to consider his glory and think about his greatness, it is not because God's ego needs to be massaged, but because his creatures require this for their best welfare. God therefore finds ways to do it, even using men to resist his will so his greatness and power are displayed.
All the Bitter Charges
Paul's conclusion, therefore, is that God has mercy on whom he wants to have mercy, and he hardens whom he wants to harden. Immediately someone objects. We all feel this objection, I am sure.
We object in the same words as verse 19:
One of you will say to me: "Then why does God still blame us? For who resists his will?"
In this brief statement are hidden all the accusations and bitter charges men bring against God: God is responsible for all human evil! God ultimately is to blame, not us! What does man do with the truth of God's sovereignty, this essential truth about God's nature? He uses it to blame God for all evil.
Verses 22-29 give us Paul's answer to this, and we will look at it in due time. But right now I want to examine this charge men bring against God. What it really says is, "All right, Paul. You say God uses men for whatever he wants to use them. Men cannot resist him. Pharaoh could not resist God's use of him. God used him to oppose what he sent Moses to do in Egypt. Pharaoh was merely an instrument in God's hands. So God uses men to do evil, then he turns around and blames them for the evil and punishes them for doing what he made them do! That's not just! That's not fair! God himself must agree it isn't fair to make someone do something and then punish him for doing it. That is offensive to the very sense of justice God himself gave us!"
Sounds logical, doesn't it? How do you answer logic like this?
Paul has four things to say in reply, and the first is found in verse 20. Basically he says, "All right, whoever you are: You are charging God with injustice. You say he is not fair. Let's examine your credentials. By this charge you have already condemned God. Do you, a man, have the right to condemn your Creator?"
Who are you, O man, to talk back to God?
"Shall what is formed say to him who formed it,
'Why did you make me like this?'"
Take a look, Paul says: Compare and consider the difference between man and God. Here is man, finite (his knowledge and understanding is limited) and frail. He has limited strength. He lasts only a little while--a breath of air and he is gone. The record shows us man is not only finite and frail, but also foolish, despite all his logic. He makes atrocious blunders, even when he thinks he is doing right.
With all his claims to logic and reason, he ends up making the most idiotic mistakes. Does this kind of man dare stand up against the God who is mighty and wise, absolute in power and majesty, infinite in knowledge, knowing all things from beginning to end--not only all things that are, but also all things that could be? This puny pipsqueak of a man dares to stand up and challenge the justice of a God like that?
Paul is saying even our logic is often wrong, because of mysteries we do not reckon on, objectives we cannot discern, resistance we know nothing about. So who are you, man, to stand and question the rightness of God?
It is a good argument, isn't it' Are we equipped to challenge God in this way?
Look Who's Asking!
Perhaps the most helpful book in the Bible on this score is Job. Job was not a cavalier; he was not a skeptic, an atheist arguing against God. He was a devout man who loved God deeply. Yet he was a deeply bewildered man who could not understand what God was doing with him. You know the story. Job was afflicted with a series of terrible boils and physical afflictions, and his family and all his wealth disappeared in a trip-hammer series of terrible catastrophes.
To top it all, he was afflicted by three torturers who called themselves his friends. Job's suffering, they told him, meant he somehow was a deep-dyed sinner, and all his pain was a result of refusing to let people know the terrible evil he must have done. They hounded poor Job, examining every crack and cranny of their argument, plumbing to its depths. Finally, in despair, Job cried out. He never once blamed God--this is the glory of the book--but just said, "Lord, I don't understand it! Oh, if I could just come and stand before you and plead my case, I could show you how unfair it seems to me!"
So in chapters 38 through 41, God appears to Job and says, "All right, Job, you wanted a chance to argue. You wanted to ask me questions. Here I am. But before you begin, I have questions for you, to see if you are qualified to investigate me. Here are my questions: Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth' Where were you when the morning stars sang together, and I flung the heavens into space? Were you there? Can you enter into the secrets of the sea? Do you understand how rain works, and how lightning appears? Do you understand these things, Job? They are simple to me--what about to you?"
Job has to hang his head
God goes on: "Look at the stars, Job. Can you order their courses? Can you make the Pleiades shine forth in the springtime? Can you make Orion stride across the winter sky, always on time? Can you handle the universe, Job?"
And Job says, "No, I'm sorry; I don't qualify."
God says, "All right, let me ask you more questions." And in a tremendous passage that is the real key to the book of Job, God uses the figures of Behemoth and Leviathan, two strange and formidable creatures, as he examines Job's qualifications to handle satanic power. "Can you handle Satan? Do you know how to control this fantastic dragon who can wreck a third of the universe with his tail? Are you able to take him on?"
Finally Job is on his face in the dust before God and says, "Lord God, I didn't know what I was getting into! I just meant to say a few things to you, but I am not in your league at all! I repent in sackcloth and ashes; I put my hand on my mouth. I have nothing to say to a God like you."
This is Paul's argument here in Romans 9: "Who are you, O man, to reply against God? You don't understand even a tiny fraction of the things to be known, so how can you argue with such a God?"
Delegated Sovereignty
Paul's second argument follows. Even among men, he says, we can see a rightful form of sovereignty in action.
Does not the potter have the right to make out of the same lump of clay some pottery for noble purposes and some for common use? (9:21).
Nobody questions this, do they? Doesn't a potter have the right to divide a lump of clay in two, and make out of one half a beautiful vase for the living room and out of the other a slop jar? Why, yes, he has this right. No one tells the potter what he should do with his clay. Men exercise sovereignty like this and nobody questions it at all.
