I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith – that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead (Philippians 3.7-11)
The promises of God do not fail because they are not contingent on mankind’s cooperation. The truth of this point of doctrine is emphatically emphasized in Romans 9.6b-29. However, it is equally true that Israel failed to pursue a righteousness that comes by faith; consequently, they were not prepared to acknowledge Jesus as God’s Messiah. In Romans 9.30-10.21 Paul shifts his focus from the sovereignty of God in salvation to Israel’s failure to respond to prompting of God’s prophets. It is her persistent unbelief that is responsible for her being cut off from the vine. Seeing these two truths in juxtaposition may help the reader to understand that divine sovereignty and human responsibility are not incompatible doctrines. “Paul viewed divine sovereignty and human responsibility as complementary rather than contradictory truths. They are not mutually exclusive but compatible. Paul provides no philosophical resolution as to how they correlate, and it is probably best to acknowledge that they relate mysteriously, in a way that exceeds our finite understanding. In any case, it would be a serious mistake to appeal to divine sovereignty as if it diminished the genuineness of human freedom and responsibility” (Thomas Schreiner, Romans, p. 531). Israel’s problem of unbelief is rooted their ignorance of God’s righteousness. There was no lacking in zeal for God, but it was a zealousness grounded in a distortion of the truth God had revealed to them through the prophets. Unbelieving Jews failed to recognize Jesus as the culmination of salvation history and stubbornly refused to believe the gospel. The Old Testament testimony about the Christ makes their willful unbelief inexcusable. The language of the gospel that governs the earlier part of his letter resurfaces in this section.
Every component of Paul’s “definition” of the gospel in the theme of the letter (1:16-17) is taken up in 9:30-10:21: “gospel” (see 10:15,16); “salvation” / “save” (see 10:1, 9, 10, 13); “all” (10:4, 11, 12, 13); “Jew and Greek” (10:12); “faith” (passim); and “the righteousness of God” (10:3). Matching and often directly related to Paul’s gospel language are quotations of the Old Testament (11 in 25 verses). In this is found Paul’s second key concern: to show that the gospel, as outlined in 1:18-4:25, is in continuity of the Old Testament. Paul shows that the law (10:6-8, 19), the prophets (9:32b-33; 10: 15-16, 20-21), and the writings (10:18) all bear witness to “the message of faith,” the gospel that Paul is preaching. Israel is zealous but ignorant: she has not understood that the gospel of Christ brings salvation history to its climax. And she should have understood, for the Old Testament witnesses to the gospel. Paul neatly summarizes this theme in his conflated quotation from Isaiah in 9:33: Israel has stumbled over the stone that God himself has “set in Zion.” (Douglas Moo, Romans, p. 618)
There was no period in Jewish history when the majority of it leadership believed that the Gentiles would be brought in large numbers into a covenant relationship with God. In spite of the Jews’ hostile reception, Hosea’s prophecy, “Those who were not my people I will call ‘my people,’ and her who was not beloved I will call ‘beloved,’” was coming to pass through the apostolic ministry of Paul’s mission to the Gentiles. Moreover, Isaiah had prophesied that only a remnant of Jews would return from the first great Diaspora and among them fewer still who would acknowledge Jesus as the Messiah. The majority would find him to be a stone of stumbling, and a rock of offense.
ISRAEL’S UNBELIEF (Romans 9.30-10.4)
Salvation history was being turned on its ear with a great influx of Gentiles into a new covenant community. The Jews who possessed every advantage with respect to knowing God (9.4-5) are being marginalized, while the Gentiles who have no record of God’s revelation in history are being included in the salvific plans of God. Paul indicates the reason for this is based on the difference between doing and believing. Israel used the law as a means for establishing a claim to personal righteousness. What God required of them was to believe in Christ who is the end of the law for righteousness and submit to the saving righteousness that comes by faith. Paul understood very well what the Jews are thinking and feeling, having come from just such a mindset himself: If anyone else thinks he has reason for confidence in the flesh, I have more: circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness, under the law blameless (Philippians 3.4-6). However, such a road can only lead to death and eschatological judgment, because if the law is your master, then every point of the law must be obeyed, an impossible task for anyone related by birth to Adam. The only alternative is to count everything as loss for the purpose of gaining Christ (Philippians 3.7-11).
