Righteousness and Life
Romans 10:4-8
We’re in Romans
10 and I’m going to start off with a little review. I covered a lot last time
and had a couple of comments. Someone said, “You went so fast.” I’m trying to
figure out when I went slowly. It’s been 20 years or so. I don’t go slowly.
Let’s review the outline we went over. Romans begins in the first chapter with
an introduction. Then in 1:18-3:20 the focus is on the condemnation of
unbelievers. First there’s the condemnation of Gentiles, reprobate, pagan
Gentiles who are immersed in immorality. Immorality isn’t the only expression
of the sin nature. There’s also the moral person. This is the person who thinks
they can achieve righteousness on their own.
Now that theme
comes back in Romans 10 because this is the problem specifically related to the
Jews who were under the Law. They thought they could through moral obedience
measure up to the righteous standard of God. That has two aspects to it. One is
measuring up to the righteousness of God in terms of God’s character, in terms
of justification. Then living out a life that measures up and reflects the
righteousness of God in terms of what we call experiential righteousness or the
righteousness related to the Christian life.
Paul shows that
unfaithful Jews are condemned because they’re not truly faithful to the Law
though they claim to be but they can’t be 100% faithful. So the conclusion that
he reaches is that all are condemned. He states it succinctly at the beginning
of the next section, “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”
As we studied that we saw that the phrase “glory of God” was often used as a
synonym to express the entire essence of God. We fall short of God’s character,
His righteousness. So the great need for man is to be justified and
justification means to be declared righteous.
One of the sad
things that we are experiencing in terms of the dumbing down of our culture due
to problems in education is that the newer translations that are coming out
often do not use time-honored, theologically significant words in their
translations. Words like justification, reconciliation, propitiation, and
redemption. I remember one time when I was in a class in seminary in the 80’s.
I was in the doctoral program but I was sitting in on a ThM class and the
professor asked the class of about 150 students when was the last time
they heard a sermon on Sunday morning on redemption or any other of the key
elements of a primarily doctrinal sermon. No one raised their hand. No one
could think of the last time. It’s impoverishes the soul of the church and so
we have modern translations that in order to write at a 5th, 6th,
or 7th grade reading level change the vocabulary so we lose these
great words like justification and sanctification. If you use them in everyday
conversation, people just look at you like you’ve just grown a third eye, right
between the two you have. They think you’re some strange person.
Justification
does not mean, “just as if I’d never sinned”, which is a little trite saying that
a lot of people came up with to remember it. Justification means that God
declares us judicially not guilty. It’s a judicial declaration because we are
clothed, as it were, with the righteousness of Christ. God declares us not
guilty. It’s not that we haven’t sinned and it’s not as if we hadn’t sinned.
It’s that what we’re wearing is like a cloak of righteousness that’s covering
all of our sins and guilt. That means it’s not an issue any more. Our fallen
nature changes because of what happens in the baptism by the Holy Spirit but we
are still fallen sinners.
We have a new
life in Christ. We are declared righteous. After that we have to learn to live
like a righteous person. That’s called sanctification, which is our spiritual
growth. So justification is the focus of Romans 3:21-5:21. Then Paul begins to
talk about the spiritual life. Now this is important because if you want to
understand the tough passage we’re getting into tonight, you have to think in
terms of how Paul is very logically developing his argument in relation to the
righteousness of God as we go through Romans.
What happens is
Paul stops talking about justification in 5:21 and he starts talking about the
spiritual life. Then he starts talking about Israel in chapters 9, 10, and 11
and there’s one mention of justification in one of the verses we’re going to
look at tonight in Romans 5:9. The issue that confuses people is that he’s not
giving that as a salvation verse or a verse to get justified. So Romans 9-11
focuses on God’s righteousness in dealing with the corporate entity of Israel.
Then the last four chapters relate to applications of God’s righteousness to
our everyday life.
I pointed out
last time that in Romans 9:1 to 11:36 Paul relates Israel to the righteousness
of God. Israel is important all the way through Romans. That’s the purpose of
looking at it this way. This isn’t saying these sections are all about Israel
and righteousness but in every section, Paul says something about Israel and
its relationship to the righteousness of God. In Romans 9-11 he demonstrates
the righteousness of God in His rejection of national Israel because Israel has
rejected God’s prescription for how you achieve righteousness. Righteousness is
by faith and not from works.
That’s how
righteousness is clear in the Old Testament. Romans 10 demonstrates that what
happened is that Israel, as a corporate entity, as a national entity, as an
ethnic entity, basically rejected divine revelation in the Old Testament.