At this point many people say, "But we're not clay! It's all right to do that with unfeeling clay, but human beings are not clay. We're people. We have feelings, sensitivities, and wills. Your analogy doesn't hold!" Well, you can extend the analogy to living things. What about the ways we treat plants and animals? Doesn't a gardener have the right to move plants around wherever he pleases? Just last week I tore out some good healthy plants and threw them away. Did I have the right to do this? Should my neighbors swear out a warrant for my arrest because I didn't first ask permission of the plants? Does a farmer have the right to select certain cattle he thinks are nice and fat and send them to slaughter, while he keeps others a while longer? Would we ever challenge him? No. Men have this kind of authority--a kind of delegated sovereignty. Therefore, can we deny it to the One who, in all the created universe, has this right above all else? This is Paul's argument. And it is hard to refute, isn't it?
"But," someone says, "it still doesn't solve this problem of justice. It seems unfair." Paul's third argument says, "Then let us consider two possible motives in God's actions":
What if God, choosing to show his wrath and make his power known, bore with great patience the objects of his wrath--prepared for destruction? What if he did this to make the riches of his glory known to the objects of his mercy, whom he prepared in advance for glory--even us, whom he also called, not only from the Jews but also from the Gentiles? As he says in Hosea:
"I will call them 'my people' who are not my people;
and I will call her 'my loved one' who is not my loved one, "
and,
"It will happen that in the very place
where it was said to them [the Gentiles],
'You are not my people,'
they will be called 'sons of the living God. '"
Isaiah cries out concerning Israel:
"Though the number of the Israelites be like the sand by the sea,
only the remnant will be saved.
For the Lord will carry out his sentence
on earth with speed and finality" (9:22-28).
Paul says God may have purposes and objectives we do not see. But doesn't he have the right to those purposes? What if one of those objectives is not only to display his power and his wrath by allowing man to oppose him until he ultimately judges them, but also to display his amazing patience and longsuffering? Did you ever think about that? Did you ever think how God for centuries and centuries has put up with the snarling, nasty, blasphemous, accusing remarks of men, and done nothing to them? He has listened to all the cheap, shoddy, vulgar things men say about him, and has allowed them to treat him with hostility and anger, never doing a thing, but patiently enduring it.
Paul says, "What if God does all this? What if it takes this kind of display of both the wrath of God and the patience of God to bring those of us whom he chooses to himself?" Something has to appear to us to make us understand God. We are not forced to come to him; we are drawn to him. Therefore we have to respond, and something must make us respond. Is it not the wrath of God (which reveals his power) and the patience of God (which reveals his love) that draw us to him?
All this, then, is necessary to bring some to glory. In other words, for some to be saved, some must be lost. I admit this is an inscrutable mystery, one I don't understand. But I don't have to. That's the whole thing. I cannot understand it right now. Someday God will reveal certain other factors to help us understand it, but he doesn't now--not because he does not want to, but because I can't handle it and neither can you. We have to accept it nevertheless. Paul suggests here that without the display of wrath on God's part, no Gentiles would have ever been saved--only the elect of Israel, and only a remnant of them. But as it is, the Gentiles, those of us who never had the advantages Israel had, are included, as Hosea and Isaiah both predicted.
The final and clinching argument, the fourth one, is found in verse 29:
It is just as Isaiah said previously:
"Unless the Lord Almighty
had left us descendants,
we would have become like Sodom,
and we would have been like Gomorrah. "
I doubt any place on earth is more desolate than the sites of Sodom and Gomorrah--just dreary, dry desert beside a briny sea in which nothing will live and around which nothing will grow. Paul argues that if God had not chosen to draw us to himself by an elective decree--something that makes men wake up and stop resisting him and start listening to him--none of us would ever be saved.
Born Lost
Clearly, we start thinking on this problem from the wrong premise. We start by thinking that everyone is in neutral, and unless he has an opportunity to be saved, he remains in neutral until it is too late for him to have a chance. But that isn't it at all! The truth is, we were all born lost. We are already lost; we were lost in Adam. Adam lost the race, not we; but we are victims of his sin. None of us has a chance to do anything but resist God. Paul said in chapter 3, "There is none who does good, no, not one! There is none who seeks after God, not one!" God does not shut us away without a chance. His grace reaches out to us. Without it, no one at all would ever be saved. The whole race would be lost. God's justice would allow the race to be lost, but God's mercy reaches out to save many among us. That properly is his sovereign choice, and that is where we must leave it.
The passage closes with a remarkable paragraph. At this point people ask, "How can we tell whether someone is chosen or not? If you can't tell by the advantages they have, how can you tell''' Here is the answer:
What then shall we say? That the Gentiles, who did not pursue righteousness, have obtained it, a righteousness that is by faith; but Israel, who pursued a law of righteousness, has not attained it. Why not? Because they pursued it not by faith but as if it were by works. They stumbled over the "stumbling stone," As it is written:
"See, I lay in Zion a stone that causes men to stumble and a rock that makes them fall, and the one who trusts in him will never be put to shame" (9:30-33).
God says you can tell whether you are being drawn by the Spirit unto salvation or whether you are being permitted by God to remain where you already were, lost and condemned: You can tell it by what you do with Jesus.
God has planted a stone in the middle of society's path. When we walk down that path and come to this big flat rock in the middle of it, we can either stumble over it or stand on it--one or the other. God says Jesus is that rock.
The Jews, who determined to work out their salvation on the basis of their own behavior, their own good works before God, stumbled over the stone. This is why the Jews rejected Jesus, and why many of them reject him to this day. They don't want to admit they are unable to save themselves, and need a Savior. But those who see they need a Savior have already been drawn by the Spirit of God, awakened by his grace, and made to understand what is going on in their lives. Their very desire to be saved, their awareness of their need for a Savior, causes them to accept Jesus. They stand upon that stone. Anyone who comes on this basis will never be put to shame.
This, God says, is the testing point. The crisis of humanity is Jesus. You can be very religious, you can spend hours and days or an entire lifetime following religious pursuits and apparently honoring God. But the test will always come: What do you do with Jesus? God put him in society to reveal those whom he has called and those whom he has not. Jesus taught this very plainly: "No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him. . . . All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never drive away" (John 6:44,37).
