Romans 10:14-15 are a stirring plea for missions, one of the most important in the Bible. But much of the force of these verses comes from their setting in Paul’s argument. Think of the preceding verse: “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved” (v. 13). That is a wonderful statement of the universal application of the gospel. It is for everybody. Anyone who calls on Jesus Christ as Savior will be saved. But how can people do that unless they know about Him? And how can they know about Jesus unless someone goes to them to teach them about Him? Those are precisely the questions Paul has in mind as he begins this new section.

Not only are these verses related to verse 13, they are also related to what follows, to verses 16-21. For Paul, in this entire section (Romans 9-11), is dealing with Jewish unbelief, and he is going to show in the latter half of chapter 10 that the unbelief of Israel is not God’s fault, since God had sent messengers to the Jewish people. Paul himself was one. He had preached the gospel, and he had done so clearly. If the Jews did not believe, it was not because they could not, since they had both heard and understood the message. In these verses Paul gives us a series of linked statements, leading from an individual’s calling on Christ in faith, backward through the mandatory intervening steps of belief in Christ, hearing Christ and preaching about Christ, to preacher’s being sent to proclaim the Lord Jesus Christ to those who need to hear him. In other words, the text is a classic statement of the need for Christian preaching and for the expanding worldwide missionary enterprise.

The first thing that is necessary if a person is to be saved, is that he or she “call on” Christ. Verse 13 flatly distinguishes between “believing” (the Greek word is “faith”) in Christ and “calling on” Christ for salvation: “How then, can they call on the one they have not believed in?” Many people know about Christ. A significant number of these also probably believe that He is the Son of God and the world’s Savior, as the Bible teaches. But they have never called on Him in personal trust, and so they are not Christians. They are not saved. Let me make this personal. It is not enough for you to understand the preaching of the Word of God to be a Christian, important as that is. It is not enough for you to know theology or even to be a student of the Bible. I commend all those things to you, but they alone do not make you a Christian. To be a Christian you must call on the Lord Jesus Christ personally, saying, “Lord Jesus Christ, I confess that I am a sinner. I cannot save myself, and I call on you to save me. Help me. Save me from my sin.” If you will do that and really mean it, Jesus will save you! In fact, He already has, because it is His work in you that leads to that confession.

The second step in Paul’s linked series of statements is that a person must believe in Christ in order to call upon Him. I have just said that mere intellectual belief is not enough. There must be personal trust or commitment to Him as Lord and Savior. Yet this does not mean that the other part, intellectual belief or content, is unimportant. On the contrary, it is essential. For how can you call upon one you don’t know? How can you ask Jesus to save you from your sin unless you understand and believe that He is the Savior? Intellectual understanding without commitment is not true faith, but neither is commitment without intellectual understanding. If you must believe on Jesus in order to call on Him, then your mind must be engaged in knowing who He is and what He has done for you.

The third of Paul’s statements is that in order to believe in Christ a person must hear Christ. The point is that it is Christ Himself who speaks to the individual, and that it is hearing Him that leads first to belief and then to calling on His name in salvation. This should not surprise us, of course, because this is exactly what Jesus taught. John 10 is a clear example. In that chapter, Jesus was speaking about Himself as “the good Shepherd,” and He was explaining how His sheep know Him and respond to His voice (John 10:2-5, 14-16). When a minister stands up to teach the Bible, if they do it rightly, it is not their word you are hearing. It is the Word of God, and the voice you hear in your heart is the voice of Christ. And when you respond don’t think you are responding to them. You are responding to Jesus, who is calling you through the appointed channel of sound preaching.

We have already moved on to the fourth step in Paul’s series of linked statements, which are in the last analysis a great plea for missions. It is that for a person to hear Christ, someone must proclaim Christ to him or her. This is a strong statement for the necessity of preaching. Today’s preaching is not valued equally with the Word, but it is through preaching that the Word is most regularly made known and blessed by God to the saving of men and women. In real preaching the speaker is the servant of the Word and God speaks and works by the Word through the servant’s lips.

This brings us to the fifth and last step in Paul’s linked statements about the way people are brought to call on Jesus Christ for salvation. Paul has indicated that people must believe in Christ before they can call on Him. They must hear Christ before they can believe. There must be preaching of the Word if people are to hear Christ. Now he concludes that for Christ to be proclaimed to such people, preachers must be sent to them. By whom? By God, of course. This is God’s work; no one can take it lightly upon himself. It is why Jesus said, “Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into His harvest field” (Matt. 9:38). If God does not send the messenger, the message will not be blessed by Him, and those who hear will not be saved.

But it is also true that messengers must be sent by the churches, just as Paul and Barnabas were sent on their missionary journeys by the Gentile church at Antioch (Acts 13:1-3). In fact, one of the objectives Paul had in writing Romans was to enlist the support of the Roman church in his plan to take the gospel beyond Rome to Spain and other places to the west (Rom. 15:23-29). The application for us is that if people today in unreached areas of the world are to hear the gospel and have the opportunity to believe on Jesus Christ, those who know Christ must pool their resources to send God’s messengers to them. We must do it. A strong missions program is mandatory for an obedient church.

Romans 10:14-15 Reflection Questions:

Does your church have a missions program?

Is God calling you to go preach the Word? Will you obey His call?

In what ways were Paul (quoting Isaiah 52:7) and the apostles who went to the Gentiles with the gospel fulfilling the traditions of Israel rather than being disloyal to them (10:13-15)?

What people do you feel the strongest desire to reach with the gospel?