Salvation, Not Justification
Romans 10:1-4
I was reminded
today of an e-mail I got today about a film that is coming out. It’s a
Christian film and it has a title like “Alone, Yet Not Alone”. It is a true
story. I saw the trailer on it and it’s really good. It’s the story of two
sisters who were captured by the Delaware Indians in 1755 in the French and
Indian War. The family was comprised of strong believers so there’s a good
lead-in before that emphasizing the role of the Word of God in the family. There’s
this Indian raid and the girls are kidnapped and taken about 300 miles away to
Ohio. It’s the story of how they learned to trust God to never leave or forsake
them during that time until, I assume, they eventually got away. The original
story was written by one of their descendants so it should be good. I never
heard about it before but I looked at the trailer and it looked very
interesting. Sometimes the trailer is all that’s good about a movie so you
never know. I’m just going to put that out there and someone can see it and
tell me about it.
Okay, we’re in
Romans 10 but what I want to do before we get into Romans 10 is to review. Last
week I was not here and you saw a lesson in 1 Thessalonians and two and three
lessons back, we went through the end of Romans 9, dealing with the issues
related to the hardening of Pharaoh’s heart and then repeating that in terms of
understanding the importance of free will.
Free will is so
significant in history. God has placed it within the structure of history as
God oversees the flow of history, He allows human beings to have free will. He
oversees history in such a way that no matter what decisions humans may make,
no matter what chaos their free will decisions bring into history, God
nevertheless is so great in His sovereignty that He still works things out in
terms of the direction of His plan. His plan is never put into jeopardy by
human decisions. Nevertheless He’s able to allow human beings to have that
freedom to make those decisions even within the structure of the outworking of
His plan.
This is
one of the things that we see with Israel. We see this again and again and will
see it many times in Matthew and in Acts where there is an offer of the
Kingdom. What makes it a legitimate offer is that they could have responded and
if they had, things would have been different. That’s what makes it legitimate.
But they didn’t. Their turning back was not God’s sovereign will but it was His
revealed will. If they had turned back, then of course, history would have been
different. We only know that in hindsight. We only know God’s sovereign will in
hindsight as we look back.
It’s
interesting that we have this intersection between Matthew, Acts, and Romans in
focusing on God’s plan for Israel. So I want to go through a little review
because it’s important to understand how this section of Romans, Romans 9, 10,
and 11, fits within the structure of Paul’s discourse on the righteousness of
God in Romans. Now one thing I want to direct your attention to is a problem
which we’re going to have to address in a problem passage in Romans 10, verses
9 and 10. This is often used as a witnessing verse and it’s totally ripped out
of context. You can’t understand it if you don’t understand the context.
When we get
into the Bible Study class on Sunday night, one of the things we’ll get to
especially in interpretation and it’s also important in observation, is to
understand context—context, context, context. It changes how we
understand certain things. There’s a number of different contexts that we look
at. We look at the context surrounding a verse, we look at the context
surrounding the chapter or the division within the book and we also look at the
context of the recipients of the epistle. Where are they coming from? Who are
they? What are the issues they’re facing?
We also look at
the context of the writer. Who is writing the epistle? That would be Paul or
Peter or John. So all of those are different contexts that are important for
properly interpreting and understanding a passage. We come to Romans 10:9-10
and we read, “That if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in
your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.” Now there are
a lot of people who think that what that means is that if I want to be saved I
need to one, believe Jesus died for my sins, and two, I have to have a public
profession of faith or at least tell somebody.
So that’s two
things, believe with my heart and confess with my mouth but that runs contrary
to all of the expressions of the Gospel of John which states over 96 times that
the issue is believe and believe alone. So how do we reconcile that? What is
Paul talking about? Is he talking about justification in Romans 10: 9-10 or is
he talking about something else? What does he mean when he uses the phrase,
‘you will be saved’? That is why I entitled this lesson: Salvation, Not
Justification because too often they are different things, especially when we
live in our culture.
Not only do you
have the Biblical context but also when someone is teaching they have to
understand the context of the audience. Our audience has a context and your
context is early 21st century American evangelicalism which has a
history going back two or three hundred years. Within that history you and I have
been taught that the word “saved” is always equivalent to the word “justified”
and it’s not. The word “saved” has different meanings and different nuances in
Scripture and you have to understand what is being said. Just because you read
that “you will be saved” doesn’t mean that Paul has justification in mind. But
that’s how most American evangelicals read it. When they read that they say,
“Oh well, if you want to get to heaven, you have to confess with your mouth as
well as believe in your heart.” But that’s not what that is saying.