That’s what Romans 10 is about. Israel rejected divine revelation and if
they’re going to be delivered by God historically they’re going to have to turn
back to God’s revelation. Romans 11 then answers the question, “Has God
permanently cast away His people?” The answer is no, He still has a plan and
there will be a future restoration of Israel to the land.
So we started
with this last time, beginning with Romans 10:1, “Brethren, my heart’s desire
and prayer to God for Israel is that they may be saved.” We did a study on the
word group for salvation, sozo. Here’s it’s the noun soteria, translated
salvation. The verb is sozo, which means to be saved and also to be delivered, to
be healed. It has a range of meanings. It means to be rescued from a
predicament. So you have to read the context to determine what you’re being
rescued from. If you’re being rescued from physical illness then it has more
the idea of healing. If you’re being rescued from national destruction, then it
has to do with physical deliverance. If you’re being rescued from the penalty of
sin, then it has to do with salvation in the sense that we normally think of
it, that is gaining eternal life so that we don’t have to go to the Lake of
Fire.
There are three
stages of salvation as the word is used in scripture. And this is one of those
great little tools that I learned probably in junior high. It’s been laid out
in the writings of numerous people like Lewis Sperry Chafer and a number of
others. It really helps to understand what the scripture is teaching,
especially as it comes to this word. There are three stages or phases in the
Christian life. The first stage takes place in an instant in time. It’s called
justification. At the instant we put our faith in Jesus Christ God imputes to
us His righteousness and then because He now sees that we’re covered with the
righteousness of Christ He declares us to be righteous.
It doesn’t
change who we are. We’re not transformed into a sinless person. It doesn’t
minimize our sin nature. It does, though, take out the dominion of the sin
nature. But that sin nature is just as nasty as it ever was, if we let it. So
this is a problem. Some people think, “Oh, so-and-so can’t be a Christian. Look
at what they did.” Some of the worst people I’ve ever met are Christians
because they don’t understand anything about the spiritual life and they’ve
turned their back on God and they’re just letting their sin nature run itself
out.
I had a
conversation the other day with someone and we were talking about a sad
situation we knew of where some folks who had been married for some time were
going through a divorce. And I said, “The sad thing is they’re two wonderful
people but they’ve just given up on Christianity.” No one ever teaches people
that when you’re falling in love with each other and you’re focused on the
Lord, you’re one kind of person but when you start letting the sin nature
control your life you become another kind of person. It’s not good enough to
make sure you’re compatible when you’re walking with the Lord. You better make
sure you’re compatible when your sin nature is in control. Everybody always
looks at me real weird at that but that’s one of the most important principles
in dating. Find out if your sin nature is compatible with the other person
because if you both get out of fellowship, it’s going to be horrible and you
have to be able to survive that. If your sin nature can’t put up with their sin
nature you’re not going to last very long. That’s just reality.
Justification
doesn’t mean we’re less of a sinner. It means that it’s Christ’s righteousness
that is the basis for our salvation, not what we do. Then we have a spiritual
life. We’re born again at the instance of salvation. That’s distinct from
justification. Justification declares us to be righteous and at the same time
God imparts to us a new life. We’re born again. We have a new spiritual life, a
new spiritual capacity that wasn’t there but we’re just like an undisciplined
bratty baby and all we want to do is scream and dirty our diapers. We have to
grow up and mature and learn how to take care of our own dirty diapers.
That’s the
whole principle of the confession of sin. We have to grow up. We have to learn
the basic principles. That comes from 1 Peter 2:2 where we are commanded to
“earnestly desire or long for the sincere milk of the Word, like a newborn
babe, that we may grow by it.” That’s the spiritual life. We need to learn how
to grow. And then the third stage also takes place somewhat as a surprise to us
when we’re separated from this physical body and we’re absent from the body and
face to face with the Lord. Then, and only then, are we free from our sin
nature. This is glorification when we are face to face with the Lord.
Now the
Scripture uses the word saved to describe each of these stages and you can’t
confuse them. If you confuse them then you will have problems. First of all,
justification is sometimes referred to as being saved. Ephesians 2:8 and 9,
“For by grace you have been saved through faith…” Simple term: faith alone in
Christ alone. In Romans 3:4 and 5 saved isn’t used that way. Justification is
used that way. Justification is the more precise word than salvation. In
American evangelicalism we always want to talk about “saved.” We ask, “When did
you get saved?” I pointed out this last time that Earl Radmacher used to always
say, “I was saved yesterday; I was saved this morning; I was saved at lunch;
I’m going to be saved all afternoon, and I’m going to be saved tomorrow.” He’s
using saved in this second sense of being saved from the power of sin related
to our spiritual life. We are working out our salvation with fear and
trembling, according to Philippians 4:2.
