If I was to ask anyone today what he or she thinks of first when asked to list the characteristics or attributes of God, I’m sure that nearly every case the person would say “love.” Yet that would not have been true for the Old Testament saints. They would have said “holiness.” Surprisingly, that is a concept almost never thought about by most people today. Not only did the Old Testament figures think of holiness when they thought of God. They also thought of holiness in reference to anything or anybody who had contact with God, for they knew that only what is holy can have contact with Him. Holiness dominated their religious ideas.

We need to remember this when we come to Romans 11:16, for Paul is certainly writing within an Old Testament framework when he says, almost casually, “If the part of the dough offered as firstfruits is holy, then the whole batch is holy; if the root is holy, so are the branches.” What Paul is doing here is drawing upon an Old Testament understanding of holiness to carry forward the important point he is making in Romans 11, namely, that God has not given up on Israel.

It’s true that the mass of Israel has been laid aside temporarily in order that by their rejection, salvation might come to the Gentiles. But even in this period of rejection, Israel has not been rejected utterly; a remnant is still being saved. Nor will Israel be rejected finally; for at the last the masses of Israel will be brought to faith in Jesus Christ, who died for them that they might have forgiveness for their sins.

In Romans 11, Paul is writing about the future of the Jews as a people. So it’s surprising how much of what he says in this chapter is to the Gentiles. He began by addressing them directly in verse 13, and he continues speaking to them exclusively until verse 25, where he begins to address a broader group of people again. In verses 17-22, he warns the Gentiles not to boast over Judaism because of the Gentiles’ current favored status, saying that if the Jews, who were God’s especially chosen people once, have been rejected at least temporarily because of unbelief, the Gentiles also will be rejected if they follow their bad example.

This is a serious warning, one that we must take to heart. As Paul writes to those of us who are Gentiles, he is aware that our present position might cause us to boast over the Jews who held a privileged position before us. But he warns us not to boast. Rather fear God, he says. We may be standing now, but we stand only by grace. If we cease to stand in grace by believing God, we too, will fail. Does that mean that salvation can be lost? No. Paul has been teaching the doctrine of perseverance. But what he says here is nevertheless a strong warning against spiritual presumption. What Paul tells us in these verses is that if the Gentiles fail to stand by faith, they will be cut off, just as the Jews were.

This warning extends to individuals today who suppose they are Christians because they are part of a Christian church and affirms the right things, but who are not actually anchored in the grace of God and are not exercising that true faith in God that comes from the presence of the Holy Spirit within them. Let me warn you that it is fatally easy to assume that all is well with your soul when actually you are perishing. In fact, in your unbelieving state it is the most natural thing in the world, because you do not perceive what is really spiritual and suppose that the externals of Christianity are what matters.

If you have any sensitivity to spiritual things, you must ask yourself, “Has my commitment to Christ made any discernible difference in my life?” In other words, is there anything you are doing now that you would not be doing if you were not a Christian? Is there anything you are not doing because you know it would displease Jesus Christ? Are you obeying His commandments? Do you love to be with other Christians? Are you studying the Bible? And when you study it can you really say that you hear God speaking to you in its pages? Do you recognize what you read there to be the truth? Do you change what you are doing as a result?  Are you trying to order your life according to the Bible’s teaching and redirect it according to right Christian priorities?

This is what it means to “make your calling and election sure” (2 Pet. 1”10), in sharp contrast to what Jesus was warning of when He described sowing seed on ground where it seemed to grow well but soon dried up for lack of depth, was chocked by weeds, or was snatched away by Satan (Matt. 13:1-9). Churches and individuals who foolishly boast of their own attainments or coast along in their present favored standing without pausing to remember the grace of God that brought them to that place and the obligation they have to stand together as Christians in grace by faith alone. So do not forget! Stand in your high calling! Stand by faith! Greater individuals than you and I have perished. Nations as powerful as ours have been overthrown. And stronger churches than ours have fallen to the severity of God’s just judgments in history.

