Studying His Word and His Works

Listen to the study here: Romans 10:5-15

Read here: Romans 10

Review

• Calvin on the theme of Romans: “Man’s only righteousness is the mercy of God in Christ, when it is offered by the Gospel and received by faith.” Romans 1:17 and elsewhere.
• IMPORTANT: Paul wrote the letter to the saints (1:7), and the letter is about the gospel, which is a reminder we need to preach the gospel to ourselves daily. 
• Luther: Simul iustus et peccator = At the same time, righteous and a sinner! Romans 3:23-25
• In Ch. 1-3 Paul shows us our unrighteousness, and God’s wrath against that, and then switches to Christ’s righteousness as our covering, the propitiation of our sins (Romans 3:25) as the final sacrifice for sin, fulfilling the promise to Abraham, who had faith before any works
• Faith being “counted” or “credited to our account” as righteousness is mentioned 11 times in Chapter 4! If “none are righteous” as Paul wrote in Romans 3:10, then this saving faith must be a gift from God.
• Ch. 5, We now have peace with God, access to God, and hope, because of what Christ did for us while we were weak(v. 6), sinners (v. 8), and enemies (v. 10). Christ did this “at the right time,” (v. 6), connecting Christ’s work on the cross and God’s plan of redemption to real history (not just a myth or legend).
• Atonement(5:6-11): Jesus satisfying God’s wrath for us through His sacrificial death on the cross.
• Ch. 5 and 6 describe federalism, this idea of one man making a difference, for righteousness (Jesus) or wickedness (Adam). 
• Ch 6 ended with lots of words pointing to the new road we are now on with Christ, the sanctification road.
  • Service is the key word, “slaves” used 8 times
  • “Present yourselves”(5), “Leads to”(5)
• Sproul: “our regeneration, our rebirth was the work of one Person, God. It was not a joint venture; but from the moment we take our first breath of regenerated spiritual life, it  becomes a joint effort.” the work of one Person is what salvation is about. The joint venture is what sanctification is about. Ch.6 ends and we continue into Ch.7 describing what this “sanctification road” looks like to walk down. We were on the sin road that leads to death, but now we are on the grace road that leads to eternal life.
• Chapter 8 is describing the assurance we have as Christians in salvation. Deus pro nobis – God for us. It is a reminder of God’s sovereignty over our salvation, and God’s infinite wisdom, in the creation, fall, redemption plan he has for not just us, but the whole world. Ultimately, God, not us, foreknows, predestines, calls, justifies and glorifies. There are many verses (Romans 2:4, John 3:16, etc) that point to God’s patience with everyone, His love for everyone, that none should perish (2 Peter 3:9), so I believe there is some free will in there somewhere, perhaps an ability to answer the call, or not. But, even if we answer the call, it is God who initiated. Even if we are crying out for God, “feeling our way to Him” like Acts 17:27 says, we are only doing this because He has already called. We are MORE THAN CONQUERORS, not on our own of course, but “through Him who loved us” from before time began. 
• Chapter 9 continues on the point of election, which, if you think about it, Paul has been discussing since Romans 1:1 when he said he was “set apart”. Paul continues to hammer the point that it is God’s free will, not ours, that matters most. It’s good to keep in mind the complexity of God, as he is not just electing, but he is doing a bunch of things simultaneously and eternally. He is electing, foreknowing, predestining, calling, justifying, glorifying, answering prayer, “giving them over to a debased mind” (Romans 1:28-32) while also being kind as a means to lead people to repentance (Romans 2:4), showing mercy to some and hardening others (9:18). It’s like God is working on an eternal and therefore infinite scale, but also an instantaneous and therefore infinitesimal scale. The late Pastor John Macarthur, described this as a parallelism, God’s sovereign election running alongside the “whoever believes in Him will have eternal life” of John 3:16. It is Euler’s “every instant,” of God initiating, so the saved are always indebted to Him. And it’s also Paul’s “unceasing anguish” for the lost in 9:2, something we should ask God to give us, too. And something that clearly shows that God predestines us to a team, His team, and we are working with Him to save sinners. He’s just team captain and MVP. He gets all the glory!
  • Also remember that Paul references almost 50 OT verses in Chapter 9 alone. He is retelling Israel’s story in many places to serve as a reminder of God’s sovereign will over nations, but also individuals like Pharoah, Moses, Jacob and Esau, etc. Some want to say election is only about nations, or only individuals, but this is another both/and. 