We need to set
this up because that word “saved” is crucial for understanding Romans 10,
especially because Paul uses that in the very first verse, “Brethren, my
heart’s desire and my prayer to God for them is for their salvation.” Is Paul
talking about justification there or is he talking about something else? So
let’s investigate that. To do that we have to spend a little time on context
and review since it’s been a couple of weeks since we’ve thought about Romans.
A brief
outline of Romans is that the first 17 verses in chapter 1 contain the
introduction where Paul brings into focus the issue related to the
righteousness of God. This is seen especially in the gospel statement of verses
16 and 17 where Paul says, “For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the
power of God for salvation…” There’s that key word again. “… to everyone who
believes…” Notice he doesn’t say anything here about making a public
confession. “… to everyone who believes, to the Jew first, and also to the
Greek…” Here’s that principle of taking the gospel first to Israel during that
introductory period or that transitional period of the 1st century.
Verse 17, “For in it [the gospel] the righteousness of God is revealed from
faith to faith as it is written, “but the righteous [the just] shall live by
faith.’” So the issue introduced there for the epistle to the Romans has to do
with righteousness.
Then in Romans
1:18 to 3:20, we saw that there is a logically developed rationale for why all
are under condemnation, for why all have sinned and fallen short of the glory
of God. There’s a condemnation of Gentiles in 1:18-32, the condemnation of the
moral person who thinks that somehow he has standing with God because he is
moral or religious. There’s a condemnation of unfaithful Jews in 2:17-3:8 and
then the conclusion is that all are condemned. In Romans 3:21 to 5:21 the focus
is on justification and there’s a transition there in the last part of Romans 5
leading into or preparing the groundwork for the next section, Romans 6:1 to
8:39 dealing with sanctification.
What’s
important to understand here is that when things sound like Paul is talking
about justification, for example the “wages of sin is death but the gift of God
is eternal life” think about how many times we’ve all used that as a gospel
verse. We say that this is how you get saved except that verse is not in the
justification section of Romans. It’s in the sanctification section of Romans.
What Paul’s talking about in Romans 6 has nothing to do with how to get eternal
life. It’s talking about how to experience eternal life in this life.
If we don’t
walk with God, then we’re walking by the sin nature and the wages of sin in the
believer’s life is death, not eternal condemnation but temporal death, carnal
death, in this life. That verse ends, “…but the free gift of God is eternal
life.” This is a reminder that God has given us eternal life and we are to
reckon ourselves dead to sin. That’s the whole argument we saw in Romans 6. So
Romans 6 through Romans 8 is a section on the spiritual life,
Then there’s a shift to Israel in Romans
9, 10, and 11. Why does Paul suddenly start talking about Israel? The last five
chapters, 12-16 deal with application. Now as we relate this to righteousness,
break it down this way. In Romans 1:18 to 5:21, Paul is relating Israel to the
righteousness of God and justification. He shows that the Gentiles are not
saved, the moral person isn’t saved, and guess what? Israel isn’t saved either
because they’re failing in the realm of righteousness.
In Romans 6:1
to 8:17 he relates Israel to the righteousness of God and to sanctification as
he’s contrasting grace and law. This is really seen especially in Romans,
chapter 8. Now the whole section is not about Israel. I’m just pointing out
that within these sections he relates his basic theme to Israel as well. In
Romans 8:18-39 he relates Israel to the righteousness of God in glorification
and in Romans 9:11-36 he relates Israel to the righteousness of God and His
vindication.
This is because
the question coming out of the Jewish community is, “Why has God done this? Why
has God brought this discipline or judgment upon Israel, if He’s righteous? How
can we rely upon God after He’s made these promises to us and now it looks like
He’s turning to the Gentiles and He’s forgotten about us. So how can we trust
Him? How can He be a righteous God if what you Christians are saying is true?”
Then in Romans 12:1-16:27 as he’s dealing with application Paul relates Israel
to the righteousness of God and its practical applications. So Israel is part
of every section in Romans, not just Romans 9-11.
What we see in
terms of background here is that Paul is viewing Israel as an entity, not as
individual Jews, but as a corporate entity. There are two issues at stake with
Israel, one is individual justification, and the other is the national destiny
of Israel so that as a corporate entity as a nation, they turn to God then God
will fulfill the covenants, the Abrahamic, the Land, the Davidic, and the New
Covenant. This is what I covered on Tuesday night. And Israel could at any time
because of free will, could corporately turn and call upon the Messiah to
deliver them. They won’t but they could and if they did, that would trigger a
series of events prophesied in the Old Testament leading to the restoration of
Israel as a regenerate people to the land.