Romans 11:16-24 Reflection Questions:

Beginning in verse 13 and continuing through verse 32 Paul is speaking directly to the Gentile Christians in the Romans church. What seems to be in danger in the Gentile believers that Paul is addressing? What is his warning to them?

He uses two illustrations in verses 16-24 to highlight the point he wants to make to the Gentile believers. What is Paul saying here?

One thing that many people may not know about olive trees in ancient Israel is that, from time to time, gardeners performed grafting operations on them. Some olives grew wild, and would often be quite strong in themselves though not producing good fruit. The gardener might decide to take that energy and harness it by grafting shoots from a proper, cultivated olive into the trunk of a wild olive, thus combining the energy of the wild tree and the fruitfulness of the cultivated one. Why does Paul reverse the illustration?

What was Paul implying through the use of the grafting image? What possible wrong impressions, particularly among Gentile believers, was he attempting to correct?

To many people the doctrines of election and reprobation seem wrong because they appear to be arbitrary. “Arbitrary” means that there are no reasons for them. It means that God chooses one and not another as if He were plucking petals from a daisy, saying: “I love you…I love you not.” That is not an accurate picture, of course. True, we dare not think that God owes us an explanation for what He is doing or that we could fully understand it if He should give us a complete one. But even if we do not have an explanation, that does not mean that God does not have His reasons. God is a purposeful God, and we should rightly suppose that everything He does has a purpose, and an infinitely wise one at that.

However, God has given us some explanation of why He chooses some people and passes by others. We saw it when we were studying Romans 9. It is that God might be glorified, that is, that He might be known as He truly is. In Romans 9, Paul taught that God makes His patience, wrath, and power known in the case of the reprobate, whom He passes by and judges for their sin, and that He reveals His mercy in the case of the elect, whom He saves apart from any supposed worthiness in them. We remember that Paul is dealing with the meaning of history in these chapters, and this means that he is writing on what we might call a down-to-earth level as well as on a theological one. He has been talking about the passing by of the great mass of Israel, which has rejected Jesus as the Messiah. We might ask: “Does God have a purpose in that?” The verses we come to now teach that God does have a purpose. God is using the passing by of Israel to bring salvation riches to the Gentiles.

In Romans 11:11-12, Paul makes four points that govern his thoughts throughout the remainder of the chapter. (1) Israel has “stumbled,” but their stumble is not final. In this section he teaches that the unbelief of Israel will not be forever. They stumbled as a nation by their rejection of Jesus as their Savior and Messiah, but they will rise again. (2) Their “stumble” had a purpose: it would be used by God to bring salvation to the Gentiles. It’s an example of the “riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God” about which Paul will write later (Rom. 11:33). (3) The salvation of the Gentiles will lead in time to the “fullness” of Israel that is to the salvation of the Jews as a nation and this in turn will lead to even greater Gentile blessing. It means that the Jews have not been cast off so that salvation might come to the Gentiles instead, but that through Gentile salvation the Jews themselves might find Jesus as their Savior. (4) The way this will happen is by the spiritual riches of the Gentiles making Israel envious. They will see what the Gentiles have, recognize that these spiritual blessings were intended for them, and long to possess them too.

When God sent Jesus to be the Savior, He sent Him not only to be the Savior of the Jews but as the world’s Savior, too. When Jesus died, God showed this by tearing the veil of the temple in two from top to bottom. That act signified that the way to God was now open to anyone who would come through faith in His sacrifice. In one sense that meant the end of Judaism, at least in its ancient form. No Jew today worships at a temple in Jerusalem. No Jew brings the required sacrifices for sin. The end of that system was the opening of salvation to the Gentiles.