So what is left for us? To respond to Jesus, that is all. And to thank God that in doing so, we are not only doing what our hearts and consciences urge us to do, but we are responding in obedience to the drawing of the electing Spirit of God, who in mercy has chosen to bring us out of a lost humanity.
(Romans 10:1-13)
Brothers, my heart's desire and prayer to God for the Israelites is that they may be saved ( 10: 1).
I doubt any word in the Christian vocabulary makes people more uncomfortable than the word saved. People cringe when they hear it. Perhaps it conjures up visions of hot-eyed, zealous buttonholers--usually with bad breath--who walk up and grab you and say, "Brother, are you saved?" Or perhaps it raises visions of a tiny band of Christians at a street meeting in front of some saloon singing, "Give the winds a mighty voice, Jesus saves! Jesus saves! "
I will never forget the startled look on the face of a man who came up to me in a movie theater. The seat beside me was vacant, and he said, "Is this seat saved?" I said, "No, but I am." He promptly found a seat across the aisle. Somehow this word threatens our religious complacency and angers the self-confident and the self-righteous alike.
And yet, when you turn to the Scriptures this word is absolutely unavoidable. Christians have to talk about men and women being saved because the fact is that men and women are lost. There is no escaping it: The Bible teaches that the human race is a lost race. This is why John 3: 16 is good news: "God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish"--not perish--"but have eternal life." We can never deal realistically with life until we face up to this fundamental fact. People are not in the process of waiting until they die to be lost--they are already lost. The grace of God reaches down and calls us out of that lost ness and gives us an opportunity to come to Christ and be saved. Therefore "saved" is a perfectly legitimate word.
Paul is explaining why some who have little knowledge are saved while many who have much knowledge are not. Part of his answer was given in the ninth chapter, in which he explained that behind this strange mystery is the elective, sovereign choice of God. God chooses to call men to him--but not all men. Now he turns to the other side. Now we are confronted with human responsibility. It is true God draws men to him; it is also true no one will come unless he voluntarily responds to the appeal of God.
As we have seen, human knowledge is too limited to resolve this apparent conflict. But both sides are true. God calls men by an elective decree that is irresistible, and yet they must respond by a choice of their will, which they are free to make or not, as it pleases them. Let's see how Paul introduces this other side of the picture and brings before us Israel's responsibility:
Brothers, my heart's desire and prayer to God for the Israelites is that they may be saved. For I can testify about them that they are zealous for God, but their zeal is not based on knowledge. Since they did not know the righteousness that comes from God and sought to establish their own, they did not submit to God's righteousness (10:1-3).
Called through Our Prayers
Probably the most outstanding thing about this paragraph is this: Despite Paul's profound conviction that God saves whomever he will by an irresistible choice, nevertheless this does not stop Paul from praying and yearning over his kinsmen according to the flesh, the nation of Israel. Clearly, prayer is not inconsistent with God's call. It is never right for us to say, "If God calls, there is nothing for us to do," because the way God calls is through the preaching of the Word and the praying of Christians, the yearning of their hearts over those who are not yet saved. Therefore, this is all part of God's program, and we need to see the importance such prayer has in reaching people. Paul prayed for men. In 1 Timothy 2:1-8 he writes,
I urge, then, first of all, that requests, prayers, intercession and thanksgiving be made for everyone--for kings and all those in authority, that we may live peaceful and quiet lives in all godliness and holiness. This is good, and pleases God our Savior, who wants all men to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth. . . . I want men everywhere to lift up holy hands in prayer, without anger or disputing.
Prayer is a great factor in this call, as C. S. Lewis has pointed out:
When we are praying about the result, say, of a battle or a medical consultation, the thought will often cross our minds that, if we only knew it, the event is already decided one way or the other. I believe this to be no reason for ceasing our prayers. The event certainly has been decided. In a sense, it was decided before all the worlds. But one of the things taken into account in deciding it, and therefore one of the things that really causes it to happen, may be this very prayer that we are now offering. . . . Thus, shocking as it may sound, I conclude that we can at noon become part causes of an event occurring at ten o'clock.
Even our prayers after an event affect the event. This is strange to us, but I think it is true. We are up against a great mystery in the matter of prayer. Lewis adds:
There is no question whether an event has happened because of your prayer. When the event you prayed for occurs, your prayer has always contributed to it. When the opposite event occurs, your prayer has never been ignored; it has been considered and refused for your ultimate good and the good of the whole universe.
These are deep matters, bur at least it is clear Paul does not hesitate to pray, though he knows God chooses whom he will.
The second emphasis Paul makes in this paragraph is Israel's zeal. "I can testify about them that they are zealous for God." And indeed they are. Perhaps the most noteworthy difference between an orthodox Jew and the average Gentile is right there. Jews take God seriously. Any of you who have seen Fiddler on the Roof or read the writings of Chain Potok know how true this is. The Jewish way of life is built around God. God is the most important element in their thinking. They sacrifice anything and everything to the centrality of God in their national and community life.
This is in stark contrast to the average Gentile. Gentiles have religious feelings--all men do. Gentiles think of God, but God is on the periphery of Gentile life. I think we Gentiles often demonstrate this. We are more casual about God. He is not the center of life, as he is in Jewish thought and action.
Yet what amazes Paul, and amazes us today, is that the casual Gentile, who is not necessarily looking for God, nevertheless often finds him. He discovers God suddenly intruding into his life when he didn't expect him. He finds peace and rest and joy even when he isn't looking for them. But the Jew, with all his zeal, with his consummate desire to discover and to know God, fails to find peace and forgiveness and is not reborn into joy and love.