There are going
to be two returns, clearly seen and prophesied in the Old Testament. One is a
return of Jews to the land as unregenerate. A lot of people think there’s only
one return and it’s regenerate. In Isaiah 11:11 it talks about the second
worldwide return. The second worldwide return is a return in regeneration, a
spiritual return. The first return is a return in apostasy. I believe that’s
what we’ve been witnessing for the last hundred years or so. Part of the reason
for that is that there’s never been this large of a percentage of return of
Jews to the land. We’re just within one or two percentage points of half of the
Jews in the world living in the land of Israel. That kind of percentage has
never happened. It didn’t happen at the time of Christ. It never happened under
Zerubbabel or Nehemiah. They just had a small group that return.
At the time of
Christ the vast number of Jews lived outside of the land. They were in Egypt.
They were in Babylon. They were scattered throughout the Roman Empire and in
Turkey, Cappadocia, Pontus, places we’ve been studying in Acts. So God has a
plan for Israel and even though in one sense it is still on pause, in another
sense it’s being ramped up as we see this return to Israel.
Think about
when the Tribulation will begin. A lot of people haven’t thought it out very
well and they think the Rapture begins the Tribulation but that’s not what
begins it. The Tribulation is a term used to describe the seventieth week of
Daniel in the prophecy in Daniel, chapter 9, verses 24 and following. It’s a
seven-year period. What begins that seven-year period, what starts the
stopwatch, is this peace treaty that is signed between the Antichrist and
Israel. Therefore, in order for that to start there has to be a political
entity of Jews in the land that are qualified to sign a peace treaty with the
Antichrist.
That means
there has to be return to Jews to the land to establish that kind of corporate
entity. Well, that’s happened now. A hundred or so years ago when Clarence
Larkin was writing his classic book on dispensational truth, in his
commentaries on Revelation and Daniel, he opined that if the Rapture were to
occur in his day, it would probably be another forty or fifty years before the
Tribulation could begin because so much would have to happen to have the
scenario in place that we see in Revelation 5 and 6 at the beginning of
Daniel’s seventieth week. Now a hundred years later we’ve seen all these things
take place, the return of the Jews to the land to establish a nation and to
grow to the size, the population size, that it is today. That was barely
imaginable a hundred years ago and yet Israel has grown to great strength
today.
So we go back
and we understand that there’s a plan for the nation as a corporate entity as
the seed, the descendants, of Abraham. So God chooses Abraham and his
descendants, as a corporate group, through which God’s going to do four things.
First of all, God’s going to bless all the nations through the coming of the
Savior “seed” as promised originally through Eve and then traced through those
genealogies which everyone skips in Genesis 5, 10, and 11. That seed line
that’s traced all the way down form Abraham, all the way to Christ, as we’ve
seen in Luke 3 showing that Jesus is the seed of Abraham, also the seed of
David and therefore qualifies to be the Messiah.
Romans 9: 4-5
showed us that Israel as a whole is the recipient of God’s covenants and
promises but because of disobedience they’re not experiencing the blessings of
those covenants and promises today. Third we see that the Messiah would enter
the human race through Israel and would come initially to Israel as a nation.
In John 1 it says “He came unto His own and His own received Him not but as
many as received Him to them He gave the power to be called the sons of God.”
Fourth, we see
in Romans 9 that all of Israel is not Israel. True Israel is the regenerate,
ethnic descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. That’s the remnant which is
the term used in the Old Testament. So not all of Israel is true Israel but
only those who believe in God and His promised Messiah are true Israel. That’s
in Romans 9:6. As we looked at this we seek to understand how Romans 9, 10, and
11 fit. We have to see this in relationship to the theme of Romans in terms of
the righteousness of God. We have to understand how that has impacted Israel.
Romans 9 demonstrates the righteousness of God in His rejection of national
Israel. Why did God reject national Israel? Because they were offered the
Messiah and they rejected the Messiah so now they’re under Divine judgment but
it’s not permanent. Romans 10 then demonstrates that that rejection is based on
Israel’s corporate neglect of the revelation given to them.
This is seen in
the quotation of certain verses, for example in verse 8 where it says “The Word
is near you, in your mouth and in your heart”. The Word of God has presented
the case for the Messiah but they have neglected the revelation that was given
to them and they substituted the viewpoints and the opinions of the rabbis in
the 2nd Temple period rather than holding to a view of Scripture
alone. They added the tradition of the rabbis so that when the Messiah shows up
they don’t recognize it.