The title of this study, “Life from the Dead,” is taken from the phrase Paul uses for the anticipated salvation of Israel as a nation in the final days of world history (v. 15). In verses 13-15 Paul speaks of Israel having been rejected, in verses 11-12 Paul made the same point by speaking of the people’s “fall” and “loss.” This is an all-too-sad reality, of course. As Paul saw it, the tragedy lay in Israel’s rejection as the Messiah, with all that entailed. For centuries the Jews had been waiting anxiously for the Messiah’s coming, asking themselves whether any leader who emerged above the average might be him. Israel’s rejection of Jesus was a rejection of the very future for which they had been hoping. It was a repudiation of their spiritual destiny. Paul was acutely aware of this and grieved for what his people had lost.

So why did the Jews reject Jesus, after all? The reason people (Jews and Gentiles alike) reject Jesus Christ is because they are dead in their sins, and being spiritually dead, they are unable to understand the extent of their need, comprehend the grace of God in the gospel, or yield their hearts to the Savior. This is what Paul was teaching in the earlier chapters of this letter (Rom. 3:10-11). Paul means that apart from a spiritual resurrection, which Jesus called being “born again,” no one is able to be good, understand spiritual things, or seek God. On the contrary, we run away from Him and make substitute gods to take the true God’s place.

So what is the solution? The solution is obvious. We need to be born again. We need a spiritual resurrection. We need God, because only God is able to give life and provide resurrections. But praise be to God, this is exactly what God does. God is in the resurrection business. I remind you of the death and resurrection of Lazarus (John 11:1-44). If the story was only about a physical resurrection, it would be spectacular enough. We have bodies, and our bodies die. We need physical resurrections if we are to stand before God, see His face, and worship Him forever – as we sense we have been designed by God to do. But the deaths of our bodies are not our greatest problem, nor is physical resurrection our greatest need. We also have dead souls, and we need the resurrection of our souls and spirits if we are to turn to Jesus Christ in living faith and find salvation in Him.

Fortunately, the story of Lazarus is also about spiritual resurrections and the promise that spiritual life is to be found in Jesus. He alone can do what needs to be done. He alone can call us from the dark, loathsome charnel house of sin. And He does. Everyone who has ever come to Christ in saving faith has experienced just such a spiritual resurrection. We were dead in our sins, but we heard Jesus calling, “come out.” And we responded. All who have ever heard that call have responded and have thereby passed out of spiritual death into spiritual life.

Have you? If you have not, I urge you to pay attention to the Bible, the Word of God, because it is through the Bible and its teaching that Jesus calls men and women today. Read it. Allow yourself to be exposed to sound teaching. Meditate on Bible truths. I believe that if you do that, you will hear Jesus calling and will find that His call is bringing you to new spiritual life.

This brings us back to Israel as a nation, for it is Israel we are talking about primarily, and it is the resurrection of that nation that is our chief concern in this passage. We are studying the teaching that the Jews will have a spiritual rebirth in the final days. I know there are people who consider that impossible for a number of reasons. But we are not talking on the human level here. We are speaking about God and resurrections, which only He is capable. “With God all things are possible” (Matt. 19:26). Why should the future gathering in of Israel be thought impossible when it is God who is doing the gathering?

Romans 11:11-15 Reflection Questions:

Verses 7-15 (and all of Romans 9-11) echo the stories of tensions between younger and older brothers from Genesis (Cain and Abel, Ishmael and Isaac, Esau and Jacob, Joseph and his brothers) as well as Jesus’ own parable of the prodigal son in Luke 15. In all these cases God establishes and vindicates the younger over the older. How is Israel now in the position of being the older brother in the prodigal son story?

How might jealousy, as described in verses 11-15, actually draw Jews to Christ?

How is it that Paul nonetheless has hope for Israel’s future and envisions its resurrection (vv. 11-15)?

Two things must characterize any Christian. One is a profound sense of personal sin and unworthiness. The other is an overwhelming awareness of the grace of God. The two go together, of course, for without a proper sense of sin, we will never appreciate grace. We will think that the good we experience from God’s hand is merited. On the other hand, the more we appreciate the grace of God, the more aware we will be of our sin and want to be free of it.