To Establish Their Own
Paul tells us why this is so: The Jews sought to establish their own righteousness, and therefore missed the gift of God, which is the righteousness of Christ, obtained without works. Anyone, Jew or Gentile, who seeks to establish his own righteousness, will be in the same boat. The Jews were constantly trying their best to obey the law of Moses. They were failing to do so, of course, but they were not willing to admit they failed. They kept hoping and seeking and believing God would accept them, though they did not truly obey the law.
Many people are like this today, both Jew and Gentile. In fact, to show you how Jews still think this way, I will quote from a letter sent by a rabbi to a boy I know, a boy with a Jewish background. The rabbi wrote because he was troubled about the boy's faith in Christ.
The basic question about religion is how to elevate man, and bring him into closer relationship with God. We believe that God revealed to us in the Torah [the law of Moses] how he wants us to live, so that we can be in harmony with his divine purpose. Our role and religious purpose is to obey God's laws--to love him and to obey him. We exercise our free will by proper intention and, through having done the good deeds, are elevated so that it becomes progressively easier and more natural to continue to do good and to resist evil.
This is the current Jewish view of how to be right before God--simply keep trying until it becomes easier and easier, and finally you stand righteous before God. Paul says this is the problem; anyone who seeks to come before God on this basis is doomed to failure. Such persons do not and cannot obey the law. Paul goes on to show us why they can't, and reveals to us that the issue is always Jesus.
Christ is the end of the law so that there may be righteousness for everyone who believes ( 10: 4).
Christ is the end of the law--any kind of law--so that there may be righteousness for everyone who believes. Of course this does not mean Christ does away with law. He does away with law as far as its effect in bringing you to God is concerned. He makes a total end of it. And as we have seen in this letter, the reason is clear. What was the purpose of law? To make us aware something is wrong with us! If you don't have a standard to try to live up to, you have no idea anything is wrong with you. You think everything you do is natural, and therefore right. We hear this argument all the time: Anything natural is right. This is because more and more today the law is being set aside.
The law was given to make us realize there are things that feel natural that are wrong. These things are destroying us. All the injury and death and darkness in our lives come because of our actions and attitudes. We produce the problem. We think it comes from everyone else, but the law helps us see we are wrong. But once it has shown us, then what good is it? It can do no more.
At this point, unless we come to Christ, we have no way out. The law cannot cure our evil; it can only show it to us. The law becomes our schoolmaster to bring us to Christ, as Paul puts it in Galatians 3:24. This is the end of the law; this is its purpose. It has been fulfilled when it does this work and brings you to Jesus Christ. He can change you. He can give you new life. He can wipe out the old pattern of failures and all the hurt and agony and anguish you have been going through, and give you a wholly new heart. Therefore Christ is the end of law, that there may be righteousness to everyone who believes in him.
In his logical way, Paul is careful to show us how this works. He quotes Moses to prove what the law is for:
Moses describes in this way the righteousness that is by the law: "The man who does these things [fulfills the law] will live by them" (10:5).
Moses said in Exodus and Leviticus: "Here is the law, the Ten Commandments. Anybody who does these things will live. God will bless him, fulfill his humanity, make him enjoy all that God had for man in the beginning. It will all come if a man will simply obey these ten rules." You know, when you read the Ten Commandments, they always seem so reasonable, they seem so easy to obey. This is the way people have always reacted to them. You say to yourself, "Why, this is not difficult. I can easily do these. All I have to do is just decide to do it, that's all!" But when you actually start to do it, you soon discover a rebelliousness inside that sooner or later stops you from doing what you want to do.
We have seen this all through Romans. So it ends up that the law was given to make people try to live this way. Paul said he who did these things would live.
The Gospel According to Moses
Now Paul goes on to quote Moses again. He doesn't say Moses said the next part, but he did, in the book of Deuteronomy. Paul sets the faith way to God right next to the law way:
But the righteousness that is by faith says: "Do not say in your heart, 'Who will ascend into heaven?'" (that is, to bring Christ down), "or 'Who will descend into the deep?'" (that is, to bring Christ up from the dead). But what does it say? "The word is near you; it is in your mouth and in your heart," that is, the word of faith we are proclaiming (10:6-8).
It may startle you to realize Paul is saying Moses taught salvation by grace through faith, just as Paul did. Moses knew the law would not work. Even as he was bringing the tablets down from the mountaintop the people had broken all ten of the commandments before the law was given to them. And after they received them they promptly broke them again.
Moses knew the people could not keep them, but Moses also taught that God had provided another way by which people could be delivered when they failed. He saw that God would lay the foundation for salvation in the incarnation, crucifixion, and resurrection of Jesus. This is why Paul quotes these words from Deuteronomy. Moses foresaw the coming of Christ from heaven, and he saw the resurrection, the raising of Jesus from the dead. Paul clearly indicates God all along had this basis in mind as the way people were to come to Christ.
When the angels sang their song to some shepherds in the darkness of the night on the plains of Bethlehem, and the glory of the Lord broke out upon them in the fields, the angel of the Lord said to them, "Behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people; for unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord" (Luke 2:10, 11). This was the historic fulfillment of the way God had been saving people for centuries before this. Now it is being worked out in history--but God had long before been saving people who saw beyond the law to the work of Christ.
When the angels, in the brightness of the Easter sunrise, said to the woman at the tomb of Jesus, "Go and tell his disciples that he is risen, as he said, "this was the culmination of God's program to work out human redemption quite apart from any effort on man's part. Jesus had done it all. So Paul points out here that Moses understood the way to lay hold of and to personally appropriate the value of these incredible events: to believe the divine announcement with the whole man, with the whole being. Thus he adds,
But what does it say? "The word is near you; it is in your mouth and in your heart," that is, the word of faith we are proclaiming (10:8).