So there’s one
sense in which saved means justification and it takes place in an instant in
time. There’s another sense in which salvation is related to our spiritual life
and we’re being saved from the power of sin. Phase 1, we’re saved from the
penalty of sin. So now our destiny is heaven. Phase 2, we’re being saved from
the power of sin so we can experience real life, and phase 3, we’re saved from
the presence of sin when we are “absent from the body, face to face with the
Lord”. It’s important to understand those things.
Romans
10:1says, “My heart’s desire and prayer to God for Israel is that they may be
saved…” Now which one of these three is he talking about? Is he talking about
that they will be justified? Is he talking that they’ll be sanctified, that
they’ll have a spiritual life? Or is he talking about phase 3? Or is he talking
about all three? He’s talking more about the end game but you can’t have the end
game unless you have phase one and phase two. That’s something that’s not
always emphasized in teaching this. The main idea here and the way he uses
“saved” for Israel is that he’s not just using it as a synonym for
justification. Sozo or soteria, as I pointed out last time in our lengthy study of
that word is never used in Romans as a synonym for justification. It’s used
primarily for the spiritual life or the end result of glorification but you
can’t be saved, phase 2, if you haven’t been justified, phase 1. That’s the
precondition. You don’t have a spiritual life to be sanctified if you haven’t
been justified and regenerated to begin with. So that’s the focus on the last
part, the completion of these stages of the spiritual life.
His prayer ultimately
is for Israel to be saved, as we’re going to see in the context, which is so
important here. If you take the text out of context, you’re just left with a
con job. That’s what most people get. Salvation, all through here, is related
to the physical deliverance of Israel at the end of the Tribulation period.
When Jesus Christ returns at the Second Coming to rescue or deliver Israel from
certain destruction at the hands of Satan and the Antichrist and the False
Prophet, Christ restores them as a nation and establishes the Kingdom. That is
their salvation. That’s what Romans 10 is all about.
It fits into
the theme of Romans 9, 10, and 11 which is whether God has forgotten about
Israel, has given up and gone back on His promises to Abraham. No, He hasn’t.
In Romans 10:2, Paul presents the problem again. It’s the same problem he
presented back in chapter 2 that the Israelites focused on works. He says, “For
I testify about them that they have a zeal for God…” They are extremely
religious, especially the observant ones that are in synagogues five times a
day, praying seven times a day, debating, sitting around and studying and
debating the minutiae of the Torah and the Talmud, day in and day out, not
working.
This is true of
the Haredim, which is a term for the ultra-orthodox Jews in Israel. They don’t
work. This is a big problem in modern Israel today. They don’t work. They don’t
serve in the army. They don’t really support the government of Israel because
they don’t think there should be an Israeli state until the Messiah comes back.
They live off of the welfare state in Israel. You have a number of different
varieties of Haredim and so that’s what they do. The men sit around all day
long and they just party and debate the fine points of the Torah. They put
Christians to shame in terms of their deep, deep knowledge, not of the Word but
of the Talmud. They’ve memorized a certain amount of Old Testament scripture,
especially from the Torah but they do what a lot of Christians are starting to
do. They can just tell you what everybody says about it but they can’t really
tell you what the text means.
We’ve gotten
that way. I saw that when I was in seminary. People sit around and talk about
what Calvin said, what Luther said, what John MacArthur said, what Chuck Swindoll
said, what so-and-so said, what J. Vernon McGee said, what Ryrie said, what
Chafer said and they go on and on and on. But can they tell you what the Bible
says? I was talking with Tommy Ice today and he said, “It’s so different in
seminary today because when we were students there you’d go around and you’d
ask what they wanted to do when they got out of seminary. The answer was that
they wanted to teach the Bible. Nowadays you don’t get that answer.” You get a
variety of other answers but that’s not their prime purpose for going to
seminary any more.
What you have
in the Jewish community is a zeal for and a passion for the Torah, a passion
for the Talmud but it’s not according to knowledge. The Greek word for
knowledge here is epignosis, which means a full knowledge. Gnosis means you know the facts, like Jack Webb in the old
Dragnet series, “Just the facts, man. Just the facts.” You know data but epignosis is where
you’ve assimilated that data into your soul because you understand it
spiritually and you believe it as the Word of God. Now their passion for God is
not according to a true, full knowledge of the Scripture.
Those of you
coming on Sunday night or watching the Bible Study Methods class you’re
learning that some of the most important words we have in Bible study are those
little connective particles, we call them in grammar, which begin each
sentence. So what we have in verse one is the statement that Paul makes that
his heart’s desire and prayer for Israel is that they be saved. Then the first
word in verse 2 is “for”. This is an explanation. He’s explaining why he’s
praying that they might be saved. Why does he need to pray that the Jews will
be saved? The Jews think they’re automatically going to go to heaven because of
either a) they’re the descendants of Abraham so they get there on Abraham’s
coattail or b) because they’re more righteous than the Gentiles because they
have Torah, they’ve studied Torah, they’ve observed the Shabbat and all these
other things.