The apostle Paul was a trophy of God’s grace, and he never forgot it, which is probably why he has included the words about grace that we find in Romans 11:6. Paul loved the doctrine of grace, saw it everywhere, and wanted his readers to see it and love it, too. Paul also knew how difficult it is for most people to accept grace and how inclined we are to add works to it. I imagine that as he wrote the preceding verses, referring to the seven thousand faithful Jews from the days of Elijah’s ministry, he would have thought that some readers would instinctively give those faithful Jews some credit and by extension give themselves a bit of credit, too.

Because that kind of thinking comes naturally to all of us, and Paul knew it, he interrupts the natural flow of thought that would have led him to the distinctions between the majority of Jews and the remnant, which he develops in verses 7-10, to make sure we all understand that even the remnant exists by God’s grace only. It is not that some had it in them to be faithful while others did not. It is rather that God chose the remnant to believe. Verse 6 makes only one point: that grace and works are incompatible opposites. So if a person is to be saved by grace, it cannot be by works, otherwise, grace is not grace. Conversely, if a person is to be saved by works, it cannot be by grace; otherwise, work would not be work.

A good teacher knows when enough information has been given out and it’s time for a summary. Paul seems to have been aware that a summary was needed at precisely this point in his letter. It is what Romans 11:7-10 is about. These verses are a summing up of what Paul has written thus far in Romans 9-11. What has he written? First, there is his teaching about election. He introduced the subject in Romans 9, showing that God’s purposes in salvation have not failed because even though the great majority of Jews had rejected the gospel, those whom God has elected to salvation beforehand nevertheless were being saved.

Second, there is his teaching about reprobation, the doctrine that God passes by the many who are not saved, sovereignly declining to elect them to salvation. Third, there is the reason for man’s rejection of the gospel. The Jews are Paul’s prime example, because he is discussing the fate of unbelieving Israel in these chapters. But it’s the same for all persons apart from Christ. People reject the gospel because they want to establish their own righteousness and do not want to submit to the righteousness that comes from God. Paul discusses these in chapter 10.

Fourth, there is the teaching that what has happened historically in the overall rejection of Christ by Israel had been foretold by God and was therefore no surprise to God, nor did it cause a departure from His plan. In Romans 9, Paul gave four separate Old Testament quotations to make this point (Hos. 2:23; 1:10; Isa. 10:22-23; 1:9). In Romans 11:8-10 he provides two more: verse 8, which combines words from Deuteronomy 29:4 and Isaiah 29:10; and verses 9 and 10, which quote Psalm 69:22-23.Yet Paul’s summaries are never mere summaries. They always seem to carry his argument just a bit further, even in summing up. In this case, Paul’s summary has the effect of highlighting the doctrine of election and thus brings him back to the point from which he started out.

In another way in which these verses carry the argument further comes by comparing Paul’s teaching about reprobation in Romans 9 with what we have here. In chapter 9 Paul uses Esau, the father of the Edomites, and Pharaoh, the nation’s great enemy. Paul wrote that God “hated” Esau and that He “hardened” Pharaoh’s heart. Neither Esau nor Pharaoh was among the elect people of God. But here is the striking thing. In Romans 11 Paul is not writing about non-Jews, Edomites, and Egyptians. He is writing about Israel, which means that he is applying the doctrine of reprobation to the allegedly “chosen” people. What’s more, he is saying that even those things that should have been a blessing to them – presumably the very things he lists at the start of Romans 9 – have become a “snare,” “trap,” “stumbling block,” and “retribution” for them in their unregenerate state (11:9).

Here is where this summary of Paul’s teaching comes home forcefully to us. If individual Jews, who were a chosen nation, missed salvation because of their rejection of Christ and if, as a result, the blessings of God that had been given to them became a curse for these people (see Mal. 2:2), it is entirely possible (indeed probable) that many sitting in the evangelical churches of America today are also missing salvation because of their failure to trust Jesus in a personal way and that their blessings have become curses, too.