The mouth symbolizes the outward man, the intellectual understanding of what has happened expressed in words; the heart is the inner man, the will, the spirit deep within us which understands the basis on which God saves. Lest anyone miss his point, Paul goes on with these clear words:
If you confess with your mouth, "Jesus is Lord," and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you confess and are saved (10:9-10).
This is the clearest statement in God's Word on how to be saved. Paul makes it simple. He says it begins with the confession of the mouth that "Jesus is Lord."
Right to Lordship
Paul does not mean you have to stand up in public somewhere and announce your belief that Jesus is Lord before you are saved, although what he says does not exclude that. He views the mouth as the symbol of a conscious acknowledgment to ourselves of what we believe. It means we have come to the place where we recognize Jesus has the right to lordship in our lives. Up to this point we have been lord of our lives. We have run our own affairs, feeling we have the right to make our own decisions according to what we want. But in time, as God's Spirit works in us and we see the reality of life as God has made it, we realize Jesus is Lord. He is Lord of our past, forgiving us our sins; he is Lord of our present, dwelling within us and guiding, directing, and controlling every area of our life; he is Lord of our future, leading us into glory at last. Christ is Lord of life, Lord of death, Lord over all.
As Jesus himself said after his resurrection, "All power is given unto me, in heaven and on earth"--all power. Jesus is in control of history; he is running all human events. He stands at the end of every path on which men go, and he is the ultimate One we all must reckon with. This is why Peter says in Acts 4: 12, "Salvation is found in no one else; for there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved." You cannot read the book of Acts without recognizing that the basic creed of the early Christians was "Jesus is Lord."
These days one hears much about mantras, words one is supposed to repeat when meditating. But mantras have a dulling effect; they are more likely to fog your mind than they are to sharpen your wits. I suggest rather that we adopt a truly significant phrase to ponder: Jesus is Lord. Wherever you are, say it again and again, to remind yourself of this great truth. When Peter stood up to speak on the day of Pentecost, this was his theme--"Jesus is Lord." The thousands of Jews listening to him could not deny what he pointed out: Jesus had lived a unique life, was witnessed to by the prophets before him, died a remarkable death, was raised from the dead in an astonishing way, then poured out supernatural signs from heaven--evidences they could not deny. They had to recognize the fact above all facts, whether they liked it or not: Jesus is Lord. The great question of all time is therefore, "What are you going to do with Jesus?"
Paul tells us Jesus is Lord, and if you have believed in your heart that he is risen and available and you are ready to say to yourself, "Jesus is my Lord," then God acts. At this moment God does something. No man can do it, but God can. He begins to bring about all that is wrapped up in this word "saved." Your sins will be forgiven; God imparts to you a standing of righteous worth in his sight; he loves you; he gives you the Holy Spirit to live within you; he makes you a son in his family; he gives you an inheritance for eternity; you are joined to the body of Christ as
members of the family of God; you are given Jesus himself to live within you, to be your power over evil, over the world, the flesh, and the devil; and you will live in an entirely different way than before. This is what happens when you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead.
He Becomes Savior
Nowhere in all the Scriptures are we ever asked to believe in Jesus as Savior; we are asked to believe in him as Lord. When you believe in him as Lord, he becomes your Savior. But you don't accept Christ as a Savior--you accept him as Lord, as the one in charge of all things, including you. When you can respond with the whole man, then God says the work of redemption is done. The miracle occurs.
"Well," someone says, "what if I'm not elect? What if all the time I've been wanting God and seeking God, and then it turns out I'm not chosen?" Anyone who talks this way (and people do talk this way) shows he has never understood what Paul is saying here. For if you believe in Christ you have given proof that you are elect. As Jesus himself put it, "No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him." You can't believe in God until God has called you and drawn you. The very desire to believe is part of that drawing, therefore we needn't struggle over this apparent conflict.
What Scripture everywhere confronts us with is the necessity for everyone to settle the question, "Is Jesus Lord of my life?" Is he your Lord? Have you enthroned him and acknowledged him where God has placed him, as King over all the earth, the Lord of glory, the one who is in charge of all things? When you do, this is the moment redemption begins to occur. Notice how Paul confirms this, first quoting Isaiah:
As the Scripture says, "Everyone who trusts in him will never be put to shame."
It is not on the basis of works, but of belief: He who accepts what Christ does, who believes on him, will not be put to shame. Paul goes on:
For there is no difference between Jew and Gentile!--the Same Lord is Lord of all and richly blesses all who call on him, for, "Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved" [words from the
prophet Joel] (10:12-13).
These verses indicate this is not something new with Paul, but something taught by all the Scriptures, Old and New Testaments alike: Faith is the way we lay hold of what God has to give us. It is never gained by earning it or by trying to be good, or by our good outweighing our bad, but simply by acknowledging that Jesus Christ has done it all on our behalf, and by opening our hearts to his lordly control.
John 1:11-12 tells us, "He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God." So if you have asked him to come into your heart and received him as Lord, and you mean to allow him to be the controlling center of your life, I can tell you on the authority of the Word of God: You have been saved!
(Romans 10:14-21)
This section of Romans 10 answers one of the questions non-Christians ask most frequently, in various forms: "What happens to all the people who never hear about Jesus?" The question especially concerns them when they hear Christians claiming that Jesus is the only way to God.
In the first part of the chapter, the apostle declared that to be salvaged from the wreck of humanity, a man or woman must call upon the name of the Lord. But how do you call on the name of the Lord? Paul goes on in verse 14 to outline the steps that lie behind this essential to salvation.
How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them? And how can they preach unless they are sent? As it is written, "How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!" (10:14-15).
Five steps are outlined here in calling on the name of the Lord. Paul begins with the final step, the call itself. He traces it back so we can see what is involved in bringing people to the place where they cry out to God and are saved, born again, made alive in Jesus Christ.