Intro

• Key words: him(Jesus) (5); Lord, believe, heart (4); preach, mouth (3); righteousness, word, Christ, confess, faith (2)
  • Jesus is Lord, believe it with all your heart and preach it with your mouth so others will know
• In Hawaii, after a massive revival swept the nation in the mid 1800s and former American missionaries helped them secure their sovereignty, King Kamehameha III famously said “The life of the land is perpetuated in righteousness.” This statement became the state motto. If there is one thing we have learned in this study of Romans, it’s that righteousness is from Christ alone. Righteousness exalts a nation (Proverbs 14:34), which can only mean Christ exalts a nation. Do you remember what happened to Israel in our last study? They stumbled (Romans 9:33). “Tripped over grace” as Sproul said.
  • Israel tripped and fell because they pursued their own righteousness. Hawaii-and all nations-will suffer the same fate. Israel was an example for us. There’s an interesting connection to 1 Cor. 10 about idolatry. Basically, ANY pursuit of self-righteousness is idolatry. Flee from it.
• Regarding the last study and the “misplaced zeal” of Romans 10:2, Sproul concludes that we SHOULD have a “heart on fire with zeal.” Zeal for God is not always bad. Remember, the problem Paul was addressing was the Jew’s zeal was not according to knowledge. It was zeal that was not informed by His word. Sproul writes “The fire in our hearts is not simply heat but also light, which comes from God’s word.” In the physical world, real heat is always associated with light. It’s interesting that Paul is saying the Jews “heat” is fake, because zeal without knowledge is like heat without light. Zeal for God without His word is zeal for a false god, in other words.
• Verse 5
  • Moses was not wrong to say that law keepers live. The thing is, only One kept it perfectly. Jesus. AND He was resurrected from the dead! God kept his promise. What most Jews missed is that they thought lawkeeping trumped faith, but it’s the other way around. This is another both/and, with a hierarchy. Obedience should flow from a humble, believing heart, broken before Jesus.
  • Speaking of death, I heard former Navy SEAL Chadd Wright say that death is humanity’s biggest unsolved problem. We can do so many things, but we haven’t defeated death. Jesus is the only one, and he did it by keeping the law perfectly, and he has offered the called His perfect righteousness as a gift, so we can defeat death, too. That’s grace!
• Verses 6-7
  • This is how righteousness based on faith speaks, but what is all this ascending/descending about? I think it is Paul continuing to explain, in another way (which he likes to do), self-righteousness and works vs. Christ’s righteousness and faith.
  • Sproul describes this as two impossibilities:
    • 1) Impossible for man to go up to Heaven and drag the Messiah down to Earth. Only God can send Him (which is exactly what God did).
    • 2) Impossible for man to go down to the abyss and, in his own righteousness, raise Christ from the dead.
      • What’s a good way to think about the abyss? Did God send Jesus to torment for 3 days before raising Him? What is the best way to understand “descended into Hell” from places like the Apostle’s Creed? The Nicene Creed says suffered death and was buried, which I think is better wording.
        • The Westminster Longer Catechism, Question 50, says Christ “continued under the power of death until the third day”. Think about what Jesus’s closest disciples did when he died, they fled! They knew they were powerless to bring back Christ from the dead. Only God can do that.
  • Paul here is comparing self-righteousness with Christ’s righteousness, imputed to us and received through His gift of faith. We have been saying that even the ability to “have faith”  and believe is not from us. If we can do that “have faith,” it is ONLY because the Holy Spirit is already at work in us. God initiates, we respond. We may even respond wrongly at first, thinking “I asked Jesus into my heart” or something like that. But I think that is part of sanctification. Growing stronger in Christ until we see more clearly (never perfectly) that “God did it”, not me. What did John the Baptist say in John 3:30, “He must increase, but I must decrease.” “Increase” as in accumulate more and more OVER TIME. The knowledge of Jesus and who He is should increase over time in the life of someone truly saved.  The understanding that God did it, not me, should increase over time in the life of someone truly saved. 
• Verse 8
  • Righteousness based on faith does NOT expect some impossible work, like verses 6 and 7 described. On the contrary, at its most basic, it is very simple and near you. “Jesus Saves,” “God made me believe,” those are better ways to describe our salvation.