Do you understand that? It means that if you will not allow the good things we enjoy as allegedly Christian people to lead you to Christ, which is what God has given them to us for, they will be worse than worthless to you. They will actually be harmful and propel you inevitably into an even greater spiritual stupor, hardness of heart, and sin.

Here are four examples: (1) Baptism. Baptism is an outward sign of an inward, spiritual union with Jesus Christ. It is meant to strengthen our faith by making the inward reality more palpable to us. But countless allegedly Christian people have trusted the outward sign without the inward commitment. They have judged themselves to be saved persons without any true following after Jesus Christ. (2) Communion. The same thing is true of communion. Entire branches of the church teach that grace is somehow imparted in the physical partaking of the elements, so that the physical act by itself conveys salvation. But the reality in not physical. The Lord’s Supper is meant to show us the broken body and atoning blood of Jesus Christ and lead us to trust Him and place our faith in Him, not the ceremony. If we don’t trust Christ, the sacrament, which is intended to do us good, actually becomes a curse for us, and we become superstitious and even pagan in our practice.

(3) Material possessions. Money and other material goods are from God. But they are dangerous, particularly when we possess them in abundance. They should lead us to God in gratitude. More often they lead us from Him. (4) The Lord’s Day. In earlier years, Sundays were sacred days of rest and worship for the majority of Americans, and even those who were not Christians respected them. Look how this has changed today, look how many events today are scheduled on Sundays, and do any of them give rest and the worship of Jesus Christ?

Romans 11:6-10 Reflection Questions:

What is the situation of the Jews to whom Paul is referring in Verses 7-12?

Paul sees Israel’s blindness and stumbling (vv. 8-10) as means by which the wider world can be brought into God’s family (vv. 11-12). How is it that Paul nonetheless has hope for Israel’s future and envisions its resurrection (vv. 11-15)?

How do you deal with Paul’s statements concerning God’s decision to save some and not others, to harden the hearts and to shut the eyes and the ears of some?

Paul is in the middle of proving that God’s historical purpose toward the Jewish nation has not failed. To prove it he unfolds the seven main arguments found in chapters 9-11. At the start of chapter 11, the point to which we have come in our verse by verse exposition of Romans, we are at Paul’s fourth argument. Question: “I ask then: Did God reject His people?” Answer: “By no means! I am an Israelite myself, a descendant of Abraham, from the tribe of Benjamin” (v.1). Here Paul is using his own case as proof that Israel has not been abandoned. As long as there is only one believing Jew – though, in fact there are many – no one can affirm that God has rejected Israel utterly. Paul is a remnant himself, whether or not there are any others. But, in fact there are and always have been others.

Here are several points of application we can take from verse one: (1) We should not be discouraged in our evangelism, because all whom God is calling to faith in Jesus Christ will come to Him. If anyone should have been discouraged in his evangelism, it should have been Paul in his attempts to reach the Jewish people. He was God’s chosen messenger to the Gentiles (Acts 9:15), but Paul always began his missionary efforts with the Jews and again and again he was rejected by them. (2) We should be warned against presumption. It is true that all whom God is calling to faith will be saved, but this does not mean that all of any race, social class, or denomination will be. Being a Jew did not in itself save these people, though there were great advantages to Judaism, as Paul acknowledges. Neither will membership in a Christian denomination save you, though there are also advantages to belonging to a good church. We must not presume on our affiliations. (3) We should put all our confidence in God, who alone is the source, effector, and sustainer of His people’s salvation. How foolish to put your confidence in anything else, or even in a combination of lesser things. If a person can be a Jew, with all the spiritual blessings attending to that great religious heritage, and yet be lost, certainly you are foolish to trust in your ancestry, nationality, education, good works, or (strange as it may seem) your good intentions. Salvation comes from the Lord; it comes from God alone. Make sure you are trusting Him and what He has done for you in Jesus Christ.