To begin, Paul stresses that each person individually must call on God. "Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. " The conviction and call must be individual and personal. It is not enough to sit under the preaching of the gospel. Some think if they go to church regularly and hear the gospel they will be saved. No, a time must come when one calls personally on the name of the Lord.
Beyond Emotions
Before the call is belief. Paul says, "How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in?" There must be belief. This means the mind must be engaged--the intellect is called into play. This is important because many people are stirred emotionally, but understand little about what God has done. They have nothing to believe in; they are simply stirred up to want something.
Years ago a great English-born evangelist named Gypsy Smith used to preach up and down this country. I remember Dr. H. A. Ironsides saying Gypsy Smith once came to Moody Church in Chicago and in a series of meetings told about his boyhood conversion and his gypsy background. The people would sit entranced with the wonderful stories he told. At the end of the meeting he would give an altar call, and people would surge forward in great numbers. Dr. Ironsides said he used to wonder why they were coming. Did they want to be gypsies, or what? They had really been given nothing in which to believe. I well recall Dr. Lewis Sperry Chafer, my great teacher at Dallas Seminary, saying to us in class, "Men, remember, you have never preached the gospel until you have given people something to believe, something God has done that their minds can grasp, something leading them to understand what God has offered to them: their salvation."
Before belief, Paul says, is the message--something heard. "How can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard?" Something must be preached. Some message must be given. Again, this is an important aspect of Christian faith. We hear of new isms, new cults springing up on every side, dominating the religious field. Often they make their appeal to some mystical feeling or philosophy, some idea men have of what might bring them to God. But the glory of Christianity is that its message is grounded in history. It is objective truth, not merely something you feel inside of you. It is not some emotion you follow, hoping life somehow will work out; it is the story of historic events.
One of these events is the coming of Jesus as a baby in the manger at Bethlehem, followed by the arrival of the wise men from the east, causing an uproar in Judea, beginning with Herod the king himself. It is all part of history. Then came the crucifixion and the resurrection and all that followed in the church. These are all historic events--objectively true. The Christian faith is grounded in events that cannot be explained away. This is the message we declare.
Human Messengers
Before the message, of course, is the messenger. "How can they hear without someone preaching to them?" A messenger must speak forth the message. God has always used some object or person to convey truth, and this method will never be superseded. All the marvelous communication media we have today are ways of conveying the preaching of the Word of God. You can preach today on television, on radio, by cassette tapes, and by video tapes. You can have the message flung to satellites and back to the four corners of the earth. But in every event, someone must deliver the message. God has chosen preaching as his means of conveying this great truth to every generation.
This is why distribution of the written Scriptures alone will never be sufficient to win men. I do not demean this ministry, because translating and spreading the Scriptures over the earth are important. But they are only supplementary to preaching. Alone they will never reach and change nations as does the gospel proclaimed by a human messenger. God has sent men everywhere to preach this Word and to proclaim the truth.
But before the messenger is the sender. "How can they preach unless they are sent?" There need be no doubt as to the One who does the sending. Jesus himself said, "Pray the Lord of the harvest, that he may send forth laborers." It is God who sends men. The great initiative in the process of redeeming men and women, of healing them and restoring them, comes from the heart of God. He calls out men and women and sends them to the far reaches of the earth.
Paul has surely brought all this before us so we might understand what a wonderful and beautiful thing God has done. This is why Paul quotes Isaiah here; "How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!" What a welcome and beautiful thing it is to think of God sending out men and women all over the earth with this message. How marvelous it is when this message takes root in the human heart! We never forget the ones who bring it to us. "How beautiful are the feet. . . ." Feet are not usually the most beautiful part of the body, but even they become beautiful when the gospel message is conveyed and God delivers, frees, and makes us whole.
Calling on the name of the Lord is like turning on a light switch. You flip the switch on the wall and the lights go on. It seems to be such a simple thing. Yet behind it is a complicated process: the power stations, the transmission towers, the substations, the dam built to hold back the water, the poles on which the wires are strung. A tremendous complexity lies behind the simple act of turning on a light switch. Every time you do it, power surges forth--but it comes only because of a complicated process already in existence.
Every time an individual comes to the place where in quietness he calls out to the Lord, a tremendous process is behind it; the birth of Jesus at Bethlehem, the darkness, anguish, and mystery of the cross, the wonder and miracle of the resurrection, the sending forth of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost--all this is the process behind a single individual's call upon the name of the Lord. God is behind it all and has arranged it. The apostle wants us to understand this marvelous activity of the sovereign God.
Puzzle of Unbelief
But what if all this is provided, but still men do not respond? This is the problem Paul faces here in regard to Israel:
But not all the Israelites accepted the good news. For Isaiah says, "Lord, who has believed our message?" Consequently, faith comes from hearing the message, and the message is heard through the word of Christ (10:16-17).
People often react strangely when they hear this message. It is what we might call the puzzle of unbelief. It is strange how some seem suspicious, so self-dependent that even when good news comes they don't want to receive it. Those who tell the good news run into this reaction all the time.
A young friend living in Fresno, California, once told me the story of his conversion. He was a man of considerable wealth, and he tried to reach his friends for Christ after he himself became a Christian. With tremendous enthusiasm he told them what had happened to him and how the Lord had changed his life and saved his marriage. But he found for the most part that his words fell on deaf ears. His wealthy friends patted him on the back and went their way.
Finally he decided on a rather strange and remarkable demonstration--both for his sake and the sake of his friends. He sat down and wrote out a check for a million dollars (and he was good for it, too!). Then he took his check around to his friends and said, "1 have always regarded you highly as a friend. I have always wanted to do something for you. Would you receive this check as a gift from me?" When they saw the amount of the check, they would hand it back and say, "I can't take that from you." He tried to give the check out to a dozen or more of his friends and no one would take it, although it was a valid offer. Finally he faced the fact that something deeply embedded in human nature does not want to receive good news, does not want to be helped too much, does not want to be the recipient of great riches without having had some part in it.