In Romans 11 we
see the answer to the question of whether God has [permanently, implied] cast
away His people. No, Paul says. God still has a plan for national, ethnic
Israel. He has not gone back on His promises. There is a future restoration of
Israel. There’s a future regeneration of Israel and ultimately all Israel will
be saved. So we not only have Romans 10:9 and 10 talking about the future
salvation of Israel but three verses later we read another quote from Joel 2,
“For whoever will call on the name of the Lord will be saved.” That has to fit
with the context of Romans 11, which emphasizes at the end that all Israel will
be saved.
They’re all
quoting from the same Old Testament prophecies. So Paul is connecting what the
righteousness of God is doing in relation to Israel to what God has stated in
the Old Testament. Looking at an overview of Romans 9-11 we see that this
begins with a vindication of God’s righteousness in light of Israel’s rejection
of the righteousness of God by faith. That’s the issue.
It’s so
important to look at the word “righteousness” if you’re having any
communication with someone Jewish and you’re starting to get into any kind of
expression of the gospel. Righteousness is a key concept. The Hebrew word is tzedek. That’s a word you’re familiar
with and you understand it as righteousness. By the 2nd Temple
period of Judaism the word began to be interpreted and understood as good works
and charitable deeds. That’s going to come out a lot when we get into the
Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5-7. They thought within rabbinical tradition
that righteousness came from works. This is the problem. They’re not seeing
righteousness as a gift from God, as it was with Abraham, but they’re seeing
righteousness as something that is the result of what we do.
So God rejects
Israel and the question that comes up as Paul’s statement in Romans 8:38-39
that nothing can separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our
Lord. A Jewish listener would say, “Well, if nothing can separate us from the
love of God, how come Israel has now been separated from the love of God? Has
God abandoned us? God’s not really righteous, is He?” So Romans 9-11 fits into
that explanation that focuses on God’s dealing with Israel as a whole, which is
God’s plan for ethnic, corporate Israel. It’s important to understand that.
There are so
many varying contradictory views that would all be resolved if we just
understood that in this whole three chapter section Paul is dealing with
corporate Israel. That is, God’s plan for Israel in history. Not individual
Jews but His corporate plan that will be fulfilled and will demonstrate the
fulfillment of the Abrahamic covenant and the other covenants related to it.
We need to
remember three things. First of all, God promised to send a savior to Israel
and He fulfilled that promise. The promised savior came first to Israel. In the
early part of Jesus’ ministry, remember He sends the disciples two by two and
tells them not to go to the Gentiles. He tells them to go to the house of Judah
and the house of Israel. Don’t go to the Gentiles at all. Now does that verse
have an application for today? No! There’s no application there. It’s a
statement that is related directly to those twelve individuals and what they
were to do at a specific point in time. There’s no application.
People get real
fuzzy thinking about this concept of application that everything in the Bible
ought to apply. It doesn’t. There are some things that don’t apply. There are
some things that are already applications and other things that are stated
principles and do apply. The promised savior comes first to Israel and the
message is only for Israel. This is why you have that really strange scene
where the Phoenician woman, the Canaanite woman, comes up and she touches the
hem of Jesus’ garment. He turns around and says, “Who touched me?” He felt her
presence and then He praises her. Up to this point His ministry was just to the
Jews and she says, “Even the dogs get the crumbs off the table.” Dogs was a
derogatory term used to describe Gentiles by the Jews and she just wants the
overflow of grace, the crumbs that come off the table.
The point is He
came first to Israel. The third thing we need to remember is that Israel as a
whole, as a corporate entity, as represented by their leaders makes a decision
to reject Jesus. That’s it; their leaders represent them. It’s a corporate
decision. In the end, we see very clearly that in the future you have Jews who
listen to what Jesus said when they see the abomination of desolation and they
see the other signs at the mid-point of the Tribulation, Jesus told them when
they see those things happening, they’re to head to the mountains. “Don’t go
back home. Woe to the woman who is with child. Go to the mountains.” So they
do. Only the ones who leave and head to the hills are saved. They’re ultimately
delivered.
They’re the
ones who are already justified when they get into the wilderness as a corporate
entity then they will call upon the name of the Lord as a nation. That’s when
Jesus returns. When they call upon the name of the Lord at the end of the
Tribulation when they’re in Basra, over near Petra, they’re already justified.
Now they want the Lord to return to physically deliver them and establish the
Kingdom.
So God’s
rejection of Israel, Paul says in chapter 9, is not inconsistent with His
justice. That’s Paul’s whole point we’ve been covering in Romans 9. It’s not
inconsistent with God’s justice and His righteousness because Israel has
rejected God’s righteousness “by faith alone”. Because Israel has rejected
God’s free offer of righteousness, God is righteous in bringing them under
condemnation.