In Romans 11:2-5, the apostle touches on a great Old Testament story as support for his contention that God has not abandoned Israel and that the Word of God has not failed. It is the story of Elijah, following his victory over the prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel (1 Kings 18:16-19:18). This account begins the fifth of Paul’s arguments in Romans 9-11 in which he proves that the purposes of God for Israel have not failed and are in fact continuing.

The new idea in this argument is the “remnant.” This word refers to a small surviving part of something, either an object or a custom or a people. In the Old Testament the word refers in most cases to a small company of Jews who survived or were to survive the invasions, destructions, and captivities inflicted on them by the Assyrians and Babylonians in the sixth and eighth centuries B.C.

So, to whom is Paul referring when he speaks of “his people, whom he foreknew”? There is no question that Paul has been proving God’s faithfulness to his people by referring to an elect remnant. Since God has elected some Jews, though as remnant, to be saved along with the believing Gentiles, it’s clear that Israel as a nation has not been cast off. The “his people” in verse 1 and “his people, whom he foreknew” in verse 2 refer to the same people, and this people must be the nation as a whole. This is the direction in which the chapter is moving.

The application of these truths in regard to Israel is what the rest of Romans 11 contains. We will be following it out in detail as we make our way through chapter 11. But there are two applications for us today: (1) God always has a remnant, and the remnant is often much larger than we might suspect. I think of many Christians who are working in difficult places or under difficult circumstances – in inner city mission, for example. They have worked hard; there have been meager results. What they have done may have been misunderstood and rejected, perhaps even violently. They might be inclined to give up, thinking, “Lord, they have killed your prophets and torn down your alters; I am the only one left, and they are trying to kill me” (v. 3). If you are thinking or feeling that way, you need to know that God still has his seven thousand who have not bowed down to Baal, that you are therefore not alone and that your work will not be without results.

(2) The Remnant of those who are God’s people have not bowed to Baal. Baal was a particularly corrupt god of the ancient Canaanites whose worship consisted of blatant sex worship, coupled with pure materialism. Sound familiar? We have the same thing today. Our western culture, particularly in America, is charging down the twin freeways of sexual promiscuity and blatant materialism. But God has His remnant. There are devout people, who are living for God and trying to do the right thing, often in what are terrible circumstances. We should be encouraged to know this, seeking out such persons and encouraging them whenever we can. That is what the church is to be, after all – the company of those who are living for God and are encouraging one another to live for Him even in this present evil world.

So let us get on with it. “Let us fix our eyes on Jesus” and so run the race set out for us (Heb. 12:1-2), whatever it may be. Moreover, let us run it, knowing that one day, like ourselves, all God’s elect people will stand before Him having conquered this present wicked world. And though we will generally have been despised and persecuted, we will know that God has accomplished His perfect will in us and that nothing we have done for Jesus will have been done in vain.

Romans 11:1-5 Reflection Questions:

Once again Paul raises the question of whether God has abandoned Israel and perhaps broken His promise to them. In verses 1-6 Paul uses the story of Elijah (from 1 Kings 18-19). How are Paul and Elijah similar?

The idea of a “remnant,” a few people, who remain after a great disaster, comes from the heart of the Old Testament, from Isaiah 10:20-23 where the prophet describes those who will return after the punishment of exile. Who is the remnant Paul has in mind?

What are some major sidetracks and pitfalls that keep people from discovering Jesus Today? How can we expose the futility of following these paths?

Several thousand years ago, there was a man who was chosen to follow a great leader. The leader possessed outstanding religious and moral qualities, and the man I am talking about lived with him and learned from him for three years. He was part of a small group who were privileged to do so. In time this man became disillusioned with his teacher and eventually betrayed him to his enemies when he had an opportunity to profit personally from the betrayal. But then he became disillusioned with himself for what he had done. Disillusionment led to depression, depression to desperation, and desperation to despair. In the end he killed himself by hanging. That man’s name was Judas and his teacher was Jesus Christ.