Verse 2 is an
explanation of why he’s praying for their salvation, because they need it. They
have a zeal for God but don’t be confused by this passion that’s not according
to knowledge. Then he has an additional explanation in verse 3. Again it begins
with that word “for”, “For not knowing about God’s righteousness…” They don’t
understand the dynamics of God’s righteousness. If you ask them if God is
righteous, they’ll say yes. But they’ve rejected what the Old Testament taught
about righteousness.
Now this gets
into something else. I had a conversation today with a professor at Dallas
Seminary who’s a free grace guy, for the most part, but it was interesting to
listen. I kept my mouth shut because I was trying to probe him for some
information on some other things and so I was just letting him talk. It was
interesting because he’s part of this group that wonders how much the people in
the Old Testament really understand. Now he’s better than most. He thinks they
understood a whole lot. In fact, one comment he made had me thinking, “You
know, I hadn’t really thought about that before.” His comment was about the
whole statement about when Abraham believed God and it was accounted to him as
righteousness.
In the New
Testament in John 8, Jesus said that Abraham longed to see My day. Now think
about that. There are a lot of people who get very concerned about just how
much the Jews needed to understand to believe in Old Testament days in order to
be saved. The answer some people give is that they just need to believe in God.
Others make it a little more precise and say that they need to believe in God’s
promise of a Messiah. If you go back and look at the text, as I’ve stated many
times, the promise is of a “seed” which is the Messiah who will be the
Deliverer of the people from their sin so there’s a clear gospel there. Abraham
longed to see Jesus’ day, that’s what Jesus says.
Hebrews 11 also
talks about the fact that some of these Old Testament saints seemed to know a
lot more about God’s future plan than we would get just from reading in
Genesis, Exodus, or Samuel. They seemed to have a greater level of revelation
than is indicated in the text. So they had a clear understanding of
righteousness. Then this professor said that the Old Testament believers didn’t
really understand righteousness or the deity of the Messiah. I’m sure they did.
I hit this last time and I had at least one person say that they needed me to
sort of go over that again.
It’s so
important to understand this concept of righteousness from the Old Testament.
Number one, Isaiah made it very clear that human righteousness is worthless. He
uses very graphic imagery here to portray how polluted and how disgusting our
righteousness is, not our unrighteousness, but our righteousness, which is the
best that we can do. All our righteousness is like an unclean garment, Isaiah
64:5. So if our righteousness is worthless, then where do we get righteousness?
We can’t produce it on our own. Genesis 15:6, Abraham believed God and it was
reckoned or imputed to him as righteousness. It’s based on faith.
Now I believe
that the tense of the verb in the Hebrew here for believe indicates something
that had already happened in the past. It’s a verb shift in the Hebrew from the
verses preceding it. It’s almost a parenthetical statement. Moses constantly in
his narrative will tell you that his happened, this happened, this happened,
and then he inserts a divinely inspired point of application or editorial. You
have to read the text carefully to get that. Otherwise you think that it’s a
straight flow of the story. That’s how some people read Genesis 15:6 but it’s
just the writer, Moses, informing the readers not to forget this point as we go
on with the story. The point is that Abraham had already believed God, long
before Genesis 12. He’s not just now getting around to believing God and being
declared righteous. He’s already been declared righteous before Genesis 12.
Moses is reminding his readers that Abraham had already believed God and God
had imputed that or reckoned that or credited that to his account as
righteousness before God ever called him to leave Ur of the Chaldees and to go
to this new land that God was going to give him. It’s interesting that a man
named Sir Charles Woolsey excavated Ur of the Chaldees just after World War I.
He had another claim to fame and that is that he had excavated Carchemish.
We’ve spoken about the Battle of Carchemish. It was on a river in northern
Syria and today that site of Carchemish is right on the border of Syria and
Turkey. Anyone want to go work there? That is a hotspot and it’s been a
hotspot.
Literally one
third of the site of ancient Carchemish is located in Syria, two/thirds is
located in Turkey. It was excavated by Woolsey before World War I and his
assistant was a guy named T. E. Lawrence, better known as Lawrence of Arabia.
That was his number one assistant. Woolsey was like 35 and Lawrence was 28.
That was just before World War I. Most people don’t realize that Lawrence was a
noted archeologist prior to his claim to fame from the period of World War I.
