PAUL’S LETTER TO THE CHRISTIANS IN ROME

Home Introduction Contents Notes Next Page

In this chapter Paul still takes up this question: ‘Why did Israel not have faith in Christ?’ Verse 1 is rather like the first verses of Chapter 9. Then Paul says (verse 2) that the Jews have plenty of religion. Yet, what we need is not just religion. We may have plenty of religion, and be in darkness. We need the light of God to shine in our minds. The Jews put a ‘hedge’ around the Law of Moses. They added all sorts of rules to it. In this way they thought that they would be safe and that they would not sin. Then they would be righteous. In this way they made sure that God’s good law did not go to other nations. They did not stop their own sins. This is because sin in our lives is so crooked and twisted. So in verse 3, Paul says three things:-

1. The Jews did not know about the righteousness which God gives to men. He gives this righteousness because of what Jesus has done for us.

2. The Jews tried to set up their own righteousness. They were so busy doing this that they did not even look for God’s righteousness. They were right when they thought that religion was all about righteousness.

3. We need to place ourselves under the righteousness which comes from God. The Jews did not do this. We should not try to set up our own righteousness. We should be under God’s righteousness.

For verse 4, it may help us to look again at 8:4. Even if a man could make himself righteous, the righteousness which Christ gives would still be greater! The name ‘Christ’ here means more even than our Lord Jesus Christ. It means God’s purpose. It means the end that God works towards. ‘The end’ here means ‘the goal’. It is not that God will do away with the Law. Christ ‘full-fills’ the Law. So every one, whether Jew or not, may trust Christ. Then God will not condemn them. He will put Christ’s righteousness on them. Perhaps we should say not ‘on them’ but ‘into them’. They will be ‘justified’.

Now Paul argues in another way. In verses 5-11, he uses some verses from the Old Testament. His first verse is from Leviticus 18:5. This is the last part of verse 5 here. Paul says:- ‘Moses writes about the righteousness which comes out of the Law’. It does not come out from God or faith. God tells us in the Law what we must do. No one really does keep all God’s Law. If a man did he would live ‘in them’. So this would be a life lived in the limits of the Law. It is not a life of the freedom which God gives.

Then in verse 6, Paul begins to talk about some verses from Deuteronomy 30:12-14. (Verse 6) There is a righteousness that comes out of faith. This verse is a place where ‘faith’ may not mean ‘our faith in God’. It may rather mean ‘God’s faithfulness to us’. This faith speaks to us. There are things which we do not say out loud. Yet we may say them in our hearts. First we are not to ask for someone to climb up into heaven. There is no need to go up to heaven to fetch Christ down to earth. God has already sent Jesus from heaven into the world to save sinners. To try to fetch Christ down from heaven would be to try to save ourselves by what we do. God says that it is only by His grace and by what Christ has done that will we be saved. We must not go against God in this!

So in verse 7 faith says another thing. We must not think about going down to the deepest places. In the Deuteronomy verses this may mean the deep paths of the sea. We can see what Paul means here. He thinks of the place where the dead are. God has already brought Christ up from the dead. He has risen! So there is no need to go ‘down’ to the place of the dead. The dead are the weak, ‘flabby’ ones. They know less than we do and have no strength to help us.

So verses 6 and 7 tell us what not to do. Verse 8 begins to say what we must do. It is ‘the righteousness that comes out of faith - or God’s faithfulness’ (verse 6) which speaks again. The word which Paul uses is not the same word which John uses at the beginning of his gospel. There the Word or ‘Logos’ imeans Jesus Himself. Here ‘word’ is the Greek word ‘rhema’. ‘Logos’ is the idea in our mind, which we then speak. ‘Rhema’ is rather what we say. So the word which God speaks to us is what we need. It is not a long way away from us. It could not be nearer. It is not only in our mouth. It is also in our hearts. Perhaps what Paul means is this. The word is near us. We know it so well. Yet often we do not see how much it matters to us. This word is the message which Paul preaches and it is ‘the word of faith’. ‘Faith’ here may again mean God’s faithfulness to us. Or here it may mean all the truth about the Good News.

In verse 9, Paul says these great things:-

1. We must speak out and say: ‘Jesus is Lord’. He owns me. I cannot belong to anyone else. No longer am I my own.
2. To say this is not enough. Sometimes it suits people to call Jesus their Lord. There are times and places when people gain like this. Paul says our faith must not only be on our lips. It must be in our hearts too. Jesus did not just rise. It was God Who raised Him from the dead.
3. Then a man will know that God has saved him.

Verse 10 adds that in this way a man is both justified and saved. Now this is the Word of God. We must be wise and careful how we use it. We may want to say: ‘If people do not believe, they will be lost. If people do not say openly, “Jesus is Lord”, they will be lost’. There are other places in Scripture which do teach this. See Mark 16:16, or John 3:18. Before we turn the Scripture round, we must be sure there are other verses which teach what we want to say. What Paul does here is not to warn people who do not believe. Moses in Deuteronomy 30:2 told the Jewish people that they could return to God. They should do what He said. He would forgive them. He would welcome them and do them good. There is nothing hard to do. Jesus is the Way. There is no ‘way’ to Him. We must come to Him.