Few people like to discuss their failures, but there are failures for all of us, even as there was for Jesus. (At least they are failures from a human point of view, though not from God’s perspective.) The point is we need to understand “failures.” Paul did. God gave Paul great success in his missionary work, enabling him to plant churches throughout much of the ancient world, particularly in Asia Minor and Greece. But Paul was too honest not to describe his failures, too. One of the places he does so is in Romans 10:16.

Paul has been describing the chain by which the gospel comes to an individual, enabling the person to call on Jesus Christ and be saved. But the apostle is nevertheless aware that it is possible to fulfill the two human parts of that chain – sending and the preaching – and still have people fail to believe the good news or call on Jesus. Unbelief is a sad and painful reality to those who know Jesus Christ. But it is still a reality, which we must acknowledge if we are not to become discouraged and utterly ineffective in our witnessing.

Scoffers abound and critics multiply. But the lesson of history is the unique power of the Bible to change people’s lives and build churches. This is what Paul is getting at in verse 17. What Paul is saying in this verse is: “Faith comes from hearing the gospel preached, and the reason faith comes from hearing the gospel preached is that Jesus Himself, the object of the gospel as well as its subject, speaks through the messenger to call the listening one to faith.” The Bible says, “Faith comes from hearing the message, and the message is heard through the word of Christ. That is the way that salvation came to you, if you are saved. If you are not yet a believer in Jesus Christ, you need to understand this verse is very true and accurate when it says that, “faith comes from hearing the message. God planned it that way. The message is being taught. Your part is to open your ears to that truth, trusting that, as you do, God will make the message true for you and that you will find yourself calling on the Lord Jesus Christ to be your Savior.

In verses 18-20 Paul is dealing with excuses. The first excuse is that the Jews were not responsible for their unbelief for the reason that they had not heard the message. Paul’s answer is that they have heard it, and he establishes this truth by quoting Psalm 19:4. We cannot object, as this imaginary listener to Paul’s teaching might be supposed to object: “But isn’t it the case that they have simply not heard?” That is not a way of getting off the hook for most people. The message has been known, and they have heard it – so they are without excuse. You are without excuse, too, if you have refused to come to Jesus Christ as your rightful Lord and Savior.

Yet the human mind and heart are quite subtle. “True,” our imaginary questioner might say, “the Jews as a whole have heard and been acquainted with the gospel. But isn’t it true that the problem might lie in another area, not that they have not heard but that they have not understood the message when it has been made known. Wouldn’t that explain their unbelief?” Paul’s answer is another quotation, in fact several. He quotes from Deuteronomy 32:21 and Isaiah 65:1 (and, at the very end, from Isaiah 65:2). Paul is saying that the Jews did understand the gospel, because they were provoked to jealousy when the Gentiles, upon whom they had often looked disparagingly, believed it. Otherwise why would they care if the Gentiles believed it? But that was not the reaction Paul was seeing. There was jealousy and anger on the Jews’ part. This indicated that they understood very well what was happening. They knew that the message being received by the Gentiles was a message of salvation by the grace of God apart from keeping the law and that it was being taught not as a contradiction of Judaism, but as a fulfillment of it. That is what made it so offensive.

It is characteristic of Paul’s method of teaching that he ends a reasoned argument with quotations from the Old Testament, establishing what he just said. In fact in Romans 10 he has already given us six quotations from the Old Testament: Joel 2:32 (in v. 13), Isaiah 52& (in v. 15), Isaiah 53:1 (in v. 16), Psalm 19:4 (in v. 18), Deuteronomy 32:21 (in v. 19), and Isaiah 65:1 (in v. 20). The seventh quotation is a continuation of the reference to Isaiah 65:1, since with it Paul simply moves on to the next verse (Isaiah 65:2) in verse 21: “All day long I have held out my hands to a disobedient and obstinate people.” This is a moving statement, because it spells out the nature of God’s love in contrast to the disobedient and obstinate rejection of the love of God by human beings.