The prophet Isaiah discovered this when he came to the people of Israel at a time when they were surrounded by enemies. They had turned to worship idols. Degrading practices had come into the nation's life, and peace and joy had fled from the land. In those dark days, 725 years before Christ was born, Isaiah came and preached to this people good news about One who was coming. He declared that on the basis of this person's life and death, God would work out their salvation. But he had to confess, as Paul writes here, that they would not believe his message.
The great and luminous fifty-third chapter of Isaiah begins with these words;
Who has believed our message
and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?
He grew up before him like a tender shoot,
and like a root out of dry ground.
He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him,
nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.
He was despised and rejected by men,
a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering.
Like one from whom men hide their faces
he was despised, and we esteemed him not.
Surely he took up our infirmities
and carried our sorrows,
yet we considered him stricken by God,
smitten by him, and afflicted.
But he was pierced for our transgressions,
he was crushed for our iniquities;
the punishment that brought us peace was upon him,
and by his wounds we are healed.
We all, like sheep, have gone astray,
each of us has turned to his own way;
and the Lord has laid on him
the iniquity of us all.
Yet when Isaiah's stricken Sufferer came to the nation of Israel, it said no to him and refused the tremendous revelation of Isaiah the prophet--at least, most of the Israelites did.
Now Paul isolates the problem for us in verse 17 of Romans 10; "Consequently faith comes from hearing the message, and the message is heard through the word of Christ." This is a more accurate translation than the King James Version, which says, "and hearing comes by the word of God." It is really the word of Christ. Paul says faith is aroused by hearing. If you hear a message, you either must believe it or disbelieve it. Your faith is aroused by the message. But if it is to be saving faith, it must be a word about Christ. All Scripture is about Christ. As Jesus himself said, "You search the Scriptures. . . and they bear testimony to me."
Once again, Paul sets Jesus at the center of the universe. He is the great issue of life. Even in ancient Israel, hearing the news about Jesus precipitated "the puzzle of unbelief." People refused it, and the word "refused" brings the whole project of God's attempt to reach men to a point of failure.
Two Views of Messiah
Earlier we saw a section from a letter written by a rabbi to a boy of Jewish background who is now a Christian. In his letter the rabbi also explained the difference he saw between what Jews and Christians believe about the Messiah. Perhaps you would be interested in his words:
The Messiah question is central to Christianity. This is the hub around which their whole theology rotates . To make this your major concern is to play their game. We have a belief in a messiah, but this is not too rigidly defined, nor of central concern. According to our belief, the messiah is a man, descended from the house of David, since God had promised not to replace the line of David with another, who will defeat the enemies of the Jews, restore the people to the land of Israel, rebuild the temple in Jerusalem, and reign there and introduce an era of peace. The advent of the messiah has to do with God's plan for actualizing his plans in the world.
This is the usual Jewish position regarding the Messiah. He was to be a man, not divine; he was to come into history only to deliver the Jews from their oppressors, in fulfillment of the promises to Israel of leadership among the nations. But they ignore passages such as Isaiah 53 and others that speak of the suffering of the Messiah. The rabbi goes on,
The situation is quite different for the Christian. He believes that nothing that men do can help. Man necessarily exists in a state of sin. Ethical living, obedience to God, goodness, all are of no avail. The only way that a man can get out of a state of damnation is to believe that Jesus is his Savior or Messiah. Thus the whole purpose of religion is for man to be in Jesus i.e., to accept this belief in Jesus as his Savior.
This betrays a considerable degree of understanding of the Christian position and of the gospel. The thoroughness of his understanding shows in his further words:
The Law (to a Christian) is not only ineffective, but unnecessary, because once one has accepted Jesus, one of the by-products is that he is essentially good and needs no direction from the Law. From this point of view, one of the most basic and almost exclusive concerns of religion is the Messiah. Don't be shifted to that question without realizing the difference in import and meaning that places messiah, as used by a Jew, and Messiah, as used by a Christian, worlds apart.
This is the position Jews still take today regarding Christ. Paul says it was the issue in his day as well. The word he preached was the word of Christ which had power to awaken faith in one who received it.
Nature's Witness
But someone may say, "The Jews never really heard the gospel. Perhaps the problem is that it never reached them." This brings up the question about those who never hear. Paul takes this up at verse 18:
But I ask, Did they not hear? Of course they did:
"Their voice has gone out into all the earth,
their words to the ends of the world. "
Psalm 19, from which Paul quotes here, details nature's witness to God. It begins,
The heavens declare the glory of God,
the skies proclaim the work of his hands.
Day after day they pour forth speech,
night after night they display knowledge.
There is no speech or language
where their voice is not heard.
Their voice goes out into all the earth,
their words to the ends of the world.
The gospel already has been universally proclaimed through nature. This is not much light about God, but it is light. Paul mentioned this witness in the first chapter of Romans:
What may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities--his eternal power and divine nature--have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse ( 1:19-20).
Here is the answer to the question, "What about those who have never heard about God?" There aren't any people who have never heard about God! Men and women everywhere know something about him. He is revealed in nature. A universal proclamation has gone out. And if it is observed, if it is noticed and followed, more light will be given. Thus Hebrews 11, the great faith chapter, gives us the simplest declaration of how men come to God:
Anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him (Hebrews 11:6).
First, there must be belief, or faith in God's existence. Then one must believe God rewards men who diligently seek him. All men everywhere are responsible to seek the God who is revealed in nature. They may have no more light than this, but if they are obedient to it, it's enough to bring them (through gradually increasing light) to the knowledge of Christ. God will see to it that they have further light. Israel had this proclamation. No matter how low they sank in their understanding, no matter how dark the land became, they at least had a universal proclamation of truth that could have brought them back to God.