Many Christians even today would be in great danger if they said openly: ‘Jesus is Lord‘. We must honour their secret faith. We believe that the Spirit of God will shew them when it is right to speak about Jesus. See Matthew 10:32 and 33; Mark 8:38 and 2 Timothy 2:12.

Verses 11-21 All can be saved

In verses 11-13, it almost seems that Paul says something new. Perhaps a Jew might say:- ‘This is all right for everyone else. Now it is the Jews who are left out. God has no place for us.’ Paul uses some words from Isaiah 28:16 in verse 11. Then in verse 13 he uses words from Joel 2:32. Peter had used those words too: see Acts 2:21. Paul says that it is not only people from other nations, but God will also save the Jews. God is One. So God will only save us is one way. (See Romans 3:29 and 30)

In verses 14 and 15 Paul asks some questions. He gives no answers to us. Yet we can look at it like this:-
(Verse 15, the first part) It is the duty of the churches to send men out to preach the Good News. The churches should, of course, not just send out any man. Men who have been called by God are the ones that the churches should send. They should send men who have gifts for the work too.

(Verse 14, the last part) Then, as men preach the Good News, people will hear.

(Verse 14, the middle part) When people hear the Good News, they will have faith. Paul does not mean that everyone who hears will believe. We know that would not be true. Some people hear and believe, but the other people do not believe.

(Verse 14, the first part) So some people will believe and they will call on God. They will call to Him to save them; and He will.

Paul finishes verse 15 with some words which he takes from Isaiah 52:7. Paul does not mean, of course, that all preachers have good feet. He does not mean that they walk over mountains where there is no one to preach to. That is not what Isaiah means either. The words mean that the preachers bring Good News to us. So we should make them welcome. We should listen to what they say. The words which they speak are pure, too.

The apostles were the first followers of Jesus. Jesus told them to go to all nations. What they did was wonderful. Yet there are parts of the world where people have still not heard the Good News after nearly 2000 years. So Paul does not mean that every Jew in his day heard the Good News.

In verses 16 to 21 Paul uses some Old Testament verses to make some new points. We should see that after ‘the word of Christ’ in verse 17, Paul does not speak again about the Lord Jesus until 11:26 where ‘the Deliverer’ is Jesus. The Jews try to be God’s people without Jesus; and they fail.

So now in verse 16, Paul uses the words from Isaiah 53:1. There Isaiah says: ‘Lord, who has believed our message? ‘We have heard God’s message, and we have passed it on to other people‘. Now Isaiah does not answer the question which he asks. We believe that the answer is: ’Hardly anyone; very few people’. So Paul says that many of the Jews did hear the Good News. Some believed it, but many more did not. ’Christ’ means ‘the Anointed One’ and sometimes has the thought of the Messiah in it. God promised to send the Messiah to the Jews as their great Saviour. Here, ’the word of Christ’ may well mean ’the message about the promised Messiah’.

Verse 17 seems to finish off what Paul has said from verse 5 to verse 16. In verse 18, Paul uses some words from Psalm 19:4. He uses these words to prove that the Jews have heard the Good News. They needed to hear, to understand and to obey God’s Word.

In verse 19, Paul uses some words of Moses from Deuteronomy 32:21. There, the Jews make God angry. They worship false ’gods’ which are not gods at all. They use idols in their religion. So God will make the Jews angry. To do this, God will use ‘those who are not a nation’. This means Christian believers. They are not ‘a nation’ because they are made up from some people from every nation. Before God called them to follow Jesus, they did not understand God’s words or ways. So they had ‘no understanding’.

In verse 20 Paul uses words from Isaiah 65:1. It is Christians who once ‘did not ask for Me’. Once, they did not know God. They did not even ask for God. When God called them, they found Him. Really it was more than that. God says: ‘I revealed Myself to them’. It was not at all by good luck or chance that they found God. It was because in His grace and love, He made Himself known. In the next verse, Isaiah 65:2, Isaiah seems to speak about the Jews. It is as though God prays to them, when they should pray to Him. He holds out His hands to them. Or the picture may be of a mother who holds out her hands to help her young child. God has been patient: He has done this ‘all day long’. Yet His people have not obeyed Him. Instead, they have tried to find fault with God and His ways.

This ends one part of Paul’s argument. We must see that it is an argument which can work both ways. The Jews do not believe, so God speaks to other nations. If those other nations do not believe, God will speak to the Jews again. He started this part of his letter at 9:30. In Chapter 11:1-24, Paul finds new arguments. But he still looks for an answer to his question, which goes back to the start of Chapter 9. Paul wants to explain why God does not save all the Jewish people. He wants to know why God does not save them all now. The answers he has found so far are still not good enough for him.