Romans 10

     From the divine standpoint, everything is settled in heaven.  If it were not so, nothing would be certain, and chaos and chance would be the ultimate reality.  Now Paul moves to cut off the objection (or the excuse) that his high view of God amounts to fatalism, that it makes God the author of sin, and man not responsible, “For who resists His will?”  (9:19).

     10:1-3.  But Israel has every reason to know better.  They know that they are responsible.  In fact, they glory in their responsibility, seeking with zeal to establish their own righteousness in obedience to God.  Yet they remain in ignorance of the fact that the law is a covenant of death for them, and that God’s righteousness comes through faith as a gift (cf. 7:6; 8:2).

     10:4.  “For Christ is the end of the law….”  Or, goal of the law (margin), and is so translated in 1 Tim.1:5.

     The Jews have confused the road for the destination.  The law is a road to take us to Christ, but has become a treadmill from which the Jews refused to dismount.

     10:5-11.  Yes, Moses has said the law must be kept.  But there is only One who has truly done so.  The way of faith is not alien to Moses’ law.  Moses himself believed and preached the same doctrine of salvation by faith that Paul is preaching (8).  See Deut.29:4; 30:6, 11-14, which teaches the same gospel as Ro.9 and 10.  “It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing”  (John 6:63).  (Cf. Ro.10:6-7 to John 3:13.)  Our hope of salvation is not the law, but a risen Savior (9-11).

     10:12-13.  Even the teaching that faith opens the door of salvation to Jew and Greek without distinction is not alien to the OT.  Paul cites Isaiah (11) and Joel (13), both of whom teach that the LORD (Jehovah) will save all who call upon him in faith.  Paul sees the OT Jehovah as the same Jesus whom we must confess and call upon to be saved.  Jesus is Lord (9).  “I and the Father are one”  (John 10:30).

     10:14-15.  John Murray says that the preposition in (14) is not needed.  They have not believed him.  They have not believed the word of God.

     These questions are all excellent sounding excuses.  Have they really heard?

     10:16.  Of course they have heard the good news.  Over and over it has come.  But it has not been believed.

     10:17.  True hearing comes “by the word of Christ,” i.e., by his command, as when he commanded the dead Lazarus to come forth.  (The margin reading, the word concerning Christ, is not the point here, I think).

     10:18-21.  But indeed they had heard the preaching, as all these OT verses show.  Many strangers to God found him without looking, but those who should have known him best refused to believe.  They could not come to him because they would not believe.  There’s your free will (see John 5:40).  Moral inability is a choice. They cannot because they will not. They will not because in their moral depravity, they cannot. “Create in me a clean heart, O God” (Ps. 51:10).