The first part, the part that spells out the nature of God’s love teaches three things about it: (1) It is continuous. God pictures Himself as holding out His hands toward Israel for an entire day. (2) It is compassionate. The love of God for sinners is not only continuing love. It is compassionate, that is, it is filled with passion for you. This is clearly taught in this text, for the picture of the constantly outstretched hands of God is meant to portray compassion. It is the posture of a parent reaching out to a crying child. It is the picture of Jesus, who reached out to us from the cross. (3) It is costly. There is one more important thing to see about the outstretched hands of God. They teach us that the love of God is costly – that is costly to God. Those hands bear the imprint of the nails brutally pounded through them as Jesus was affixed to the cross to bear the penalty for our sins.

What has been the response to God’s great love? This is what the second half of the verse is telling us. The response has been rejection. Two words summarize it: (1) Disobedient. When we think of the gospel, we usually think of it as an invitation, and it is true that the Good News is sometimes presented in that way (see Matt. 11:28 & Rev. 22:17). But what most of us forget is that the gospel is also a command. It is a command to turn from sin to faith in Jesus Christ and to follow Him in obedient discipleship. It is a characteristic of people to labor strenuously to disobey this command, It was that way for Israel, and it is also true for people today. (2) Obstinate. Not only was Israel’s response to the gospel one of disobedience; it was an obstinate disobedience. That is, it was hard-nosed, steely-faced, heart-encrusted, and doggedly persistent. So is ours. What was true of Israel is true of all natural human responses to God’s love in Christ Jesus.

Jesus described this in a parable (Matt. 21:33-46). The picture is of obstinate resistance to the rights and love of God and it describes what happened. The prophets were the servants. They had been beaten, killed, and stoned. Jesus was the Son. He was crucified. Therefore, the kingdom was taken from these Jewish tenants, and the door of salvation was thrown open to the entire world. Because of Jesus’ death, the way was open, and anyone – Gentiles as well as Jews, women as well as men, slaves as well as free born people – anyone could come to God through Him.

We have found exactly the same thing that both Jesus and Paul found. The unregenerate world is not interested in the gospel. And, if the truth is told, there are a good many apparent Christians who do not seem to be very interested in it either. They treat church attendance lightly, preferring to stay home Sunday’s and watch T.V. rather than worship God, who saved them, and allow the teaching of His Word to nourish their emaciated souls. They don’t study their Bibles and they do not read Christian books. They don’t tell others about Jesus. They don’t work for Jesus, and they don’t even give money so that others can do the work in their place. They just live for themselves. Are they not like those Paul describes? Disobedient?

God is calling you, and He is doing exactly as Paul says He does in Romans 10:14-15. That is the way the gospel comes to everyone. You need to hear the message, because it is in the teaching of the gospel that the voice of God is heard and His outstretched hands are seen. It is a wounded hand that holds out salvation to you and invites you to come. Reach out and touch that hand. Then allow it to enfold you in an embrace that nothing on earth or in heaven will ever diminish or disturb.

Romans 10:16-21 Reflection Questions:

In 10:16 Paul goes back to the question that has caused him such anguish. “Why are so many of the Jews refusing to believe in the Messiah?” In a series of Old Testament quotations who does Paul, playing the lawyer, call as witnesses against the Jews, and what is significant about each piece of testimony (10:16-21)?

At the end of chapter 10 of Romans we do well to stop and ponder the strange path by which the gospel first made its way into the world, humbling the proud and lifting up the lowly. Is this what happens with the preaching of the gospel today? If not, why not?

In what ways has the gospel burst into your life unexpectedly?

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?