    • Contrast the simplicity of salvation with the well of knowledge and understanding that is deep and infinite, because God is deep and infinite. We can never stop understanding and exploring and discovering things about God and His creation. Salvation in Christ opens a door to infinite exploration, discovery, and growth. 
    • Sproul says near you is a Hebrew idiom for “within our grasp.” Great quote from Sproul about verse 8 here and the word of faith:
      • “The word of faith is simple. I have said to you throughout our study of Romans that to understand the doctrine of justification by faith alone-the very heart and soul of the gospel-is not a difficult thing. A child can understand it. To get in the bloodstream, however, is something that requires a life of concentrated study of God’s Word. Embracing what God has put in front of us requires hearing the Word of God day in and day out.”
    • The truly saved will have a sanctification journey of growth. Think about how Jesus described saving faith, like a tiny mustard seed in Matthew 17:20. Supposedly He was referring to black mustard, which has a seed about 1 mm long, and that grows into a shrub of 4-5 ft. In the same way, saving faith is the seed, and you should expect that to grow in someone truly saved. It starts tiny and simply, but it’s not meant to stay that way. 
• Verse 9, Paul is basically saying, “look, this is how easy it is. Do you believe it enough to speak ‘Jesus saved me?’ If so, you will be saved.”
  • Note, this is another both/and. It’s not enough to just speak it, it’s believe it AND speak it. 
  • Sproul: “we are not satisfied with simply proclaiming the gospel and then allowing the Holy Spirit to take that truth and pierce human hearts with it. We want to give our assistance to make sure our evangelistic statistics are good.” Like by doing altar calls, having a raising of hands, etc.
    • I agree with Sproul about evangelistic statistics, but the Bible also says “repent and be baptized”(Acts 2:38-39, etc.), and you need someone to baptize you, so there is nothing wrong with a church keeping a record of baptisms. The problem is if we think that is what saves people. The baptism, the altar call, the praying of a sinner’s prayer. None of those things are bad, but we MUST connect and believe in your heart to this. It’s both/and. In other words, churches are in error when they just keep statistics on baptisms but ignore the discipleship that follows.
  • Connecting back to the mustard seed of faith, Sproul said Luther called true faith, fides viva, a living faith.
  • Sproul wrote about the ingredients of saving faith, none of which are enough on their own:
    • Notae, or content, the content of our faith is in Christ, not in some idol, etc.
    • Assensus, intellectual assent (agreement after careful consideration) to the truth of the data.
    • The third ingredient is resistless logic, if this/then that. If confess AND believe, then saved.
      • Sproul was asked “How can I know I’m saved if I have been elected?” His reply is “that is what you are elected to-salvation.” 
      • Election is God initiating. We will not confess and believe unless we are elect. That is not something non-elect do.
• Verses 10-11
  • Paul continues the believe/confess connection. The conclusion is salvation, the conclusion is we will not be put to shame. You won’t have the shame and humiliation of a false hope or standing before God one day and being told you devoted your life to a myth. We should pray that God will use us to share His word so that others will not suffer that humiliation, experiencing forgiveness and salvation, before it’s too late, being eternally humiliated!
  • Note verse 11 is a restatement of Romans 9:33, of Paul quoting Isaiah 28:16, and Peter quoting the same verse in 1 Peter 2:6-7. Behold this Stone of stumbling! You can either trip over it or build on it. God put this Stone in the city of God, called Zion, to create a new Zion from the remnant. Originally, Zion was a city that David captured(2 Samuel 5:7). Also referred to as the City of David. Jerusalem was the “Salem” of Melchizedek (Gen 14:18). Salem was an unwalled city, which the Jebusites conquered around 1850 BC and renamed Jebus. David captured Jebus after ruling in Hebron for about 7 years. At this point, Jebus was strongly fortified. Joab, David’s commander in chief, entered the city through its water system and opened the gates to let David in and conquer. It was given many names, from Jerusalem, to the City of David to Zion. Zion is more general, but the word probably comes from “fortress” or “citadel”. A stronghold.
