Reflections on Romans 10

Romans 10 (Contemporary English Version)
1. Dear friends, my greatest wish and my prayer to God is for the people of Israel to be saved.
   
2. I know they love God, but they don't understand
   
3. what makes people acceptable to him. So they refuse to trust God, and they try to be acceptable by obeying the Law.
   
4. But Christ makes the Law no longer necessary for those who become acceptable to God by faith.
   
5. Moses said that a person could become acceptable to God by obeying the Law. He did this when he wrote, "If you want to live, you must do all that the Law commands."
   
6. But people whose faith makes them acceptable to God will never ask, "Who will go up to heaven to bring Christ down?"
   
7. Neither will they ask, "Who will go down into the world of the dead to raise him to life?"
   
8. All who are acceptable because of their faith simply say, "The message is as near as your mouth or your heart." And this is the same message we preach about faith.
   
9. So you will be saved, if you honestly say, "Jesus is Lord," and if you believe with all your heart that God raised him from death.
   
10. God will accept you and save you, if you truly believe this and tell it to others.
    
11. The Scriptures say that no one who has faith will be disappointed,
    
12. no matter if that person is a Jew or a Gentile. There is only one Lord, and he is generous to everyone who asks for his help.
    
13. All who call out to the Lord will be saved.
    
14. How can people have faith in the Lord and ask him to save them, if they have never heard about him? And how can they hear, unless someone tells them?
    
15. And how can anyone tell them without being sent by the Lord? The Scriptures say it is a beautiful sight to see even the feet of someone coming to preach the good news.
    
16. Yet not everyone has believed the message. For example, the prophet Isaiah asked, "Lord, has anyone believed what we said?"
    
17. No one can have faith without hearing the message about Christ.
    
18. But am I saying that the people of Israel did not hear? No, I am not! The Scriptures say, "The message was told everywhere on earth. It was announced all over the world."
    
19. Did the people of Israel understand or not? Moses answered this question when he told that the Lord had said, "I will make Israel jealous of people who are a nation of nobodies. I will make them angry at people who don't understand a thing."
    
20. Isaiah was fearless enough to tell that the Lord had said, "I was found by people who were not looking for me. I appeared to the ones who were not asking about me."
    
21. And Isaiah said about the people of Israel, "All day long the Lord has reached out to people who are stubborn and refuse to obey."
    
    

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    A zeal for God does not, in itself, bring salvation, Paul says. He could attest to the zeal many Jews had for God, but their zeal was without knowledge. It was misguided. They sought to "establish their own righteousness" and thus had not "submitted to God's righteousness." (10:3) God's righteousness is through Christ who is "the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes." (10:4) The key here is the submission of our will to God's will. We are all too inclined to do it our way - to keep the control.
    
    Paul makes clear how this righteousness by faith takes place: "With the heart one believes, resulting in righteousness, and with the mouth one confesses, resulting in salvation." (10:10) Or, to state it another way, he says, "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." (10:9) Paul has pointed out in earlier passages that this means of salvation God has provided through faith in Jesus is a stumblingblock for many. It doesn't make sense to them, so they follow their own religious system that makes sense to them but which will not lead to righteousness.
    
    In spite of the special position the Jews have had in bringing both the law and Christ to all people, God's salvation is not just for them. Paul says, "there is no distinction between Jew and Greek since the same Lord of all is rich to all who call on Him." (10:12) Therefore, "Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved." (10:13) Not only is there no distinction between the Jew and the Greek (Gentile) in regard to salvation through faith in Christ, neither is there any distinction between them as to their rejection of this means to salvation. Jews as well as Gentiles have, and will continue, to reject God's righteousness through Christ. And there is no other means of salvation available to either, as stated in Acts 4:12: "There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to people by which we must be saved."