But the revelation of God has another stage. God in his grace often gives more light even when people refuse the light of nature. No one deserves more light, but God gives it nevertheless. I think people in the United Stares of America above all peoples ought to be grateful for the grace God has poured out on us when we did not deserve it. God has given us much light. But we must remember that more light does not necessarily mean more belief. To make the light brighter does not mean people will believe more than when it was dim. Unbelief can reject bright light as well as dim light, so more light does not necessarily mean more belief. Thus the United States, with this great and shining light pouring so brilliantly upon it, is still a nation filled with unbelievers as was Israel of old.
Beyond the revelation of God in nature, God sends messengers:
Again I ask, did Israel not understand? First, Moses says,
"I will make you envious of those
who are not a nation;
I will make you angry by a nation that
has no understanding. "
Then Isaiah boldly says,
"I was found by those who did not seek me;
I revealed myself to those who did not ask for me" ( 10: 19-20).
God sent the prophets to Israel. He sent Moses and Samuel, Elijah and Elisha, Isaiah and Jeremiah, and all the other prophets of the Old Testament. Through many years and centuries he sent them to this people. He did it to arouse them to jealousy, for although Israel often rejected the prophets, the Gentiles would often believe, as in the cases of Rehab and Naaman. This would be true more fully in the day when Gentile nations would turn to God in large numbers while the Jews remained hardened.
This, of course, is exactly what has happened. Paul singles out what God uses to arouse belief, even when people tend to reject truth--jealousy. I was watching my grandson play with his cousins one day. He was playing with a certain toy until he became tired of it and threw it away. One of his cousins picked it up and started playing with it, and immediately my grandson ran over and grabbed the toy away. "No, that's mine!" he said. He wanted to play with it only because he was made jealous by someone else having it.
Certainly God fully understands this principle of fallen human nature. He sometimes uses it to make people wake up. This is why God may open the eyes of one member of a family to receive spiritual insight. He does it to make the others jealous so they will listen to him. God will pour out blessings upon one nation to make other nations jealous. "What is the secret of your blessing?" they will ask. Thus they are awakened to the witness about God.
If you understand these things you will read your newspaper differently than you ordinarily do. What is God doing in the great human conflicts of our day? We may see them simply as encounters between warring factions, but God uses these events to arouse people to jealousy.
Paul gives two instances of this. First he points out what Moses said: God would use a people far less intelligent than the Jews. One of the striking things about Jewish history is their brilliance. It would be impossible to list all the Jewish leaders in science, philosophy, literature, art, and music. They dominate these fields. More than twelve percent of the Nobel Prize winners have been Jewish. And yet these brilliant people are often brought into contact with even untaught savages from the jungles who have found God, become Christians, been delivered from evil, and been blessed with hope, peace, and even prosperity. God is doing this to arouse and awaken his people.
Then, Paul declares, Isaiah came along. Not only will God use those who are less intelligent, he says, but God will use people who are less motivated: "I was found by those who did not seek me; I revealed myself to those who did not ask for me." Another characteristic of the Jew has been his zeal for God, as Paul has already pointed out. And yet careless Gentiles, who do not often think about God, learn through Christ to revel in the grace, love, and blessing of the living God. This is all to arouse Jews to jealousy. God uses this principle with Gentiles too. This explains why people watch Christians. A blessing is visible that non-Christians can't understand. God is using it to awaken them to listen, that they might be saved, to turn and settle the issue of salvation at the feet of Jesus.
A Four- Thousand-Year Day
A final stage of divine pursuit is described in verse 21:
But concerning Israel he says,
"All day long I have held out my hands to a disobedient and obstinate people."
What a beautiful picture of God's character. Here is declared his remarkable patience--"all day long"! That day has stretched now for almost four thousand years. Four thousand years ago Abraham set out for Canaan. Four thousand years later, God is still holding out his hands to this stubborn people, longing to draw them to himself.
He is not only patient, but loving. He holds out his hands! This is the stance of God toward those who resist his will--with wide open arms, all day long, he waits to draw them back.
Remember that Jesus said to the Pharisees of his day , "You will not come unto me that you may have life." Looking over Jerusalem, he wept as he saw the stubbornness and pride of people who will not admit their need. This has been repeated again and again throughout the world. God longs to draw men to himself. He must somehow arouse faith in the individual. To do so he sends messengers with a glorious message, and yet his will and purpose meet resistance.
Romans 10 closes with this picture of God standing with open arms, longing to draw men to himself, stating that the problem is a disobedient and obstinate people. The most amazing thing from this account is to realize that in order to perish, to go to hell, you must resist the pleas of a loving God. God never damns anyone to hell without a chance, and don't let anyone tell you the Bible teaches that he does. The Bible does not teach any such thing.
Rather, it teaches us that no one--not one person--will end up separated from God who has not personally resisted the claim and appeal of the loving God who sought to reach him. Hell is arrived at only after long years of rejecting truth and turning one's back to the light.
(Romans 11:1-24)
The eleventh chapter of Romans deals with Israel--its hope, its promises, and its relationship to the church. Unfortunately the church and Israel are often like two relatives who can't get along. Through the centuries, disagreement and outright persecution have prevailed between them. But Romans 11 gives us helpful insights into how to live with Jewish friends and neighbors.
Twice in this passage Paul asks, "Did God reject his people?" And both times Paul answers, "By no means!" Is God through with Israel because of the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ? Because they turned a deaf ear to Jesus, has God rejected them? Has he said they no longer have any place in his scheme of things? No. God is not through with the Jews.
Anyone who teaches that the church has inherited the promises of Israel should take a second look at the Scriptures, especially Romans 11. It is amazing how many apply to the church the blessings and glories promised to Israel in the Old Testament, but then unfairly apply all the cursings and the punishments to Israel!
Let's take a look at Paul's examination of this issue.