Carchemish
never got worked again because of all the fighting going on since the end of
World War I all the way up to 2011. A team went in at that time and worked for
six months and then, of course, all of this rebellion of Syria broke out and it
hasn’t been worked since. So for ninety years, basically it hasn’t been worked
since Lawrence worked it. Carchemish up there on the Euphrates River was not
far from Haran, which is where Abraham stops on his way. He left Ur where
Woolsey later excavated and then Abraham goes north and he’s trusting God along
the way but that’s not his justification. That’s part of his spiritual life.
How did Abraham
get righteousness? It was credited to him because he believed God, not because
of what he did. This is Paul’s whole argument in Romans 4 and Galatians 3.
Abraham couldn’t get righteousness from the Law because the Law is not given
for another 400 years. So the Law was not the basis for becoming or getting
righteousness. It’s faith in God and that’s it. It’s not based on works.
Now where
righteousness comes back in play is again in Isaiah 53. I pointed this out last
time. You read through that and it’s the story of the suffering servant who’s going
to come and He will die as a substitute, pay the penalty for His people. Isaiah
53:4, “He was despised and forsaken of men, a man of sorrows and acquainted
with grief.” He’s wounded because of our sins. He’s crushed because of our
iniquities. We’re all sinners.
This is a
problem in Judaism. You don’t need righteousness if you’re not born totally
depraved. In modern Judaism and rabbinic Judaism, they don’t think you’re born
totally depraved. You may sin but there’s not a doctrine of total depravity or
original sin in modern Judaism. As a result of that, if you’re not inherently
bad, then you can be reformed and you can do good. But the Bible says clearly,
“All of our works of righteousness are as filthy rags and we all went astray.”
Isaiah is talking about himself and he’s one of the greatest prophets of the
Old Testament. He says “we all went astray like sheep, each going his own way,
and the Lord visited upon Him the guilt of all of us”—a clear doctrine of
universal human guilt in Isaiah 53:6.
It goes on
later in Isaiah 53:6, “But the Lord has caused the iniquity of us all to fall
on Him.” It goes on to say in Isaiah 53:12, “And was numbered with the
transgressors; Yet He Himself bore the sin of many, and interceded for the
transgressors.” Again, a substitutionary death is described here. In Isaiah
53:11, it says, “By His knowledge, the Righteous One, My Servant, will justify
the many.” Only the Servant is righteous. He’s righteous because He’s
inherently righteous. The Servant is the incarnate Son of God, the child from
back in Isaiah 7:14, “Emmanuel, born of a virgin.” In Isaiah 9:6, the one who
is called “Mighty God”, the one who is called “The Father of eternity”, the one
who is called “Wonderful Counselor.” All these terms apply to deity.
He is the One
who was born as a human so what does the Righteous Servant do in Isaiah 53:11,
“He makes the many righteous.” They can’t do it themselves. They have to be
given that righteousness. Now all of this is important to understand the next
verse in our passage. Righteousness in the Old Testament comes from believing a
promise of God, the promise of the Seed. The promise of God is that the “seed
of the woman will defeat the seed of the serpent.” That’s the first indication
in Genesis 3:15. Then we go through all those Messianic prophecies in the Old
Testament that tell us that He’s going to be a descendant of Abraham, Isaac,
and Jacob and He’s going to be from the tribe of Judah. He’s going to be born
in Bethlehem. He’s going to be born of a virgin. He’s going to suffer. He’s
going to die. He’s going to be the One through whom God makes His people
righteous.
Paul says in
Romans 10:4, “For Christ is the end of the Law for righteousness to everyone
who believes.” Now this is a much more difficult verse to understand than
what meets the eye. I would guess that most of us would look at that and at
first blush we would say the predominant view in modern commentaries. I don’t
think it’s right but it’s the predominant view. Some of you are going to be
aghast and think, “I can’t believe you said that.” No, I don’t think this is
right. We read it as “Christ ended the Law.” But it’s not a verb. It doesn’t
say that Christ ended the Law. Other passages say Christ ended the Law but
that’s not what this verse is talking about. It’s saying that Christ is the end
of the Law.
The word in the
Greek translated "end" is the word telos. It is
interesting how in the last few weeks I’ve had to do a lot of work on this
particular word because a form of this word teleios, with an “ei”
in there between the “l” and the “o”, is the one that’s translated “perfect” in
1Corinthians 13:10, “When the perfect comes that which is partial shall be done
away with.” So there’s a lot of discussion on this particular word and a lot of
research. Every few years I go back and reevaluate and rethink and read a lot
of new stuff on this. This is the word telos and the reason
it’s debated is because it has a wide range of meanings.