The contrast between Israel and the Gentiles could not be more striking: the Gentiles who did not pursue righteousness attained it by faith, while Israel pursued the law with a fanatical zeal intent to gain personal righteousness failed in her quest. Israel, proud of her heritage, refused to acknowledge her moral and spiritual poverty, thus setting up a barrier around which no one could travel. “Israel has chosen to keep her focus on the law, seeking to find righteousness though it, when Christ, the culmination of that law and the only source of righteousness, has already come. For it is only in Christ that the demand of the law is fully met; and only, therefore, by accepting him in faith that a person can find the righteousness that the law promises (Rom. 3:31; 8:4)” (Moo, p. 627). It ought to be sufficiently clear at this point in Paul’s letter that while the law promises righteousness it only does so to the one who can keep it perfectly and this no outside of Christ has done (cp. 2.13; 3.20; 3.9). This was not God’s final word on the matter of sin. From the beginning God had decreed a remedy for man’s impoverished soul. Yet, his plan of salvation would prove to be an obstacle to Israel. This is true in two ways: “On the one hand, Paul argues that Israel has missed Christ, the culmination of the plan of God, because she has focused too narrowly on the law. Israel is like a person walking a path, whose eyes are so narrowly focused downward on the path itself that she trips over a stone in the middle of that path. On the other hand, Israel’s failure to perceive in Christ the end and goal of the path she has been walking leads her to continue on that path after it had served its purpose” (Moo, p. 628).
GOD’S RIGHTEOUSNESS AND ISRAEL’S RIGHTEOUSNESS (10.1-4)
Though Paul acknowledges his call as an apostle to the Gentiles, he remains passionately committed to the salvation of the Jews and the concern for his unsaved brethren is markedly evident in the words of this compassionate apostle. But the sad reality is that the religious and nationalistic zeal cultivated by the Jews during the intertestamental period (the 400 years between Malachi and Matthew) which served to maintain them as a distinct people, did nothing to prepare their hearts for the kingdom message of the Messiah. Israel did not heed the warning of Malachi and the heart of stone that characterized Israel in his day was in large measure the same heart that heard the message of the gospel.
Israel was ignorant of the righteousness that comes from God; that is, they did not recognize that this righteousness was to be found in Jesus Christ. It is God who declares a person righteous; one cannot simply be righteous. “Paul’s use of the word ‘submit’ shows that the righteousness of God is an active force to which one must humbly and obediently subordinate oneself. Another way to put the matter would be to say that the Jews have not responded to God’s righteousness in faith. So close a relationship does Paul establish between the righteousness of God and faith that one cannot mention the former without thinking of the latter. And that Israel’s ‘not submitting’ is equivalent to their not having faith is evident from the parallel texts in this passage (9:32a; cf. v. 33b; 10:5-6)” (Moo, pp. 633-4).
God’s righteousness has become manifest in that Christ is the end of the law and thus he also is the end of all the individual’s own righteousness. For the believer righteousness is brought about precisely because Christ acts apart from the law and takes its place as the individual’s Lord. Everyone whose goal it is to establish his own right denies that righteousness is to be found in union with Jesus and that it is given to everyone who believes, not only to the Jew. To the extent of Christ’s dominion the law no longer rules, and hence freedom from the law is not lawlessness but righteousness. Conversely the law remains in force with its commandment and its condemnation where Christ is not present. He is present with everyone who believes, however. (Adolf Schlatter, Romans: The Righteousness of God, p. 213)
SALVATION FOR ALL WHO BELIEVE (Romans 10.5-13)
Righteousness is based on the law: the person who chooses to live by the law must keep the whole of it (Leviticus 18.5; cp. Deuteronomy 27.26). But Paul contends that justification by faith has always been the means by which God has accepted his people. Anyone who was serious about the law’s demands certainly knew that he could not keep them in its entirety (e.g., Matthew 19.16-26), but that the law reflects the character of God and the person who desired to please God must live in faith dependence upon him (cp. Hebrews 11). When Paul makes reference to a faith dependent righteousness he was no doubt thinking about Deuteronomy 30.11-14. The giving of the law was a demonstration of God grace. It was not given to condemn Israel but to show them their great need to rely on the mercies of God. Paul interprets the Moses’ comments by substituting the earthly and resurrected life of Christ in place of the commandments. Thus, the law is seen as that which foreshadows a righteousness based on faith. As John Pipers notes, that is the key to justification: God credits Christ’s obedience to the law to every believer (cp. http://www.desiringgod.org/library/sermons/03/051803.html).
The way of salvation is clearly outlined in Romans 10.9-13. “It proclaims in the simplest possible words that Jesus of Nazareth is in fact God. The Greek word used throughout the LXX for Yahweh (over six thousand times) is here applied to Jesus. … Primarily it means that Jesus’ authority is absolute, unlimited, and universal. Those who come to Christ by faith are acknowledging that they have placed themselves entirely and without reserve under his authority to carry out without hesitation whatever he may choose for them to do” (Robert Mounce, The New American Commentary: Romans, p. 209). All such confessions are born of an inward conviction that Jesus was raised from the dead. Today, as always, the resurrection of Christ is central to Christianity. Faith leads to justification and confession results in salvation. This is one event not two. Salvation is available to all who will call upon the name of the Lord.