From chapter
9:30 through 10:13 the focus is on Israel itself being worthy of blame because
it rejected God’s righteousness through faith and replaced it with
righteousness through or from the source of works. That’s why Israel is rejected;
they rejected a righteousness by faith. Then in
10:14-21 Israel’s unbelief is not excused on the basis of a lack of
opportunity. That’s what Paul develops in those verses, that they’ve had plenty
of opportunity. Then in Romans 11: 1-10 Israel’s rejection is neither complete
nor final. That brings us to the end of the section.
It’s
important sometimes to read the last verse of a section, or the conclusion, so
you know where the author is taking you. What you see in Romans 11:26 and 27 is
that when Paul wraps up this discussion in Romans 9-11, he says, “And so all
Israel will be saved; just as it is written, ‘The Deliverer will come from
Zion, He will remove ungodliness from Jacob. This is My covenant with them,
When I take away their sins.” When we look at these verses we see that this is
a citation from the Old Testament from Isaiah 59: 20 and 21. So Paul is
applying that and showing when it will be fulfilled.
What we see
there for the word “so” is the Greek word houto
which means “in this manner” which he’s about to describe. It’s the same word
that used in John 3:16. “For God so loved the world…” People get the idea that
it says God so loved the world. It should be translated, “God loved the world
in this way that He gave His unique son that whosoever believes on Him should
not perish but have everlasting life.”
The word that’s
translated remove or turned away is apostrepho
which means to take something by force, to remove it or to cut it off or to
cause a state or condition to cease. So God is going to remove this ungodliness
from Jacob. It’s going to be the end of the blindness on Israel during this
dispensation and this is going to be removed because this time Israel is going
to accept the Messiah and turn to God. This word apostrepho is the same word used in Hebrews 10:4 for taking
away sins, for removing something.
Okay, that’s
our introduction. Now in Romans 10:1 Paul says, “Brethren my heart’s desire and
my prayer to God for them [Israel] is for their salvation.” This expresses
Paul’s love for Israel. There’s no hint of anti-Semitism in Paul. Paul is
Jewish. He doesn’t hate his own people and he expresses his love for them
several times in Romans 9-11. In Romans 9:3 he said, “For I could wish that I
myself were accursed, separated from Christ for the sake of my brethren, my
kinsmen according to the flesh.” Here he expresses that it’s his heart’s desire
and his continual prayer to God that Israel be saved. But what does that mean?
Is he saying that they may be justified or is he saying something else? Here’s
the phrase. It’s the preposition eis which indicates a direction toward
something, an ultimate goal, and the word is soteria
in the accusative. It’s the noun soteria
in the accusative and it’s just translated salvation. It’s really important to
understand how Paul uses salvation. I don’t think Paul ever uses the word group
from sozo, the verb or soteria, the noun, to ever refer to
justification.
We need to
remind ourselves that there are three stages of salvation spoken of in the
scripture and the word for saved is used for all three together in some places
or for each phase individually. In phase one we talk about justification. So
one way to make this clear is to talk about justification salvation. Paul
doesn’t use the word salvation or saved as a synonym for justification anywhere
in Romans. He’s very technical. When he’s talking about how to get right with
God, he uses the word justify. What he does in Romans 10:9 and 10, after the
verse that I read to you earlier in verse 9 which talks about confessing with
your mouth and believing in your heart, Paul then explains that by saying, “For
with the heart a person believes, resulting in righteousness…” That’s
justification language. And then he says, “For with the mouth confession is
made unto salvation…”
It’s as if it’s
a second step. He’s talking about something different form justification. The
spiritual life or phase two is sanctification salvation. It’s talking about how
we are saved in this life from the consequences of sin and the third phase we
talk about is glorification. So in phase one we talk about being saved
from the penalty of sin, that we were saved in the past. In phase two we talk
about being saved from the power of sin, that you are being saved continuously,
every day, every time we go through spiritual life we are being saved. Earl
Radmacher used to try to shock people by saving, “I was saved yesterday. I was
saved the day before. I was saved this morning. I was saved this afternoon. I’m
saved now and I’ll be saved tomorrow.” He was using the term saved in this
sense, in terms of sanctification, because it’s our moment-by-moment spiritual
growth. Final salvation is when we’re saved from the presence of sin. Paul
talks about that in the future tense, “you will be saved”.