If a word can
be one of ten things it doesn’t mean you can go “eeni, meeni, miny mo” and you
can find one you like. What it means is that you’ve got to pay a lot more
attention to context and the development of the writer’s argument so that you
don’t assign the wrong meaning and misunderstand the passage. It commonly happens
in a lot of things, not to mention politics in Washington, D.C. and understanding the scripture that Christ is the
end of the Law.
Now there’s
basically three major senses to this word telos. Fulfillment
is one. Christ is the fulfillment of the Law. He fulfills the Law. Second, He’s
the goal of the Law. The Law points to Christ. A lot of people say, “Well, it’s
both of those together that’s the main sense here.” The one that’s probably the
meaning many of you have heard before is that Christ is the termination of the
Law, and that’s true. Christ certainly, indeed, does terminate the Law. That’s
stated in any number of passages but that’s not the thrust here. The thrust
here has to do more with this idea of Christ being either the fulfillment or
the goal of the Law.
Galatians says
the Law was a pedagogue, a tutor, to lead us to Christ. So that makes a little
more sense. I’ll show you a couple more verses on that in just a second. First
of all, let’s look at this context. Look back at verse 3, “For not knowing
about God’s righteousness and seeking to establish their own righteousness,
they did not subject themselves to the righteousness of God.” What do you think
is the main concept in verse 3? It’s the Law of repetition. You see one word
used three times and that’s the word righteousness. The problem is that one
group is ignorant of God’s righteousness, they don’t understand the integrity
of God and the high standard or God’s righteousness and that’s a reference to
the Jewish thought, 2nd Temple period, and rabbinical theology.
One of the
things I’ve always noticed in theological systems is that the less of a sinner
people are, the less grace God has to give and the less righteous God is.
There’s a correlation there. It’s just like if you think you can do something
to lose your salvation somewhere, buried in your thinking, is the idea that you
do something to get your salvation. But if you don’t do anything to gain your
salvation, you can’t do anything to lose it because it was a free gift. The
same thing here, if you have a low regard of the righteousness of God, that
somehow it’s diluted, then man becomes a little bit better.
If God’s
standard isn’t an unreachable standard that’s a hundred miles up, and I can’t
ever jump up and touch it, then that means that the only way I’ll get there is
if someone takes me there. But if God’s standard is seven feet off the ground
then I just might be able to jump high enough to get there. So the lower that
standard is, the easier it is for unbelievers to reach it. So if you minimize
the righteousness of God and change that meaning like in 2nd Temple
Judaism the term righteousness or begins to shift from the main idea of a
righteous absolute standard to the idea of doing works of charity. That really
changes things.
One example
that I ran into years ago when I first started going over to Russian-speaking
areas in the former Soviet Union, everybody over there was using an old Russian
translation like a King James translation of the Bible, called the Russian
Synovial Text. In the New Testament, the word dikaiosune, the word for
righteousness, is consistently translated with the Russian word Pravda.
You’ve heard Pravda
before that’s the Russian word for the main newspaper in Moscow. It means
truth. But if you read a passage like this instead of they being ignorant of
God’s truth and seeking to establish their own truth they have not submitted to
the truth of God, it totally changes what the sentence is saying.
So if you have
a misconception of what righteousness is and you’re defining it as works of
charity, then that’s going to ping-pong all the way through your theology and
change everything so it doesn’t conform to the text anymore. You basically go
way off-kilter. So they’re ignorant of God’s righteousness. They’re seeking to
establish their own righteousness. When you deny the absolute standard of God
and you’re seeking your own standard, what have you done? You’re substituting
your standard for God’s standard. It’s the standard of God’s character. So
they’re seeking to establish their own standard instead of following God’s
standard. They’re thinking that since they can’t live up to perfection they
just change it and bring it down to something they can do.
So by seeking
to establish their own standard, what have they done? They’ve rebelled and
rejected what God has said in the Scriptures. That’s why Paul says they haven’t
submitted to the righteousness of God. They’re in rebellion. They’re in
spiritual rebellion. They have rejected what God has said and they’re manufacturing
their own religious system as a substitute. In Judaism it’s a profound system
because they’re spending all this time talking about the Old Testament but they
come up with some of the most unusual ways to interpret the scripture. You get
into numerology. You get into all kinds of hidden codes, mystical codes, and
that kind of thing. It changes up how you interpret the Scripture.
So on the one
hand we have the Jews who are ignorant of God’s righteousness and they’ve
rebelled against God’s righteousness and then Paul gives another explanation in
verse 4 for Christ is “the end of the Law”. See, he’s not saying that Christ
ended the Law. He says that other places but what he is saying here is that
Christ is the focal point of the Law and as we’ll see from the verses he’s
quoting from the Law, these verses are all talking about the post-salvation
life of the believer in Israel. They’re not talking about how the Jews are to
get saved.