    • Later, it came to mean God’s chosen people, and then God’s kingdom. So now, in the midst of God’s own kingdom, His covenant community, He has placed a stumbling stone, and EVERYONE who believes, not just Jews, will be saved. His kingdom has always been about the faithful, with an emphasis on the Jews, but now this EVERYONE is clearly declared. I think we get confused by this sometimes when reading the Bible and we think only the Jews were God’s chosen, but it has always been the faithful that were God’s chosen. The Jews were set apart to keep the Scripture and the temple, so they definitely did have a “chosen” position that was different than Gentiles.
• Verses 12-13, Paul continues to clarify what he means by everyone. He has been saying this from the beginning, from Romans 1:13-16. In fact, Paul uses the phrase everyone who believes in 1:16, 10:4, and 10:11, and further clarifies it here in verse 12 by saying there is no distinction between Jew and Greek. God’s riches (spiritual rebirth, peace, access, hope, eternal life, etc.) are for everyone who calls on Him.
  • But, this seems like a paradox! We have written so much about God’s sovereignty in election, but then this sounds like man’s choice in “calling on” the Lord. I think the best way to understand this is that it is ALWAYS God initiating and us responding. There is no righteousness in us, it has to be a work of the Holy Spirit in us to make us call in the first place. It is Euler’s “God, every instant, putting situations in front of us for our salvation.” It is Romans 6 and 7 and what Sproul said about our rebirth (bold highlighted above in the review).
  • Sproul has a humbling statement about this: “We may be elect or we may be not, but we cannot know for sure until we die. [But,] we do not have to work through all the intricacies of doctrine so long as we understand that if we sincerely call upon the name of the Lord, we will be saved.”
    • Ultimately, this is something way on the inside, from your heart (verse 9). Something that transcends a person with Alzheimer’s, or a person with Down’s Syndrome, or a person with a traumatic brain injury. It’s deeper than all that. Salvation is a work of the Holy Spirit from the inside out. 
• Verses 14-15
  • Sproul titles this section “Election and Missions.” It is a great chain of how questions about calling and sending and beautiful feet! And it seems contradictory at first because of all the election discussion in Chapter 9.
  • Sproul helps us quickly make sense of this seeming paradox: “God could have preached His Word from the clouds without any human participation, but He chose the means to accomplish it, chiefly, the foolishness of preaching. God gave us the unspeakable privilege of participating in His majestic program of redemption, which He planned from the foundation of the world.”
    • Read Matthew 28:18-20, the Great Commission. What did Jesus say to go do? Make disciples. What are we supposed to go teach? To obey all His commandments. 
  • Note the order of questions in verses 14-15. Belief before calling on Him. If you don’t believe He can save, you are not going to call on Him. “Belief” is that gift of saving faith, initiated by Christ alone. None of the rest of this matters without Christ first doing a work in you. The preacher IS dispensible, but nevertheless God uses him to accomplish His purposes. 
  • So the order is this:
    • Sending a preacher with beautiful feet (Isaiah 52:7, Nahum 1:15)
    • Hearing the preacher (light)
    • Believing the good news shared by the preacher (heat)
    • Calling on the name of the Lord
    • Salvation! 
  • Sproul says “saving faith requires information.” And not just any information, but information about the Word. That is why expository preaching is so important. Saving faith requires the light, and the light is Jesus, and Jesus is the Word (John 1).
    • In the previous study, we quoted Sproul’s statement that salvation requires light AND heat. That’s what Romans 10:2 is saying, that Jews had “heat without light”, zeal without knowledge. And that’s why expository preaching is so much better. Preaching more of the Word produces more light. 
  • The Latin word for send in v. 15 is missia, from which we get the word mission.
    • Missionaries cannot go unless someone supports and sends them.
    • But we are also all called to “go”, to be beautiful feet. Sproul says not to think of this as a duty but as an extraordinary privilege of the elect, of having beautiful feet in the eyes of those who hear and respond to the gospel.
      • So, while it is not a works-based duty, we are nevertheless called. And for true believers, we are called to service, to “doulos”, being unashamed slaves of Christ. But this “slavery” is a privilege, an exciting honor to use the gift of faith the Holy Spirit has given us. This may not be the best analogy, but It reminds me of my grandson Owen, who is really into knives lately, and how excited he would get when I asked him to use his knife to cut fishing line. It wasn’t like this ball-and-chain-slavery task, he was excited to use his knife and to help be a part of the fishing mission. I think we should consider our salvation in the same way, as a gift to get excited about using, and hit the ground running with those beautiful feet!
• Up next, Romans 10:16-21