So the word
salvation has to be understood in terms of these different tenses. Now in
Romans 1:16 and 17 we see the first mention of the word salvation. “For I am
not ashamed of the gospel for it is the power of God for salvation…” Now one of
the first things that happens is you read that and you see the word gospel so
you think it’s referring to how you get to heaven. But there’s a narrow use of
the word gospel and a broad use of the word gospel. Romans is all about the
gospel but Romans is telling us a lot more than just how to get to heaven.
Romans is telling us not only how to get to heaven, how to get justified, but
how a justified person is supposed to live. How you and I are supposed to live
on an everyday basis and what that means. That’s salvation in the full sense.
So gospel has a
narrow sense of the good news that we need to hear in order to be justified and
have eternal life and go to heaven when we die and secondly, gospel has a broad
sense to include the whole realm of Christian doctrine because everything in
the New Testament is good news. It teaches us how to live, how to have the joy
of our salvation, how to have peace, and how to live for God. That is all part
of the gospel so we have to address this issue when we’re looking at passages
and not interpret every verse because our 19th century American
evangelicalism has restricted the meaning of gospel of just how to get to
heaven. The Bible doesn’t use it in that narrow sense.
We talk about
the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John but all four of those gospels tell
us a lot about how to live the spiritual life. They’re not just telling us how
to get the spiritual life. We have to understand that gospel has a narrow use
and a broad use. We see this connection in Romans 1:16 and 17 between the
gospel that is the power of salvation to everyone who believes. This is
emphasizing that our broad salvation from spiritual birth to the time we’re
taken to be with the Lord is based on the faith-rest drill. We’re trusting God
and mixing our faith with the promises of God so that as we walk step-by-step,
we’re depending upon Him and resting in His care. “Casting all your care upon
Him because He cares for you.” For those who are disobedient there’s the wrath
of God in time. So Romans is talking about time in history, time in our lives,
not talking about some sort of future, eschatological event but realizing that
real time salvation or deliverance from the power of sin in this life.
Now when we get
into Romans 10 we see the next time the word salvation used in Romans 10:10 and
1l. We find it used three times in Romans 10. The first verse uses the word
saved. If you just looked at that verse you might walk away and say, “Well he’s
talking about justification there.” But you have to look at the whole context
of how the word is used throughout the entire context. He could be talking
about justification there but he doesn’t use the word that way in the rest of
the chapter so that argues against just reading this justification idea into
the text. “And believes unto righteousness and with the mouth confession is
made unto salvation.” This clearly distinguishes justification by faith alone,
the first part, to something in addition. Confessing with the mouth isn’t
getting you justified. It has to do with phase 2 or phase 2 salvation.
Romans 11:11
talks about salvation coming to the Gentiles. Romans 13:11 says, “Do this,
knowing the time, that it is already the hour for you to awaken from sleep, for
now salvation is nearer to us than when we believed.” They’re already justified
and Paul is again using salvation in a very different sense here than just
justification. Now let’s see how this works in terms of just the verb say.
Romans 5:9, “Much more then, having now been justified by His blood, we shall
be saved from the wrath of God through Him.” He’s using the past tense. He says
that now we’ve already been justified but we shall be saved, future tense. You
can be justified but not saved. Now if you want to interpret saved the way
evangelicals use it all the time you’re confused right now. How can we be
justified and not saved? Because the words aren’t synonyms. In some cases they
are but in many cases they’re not.
Verse 10, “For
if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His
son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life.” Jesus’
life is not the basis of justification. The basis for justification was His
death on the cross. His life was the pattern, the precedent for our spiritual
life of walking by the Holy Spirit. Romans 8:24, “For in hope we have been
saved but hope that is seen is not hope for who hopes for what he already
sees?” Now that’s all within the context of the spiritual life. It’s not in the
context of justification any more. Saved, there, is talking about our
realization of our new life in Christ, walking by the Spirit.
Then we come to
Romans 10:9 and 10 and it becomes clear that when Paul is talking about being
saved here he’s not talking about justification. He’s talking about something
in addition to justification. If you look at the original context of Joel
2 about whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved, it’s not talking
about spiritual justification. It’s talking about physical deliverance when
Israel is on the edge of being totally annihilated. So having said all that,
when we look at Romans 10:1 it’s not legitimate to think that he’s talking here
about individual Jews getting justified.
Number one,
he’s not talking about individual Jews. He’s talking about God’s plan for
corporate Israel. And number two, he’s talking about their future deliverance
because that word saved there is restated in Romans 10:9-10, the principle is
there in Romans 10:13, and then it’s restated again when you get to Romans 11;
25 and 26. So his desire is for Israel to be saved and for that fullness to
come where the Jews, as a nation, turn back and accept the Messiah at which
time He will deliver them and establish His Kingdom.