These passages are
coming out of Deuteronomy and they’re talking about how the redeemed nation is
to live to experience the full blessing of God. In other words, these passages
aren’t talking about phase one experience in Israel. They’re talking about a
phase two experience in Israel, the spiritual life. This fits the context of
Romans because this part of Romans has left the phase one justification stage
behind at the end of chapter five. We went on to the spiritual life and from
there we’re talking about the righteousness of God and Paul’s prayer for the
Jews that they be “saved”. It’s not talking just about being justified; it
includes that but it’s talking about them experiencing the fullness of their
salvation.
Jesus said that
He didn’t come to “steal and destroy”. He said He came to “give them life
[phase one] and to give life abundantly [phase two]”. That’s the spiritual
life. It’s two separate issues. One is how to get to heaven and the other is
how to live now that you’re a citizen of heaven. So Christ is “the end of the
Law”. The Law points to Christ and His life because in His life He set the
precedent for the spiritual life for the church age. He’s the model. He’s the
paradigm. He’s the rubric for how to live the Christian life in this age. He’s
the end of the Law for righteousness.
This phrase
“unto righteousness” is the same preposition construction we’re going to see
when we get into Romans 10:9-10. That’s the goal. Jesus is the goal. The Law
points to Him. He is the end or the fulfillment of the Law to righteousness to
everyone who believes.” Are we talking about justification belief here or are
we talking about sanctification belief here? Just think a little bit. That’s
why I spent so much time going through Phase 1. Phase 2. Phase 3. Some of your
eyes were glazing over because you’re heard it so many times but now is the pop
quiz. That’s why it’s important.
Paul is not
talking about how to get righteousness. He’s talking about how to live now that
you’re righteous. Now that they have the experiential righteousness, that’s
supposed to characterize our lives after salvation, not the forensic or
justified righteousness that we got at salvation. When it says Christ is the
end of the Law, this is clear from a number of passages of scripture. Like
Matthew 5:17 where Jesus said, “Do not think that I came to abolish the Law or
the prophets. I did not come to abolish but to fulfill.” That fits the idea
that He is the focal point, the end game in terms of what the Old Testament is
pointing to. Romans 13:10, “Love does no wrong to a neighbor, therefore, love
is the fulfillment of the Law.” 1 Timothy 1:5, “But the goal of our instruction
is love from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith.”
Now we’re going
to the next verse. We’re going show that it’s not a verse on how to be
justified because I would guess that so many of you are confused on Romans 10:9
and 10 and think that if we “believe in our heart and confess with our mouth
that Jesus is Lord, we’ll be saved.” You think that’s talking about how to get
to Heaven. What I’m very carefully pointing out to you is that this verse has
nothing to do with how to get to Heaven. If it did it’s teaching a works
salvation: that you have to believe and then do something with your mouth. But
that’s not what it’s talking about. It doesn’t fit anything in Romans at all.
Okay, Romans
10:5, “For Moses writes that the man who practices the righteousness which is
based on Law…” Interesting verse. Paul is going to quote from Leviticus 18:5
which says, “You shall therefore keep My statutes and My judgments, by which a
man may live if he does them; I am the Lord.” Let’s turn in our Bibles there.
We’re going to float around in Leviticus and Deuteronomy a little bit so it’s
not going to hurt you to leave Romans and see if you can get those pages in
Leviticus and Deuteronomy to separate.
Who is speaking
in Leviticus 18:5? Yahweh, the Covenant God of Israel. He’s speaking to Moses, the
greatest prophet of the Old Testament. In verse 1 He says, “Then the Lord spoke
to Moses, saying, Speak to the sons of Israel and say to them, I am the Lord
your God.” They are already in a covenant relationship with God. They’re
already for the most part, as reprobate as the Exodus generation became, they
are viewed as a “saved” generation. They believed God again and again and
again. Of course, they turned around the next day, unlike you and me, and
forgot everything and disobeyed God. But in this passage God is telling them to
remember that He is the Lord, their God.
Then He reminds
them where they came from, “According to what is done in the land of Egypt”. He
might say, “Remember before you were a Christian and you just lived like all
the reprobates and pagans around you.” That would be the comparison to today.
In other words he’s telling them not to live like the pagans who lived around
them when they were living in Egypt. He also told them that He was taking them
to Canaan and He didn’t want them to live like them either. It may have been a
new neighborhood with a different way of living but it’s just as pagan so He
warned them not to follow their practices either. “Nor shall you walk in their
statutes.” Don’t follow their customs. Don’t follow their Laws. I’m giving you
a separate and distinct set of standards for how you should live.
In verse 4,
“You are to perform My judgments and keep My statues, to live in accord with
them” Whenever you see the word “walk”, take note. “Walk” is a process. Walk
isn’t how to get saved. Walk is what you do after you’re saved. You walk by
means of the Spirit. You walk in the light. You abide in Christ. You abide in
the truth. These are all descriptions of the Christian life, phase two. Then we
come to verse 5, the verse Paul is quoting in Romans 10, “So you shall keep My
statutes and My judgments, by which a man may live if he does them, I am the
Lord.”
Now, some
people take verse 5 in Romans 10 that Paul is talking sort of hypothetically,
that if a man could do these things, he would live by them. That’s not what the
original context is saying. God is saying “Okay, I’ve saved you and redeemed
you out from slavery in Egypt and I’m bringing you to a new land and I’m giving
you a new set of standards on how you’re to live your life. If you live like
the pagans around you, you’re going to destroy your life and you’re going to
self-destruct. But if you live according to My standards and My principles,
you’re going to experience blessing and riches in life.” He’s talking about
their life after salvation. He’s not talking about how they should get
justified and go to heaven. He’s talking about how that now that “you’re My
people, this is how you should live.”
The Mosaic Law
and the Ten Commandments didn’t have anything to do with how you became the
people of God. It had to do with how the people of God are supposed to live
once they become the people of God. So Leviticus 18 isn’t talking about getting
justified because the Law can't justify you. Galatians 3:21 says, “Is the Law
then against the promise of God? Certainly not. For if there had been a Law given
which could have given life truly righteousness [justification] would have been
by the source of the Law if the Law could have given life.” But no Law can give
justification so you’re born into a new life.
Philippians 3:9
“And be found in Him not having my own righteousness which is from the Law.”
You can be moral or immoral. That’s not the issue in salvation. The issue in
salvation isn’t what kind of righteousness do you have but have you received
the imputation of Christ’s righteousness? Do you have your righteousness, good,
bad, or indifferent, or do you have Christ’s righteousness? If you have
Christ’s righteousness, then you’re going into heaven because the righteousness
is by Christ.
Philippians 3:9
continues, “But that which is from Christ, the righteousness which is from God
by faith.” So in Romans 10:6, Paul says, “But the righteousness based on faith
speaks as follow,” I don’t have time to go there. We’re going to have to stop
here. We’re going to get into a quote from Deuteronomy 30:12-14 and we have to
build a chart and show what is going on here.
Where am I
going with this? You need to understand a little bit about what the conclusion
is going to be. The conclusion is in verses 6, 7, 8 “ that the righteousness of
faith speaks in this way, Do not say in your heart, Who will ascend into
Heaven?” You know, don’t say I need to go to heaven to find God or go into the
abyss to find God’s Word. But what does Deuteronomy say? It says the Word is
near you. To Jews God revealed His word. The Jewish people have been the
custodians of God's Word from the time of Abraham on. Every book, except
possibly the book of Job in the Old Testament was written by a Jew. The Jews
were the custodians of the revelation of God. It was available to them. They
didn’t have to go to Heaven or to the Abyss to get it. It was near them. It was
in their word and in their heart. So they need to be obedient to the Word.
Then in verse 9
“If you confess with your mouth… (admit or acknowledge the Lord Jesus is the Messiah).”
This is not about justification here. It’s talking about phase two and phase
three which is the spiritual life and have fully realized all the blessings of
justification, then this verse is not telling you what you need to be saved.
It’s telling you how to live after you’re saved.
It has some
specific Jewish applications. Verse 10 is the explanation. It says, “With the
heart a person believes, resulting in righteousness, and with the mouth he
confesses, resulting in salvation.” The first part is justification and the
second part is sanctification. There’s another quote from Joel saying, “Whoever
calls on the Name of the Lord will be saved.” This is parallel in context with
confession. The issue with the Jews is that they had rejected Jesus. Now they
have to call upon Jesus.
He had said at
the end of Matthew 23, “I am not coming back until you call upon the name of
the Lord.” So until the Jewish nation calls upon the name of the Lord, Jesus
isn’t going to return as their Messiah. That’s what Paul is talking about. God
still has a plan but they have to quit rejecting the revelation He had been
giving them and they not only have to believe Jesus died on the Cross for their
sins but they have to have personal righteousness before men and they have to
call on Him to come deliver them, then He will rescue them.
That’s what
verse 13 is talking about and that’s the same thing he will use in chapter 11
when he says, “all Israel will be saved.” So it all ties together in a nice,
neat little package. So we’ll come back next time because we have to look at
these verses, Romans 10:7 and 8 and then we have to put them together. We need
to compare Old Testament and New Testament passages so we can properly
understand what Paul is saying and what he’s not saying.