But there’s a
problem. That problem is stated in verses two and three. It says, “For I
testify about them that they have a zeal for God…” They are passionate about
God. We see a lot of secular Jews in our world. There are a lot of Jews in the U.S., and most Israelis, are completely non-religious.
They’re not observant at all. In many cases they’re just agnostic. They’re not
any different from anybody else you meet that’s just an agnostic secularist.
But there are those who do have a tremendous passion for God. I’m just
impressed by their passion and their works. I’ve been to several Shabbat
services and you just see them wearing their prayer shawls. They’ve memorized
all of their prayers. I wish my congregation had memorized half the verses
they’ve memorized.
They have a
passion for God but there’s something missing. That’s what Paul says here,
“It’s not in accordance with knowledge.” Knowledge in the Greek is epignosis, not just gnosis,
which is an awareness of academic knowledge or facts, but it’s a full
knowledge, an applicable knowledge. They don’t have a full knowledge or full
understanding of the scripture. Why? That’s the next verse. It begins with
“for” which in the Greek is the Greek word gar, which indicates he’s now explaining
what he just said. “For not knowing about God’s righteousness…” Now that’s the
theme of Romans, the righteousness of God. And they’re ignorant of God’s
righteousness.
Righteousness
is a key issue in rabbinic Judaism. But it’s tzedakah, which is
the doing of good works and charitable deeds. In fact, one of the major ideas
in modern Judaism is the idea that the role of the Jew is to repair the world.
In Hebrew it’s tikkun olam. Their job
is to repair the world, to right the wrongs, to take care of people. We would
say it’s a little bit of a perversion of the blessing command that God gave to
Abraham that they were to be a blessing to the whole world. And so, this is why
you see things like when they had the earthquake in the Dominican Republic, the
very first emergency responders on the scene were from Israel. What they’re
doing in Africa and going to the impoverished nations and teaching them
principles of agriculture and how to farm and what to do about water, solving
the water problems. It’s just incredible. Many times their teams go in but
under some sort of non-government organization title because the people or the
government is hostile to Israel but they go in anyway just sort of as a
non-government organization and they help teach the people things.
This is in
contrast to Americans, we throw billions of dollars at impoverished countries
and we send in tractors and all kinds of things they can use. But you know
what? We don’t teach them how to read so they can’t fix anything we send
because they can’t read the manuals. What the Israelis do is they send
educators in to teach the people how to read, how to read the manuals and how
to use the manuals. You know, it’s like such a blinding flash of the obvious
but Americans think that if we can just dump a load of cash on people then we
can go away and our conscience is now clear. We haven’t done anything but
create an enormous problem.
So this is all
part of the Jewish idea that they are doing tzedakah,
they’re doing works. These works, they believe, accumulate for righteousness.
But this is not what the Old Testament teaches. In Isaiah 64:5, Isaiah who is a
mature believer says, “And all [including himself] have become like one who is
unclean…” Everyone of us Judean Jews in approximately 670 B.C. he’s including. “And all our righteous deeds are
like a filthy garment…” In the Old King James it’s, “All of our righteousnesses
are as filthy rags.” This is not our unrighteounesses but all our
righteousnesses, our good deeds, our tzedakah,
all of our charitable works are as filthy rags in the sight of
God.” That’s
God’s opinion of the best we have to offer.
Righteousness
is a key theme in the Old Testament. Even if you go along and say, “Okay, let’s
just call it charitable deeds to understand the concept.” How did you get
righteousness in the Old Testament? You have to go back to Abraham. Abraham in
Genesis 15:6, “Then he [Abraham] believed in the Lord and He [God] reckoned it
to him as righteousness.” Abraham had already believed God and it was reckoned
or accounted to him as righteousness. Not because of what Abraham did but
because Abraham trusted God for his salvation. So how do you get righteousness?
Not by doing the Law because the Law wasn’t even in existence in Abraham’s
time. That’s Paul’s whole argument in Romans 3 and 4.
But how do you
get righteousness? How did Abraham get righteousness? By believing in God. And
God imputed or credited righteousness to him. That’s our doctrine of
justification by faith alone. And then what you can do is show how
righteousness is a key element of Isaiah 53. In describing the suffering
servant, the Messiah, in Isaiah 53 we read in verse 3, “He was despised and
forsaken of men, A man of sorrows and acquainted with grief…”
Jesus didn’t
fit the pre-conceived notion in 2nd Temple Judaism of what the
Messiah would be like. They thought the Messiah would be a victorious king and
not a suffering Messiah. “So he was despised and forsaken of men, a man of
sorrows and acquainted with grief, like one from whom men hide their face, He
was despised and we did not esteem Him. Surely our griefs He Himself bore, and
our sorrows He carried…” Some people get the idea that this is talking about
Jesus died for our physical healing but in the poetry of Isaiah 53 that healing
and sickness if you read through the verses is parallel to sin and bearing our
sins. We have substitutionary atonement here that the Messiah bore in His body
on the tree our sins. He endured our suffering in our place. We accounted Him
plagued, smitten and afflicted by God but He was wounded because of our sins He
was wounded because of our sins, crushed because of our iniquities.
That explains
what the sickness in verse 4 was about. Sickness is another way of talking
about sin. Verse 6, “He was crushed for our iniquities, He bore the
chastisement that made us whole.” I have quoted all of this out of the
Jewish Publication Society Tanakh from 1918 so we’re seeing how the Jewish
Bible is translated. We usually translate this, “He bore the chastisement of
our peace.” They translate, “He bore the chastisement that made us whole.” See
that’s a great way to explain the gospel. Jesus Christ, the Messiah, as a
substitute paid the penalty so that we could be made whole, so we could have shalom or peace with God. “And by His
bruises we were healed.” Healed of what? Healed of sin that brought about
spiritual death.
Verse 6, “We
all went astray like sheep.” In Judaism there’s no doctrine of original sin.
There’s no doctrine of total depravity. And yet it’s evident on the pages, such
as “all of our righteousnesses are as filthy rags.” It’s obvious. Here “we’re
all astray like sheep”. Even Isaiah has gone astray like sheep. Everyone has
the same problem. “Each goes his own way and the Lord visited upon Him, that is
upon the suffering servant, the Messiah, the guilt of us all.” That is
substitutionary atonement. Isaiah 53:7-8, “He was maltreated yet He was
submissive. He did not open His mouth. Like a sheep being led to slaughter, like
a ewe, dumb before those who shear her, He did not open His mouth.” That was
fulfilled with Jesus.
He did
not open His mouth, or utter a sound, until God poured out our sins upon Him
upon the Cross. They whipped him, they beat him almost to death and yet He did
not cry out until our sins were imputed to Him. Verse 8, “By oppressive
judgment He was taken away. Who could describe His abode? For He was cut off
from the land of the living [killed] through the sin of my people who deserved
the punishment—once again the idea of substitutionary atonement. And then
in verse 9 and 10 we read, “His grave was set among the wicked…” That talks
about his grave was a rich man’s grave, Joseph of Aramathea’s grave. Then look
at verse 10, “But the Lord chose to crush Him by disease that if He made
Himself an offering for guilt.” A guilt offering. Again that’s a picture of
substitution. “He might see offspring and have long life.” Then we go to verse
12, “Assuredly, I will give Him the many as His fortune. He shall receive the
multitude as His spoil for He exposed Himself to death and was numbered among
the sinners whereas He bore the guilt of the many and made intercession for
sinners.”
Now when we get
into this what we see is that in the Hebrew, it talks about justification. That
He is the One who became the One who justified. That doesn’t come across in the
Hebrew translation. In verse 12 it expresses the fact in the Hebrew that when
He was numbered among the sinners and He bears the guilt of the many that He is
the One who brings justification. Now in the New Testament we read that it’s
not by works of righteousness which we have done…” This is the concept out of
Judaism. “…But according to His mercies He saves us by the washing of
regeneration and renewal by the Holy Spirit.”
This is why
Paul then goes into the 4th verse of chapter 10, “For Christ is the
end of law for righteousness, to everyone who believes.” Christ has fulfilled
the Law in His life because He is perfectly righteous so then we can receive
righteousness by believing in Him. We’ll come back next time and start looking
at that particular passage.
I see I got a
verse out of context. Verse 11 in Isaiah 53,”As a result of the anguish of His
soul, He will see it and be satisfied; By His knowledge the Righteous One, My
servant will justify the many.” Christ is the Righteous One and He makes the
many righteous. That’s justification. So this idea of righteousness runs its
thread through so many of these key passages in the Old Testament. It’s
not a righteousness that comes from the Law. This is what Romans 10:4 says,
“For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes.”
The Jews in verse 3 sought to establish their own righteousness by not
submitting to the righteousness of God so we’ll look at how this righteousness
plays out in understanding the rest of Romans 10 and the future deliverance of
Israel next week.