Beautiful feet

(Romans 10.14-17)

Jason Procopio

Some people are fascinated by feet. They get a charge—sometimes even a sexual charge—out of seeing someone's feet they like, the way other people might about seeing someone with great hair or beautiful skin.

I’ve never understood this. Feet are paddles with tiny sausages on the end. I understand the physiological point of toes, but they’re not something I find particularly mesmerizing.

The only reason a person’s feet might interest me is because of what they can do. A dancer’s feet interest me. A football player’s feet interest me. (How obvious can you be?) Michael Jordan’s feet interest me. I don’t understand how these sausage paddles we all have are capable of such things.

But dexterity or strength are not the Bible’s criteria for what makes great feet.

In Isaiah 52.7, the prophet Isaiah says this:

How beautiful upon the mountains

are the feet of him who brings good news,

who publishes peace, who brings good news of happiness,

who publishes salvation,

who says to Zion, “Your God reigns.”

We used to sing this in church, and I always thought it was funny: I’d look at Loanne and then look down at my own feet and nod: You see? I told you. (I do not have nice feet.)

But it’s not supposed to be funny. According to Isaiah (speaking on God’s behalf), what makes a pair of feet truly beautiful is when they carry someone who is bringing the best possible news in all creation.

And this is, in a very real sense, what we are all called to do. We are all called to have beautiful feet.

So what is the good news we are carrying along on our beautiful feet? We saw this last week, in the first 13 verses of Romans 10, which ended with Paul reminding us how easy it is to be saved.

Romans 10.12-13:

12 For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; for the same Lord is Lord of all, bestowing his riches on all who call on him. 13 For “everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.”

Last week we looked at what that entails—confessing that Jesus is Lord and believing that God raised him from the dead—and why those two elements are so crucial. Confessing that Jesus is Lord means that he has done what you could not do: he lived the righteous life we were called to live, but couldn’t live on our own, and he gave us his perfect righteousness. He suffered the punishment for our unrighteousness, so that we wouldn’t have to. He absorbed the wrath of God against our sin on the cross, dying for us—and then God raised him from the dead, showing that his wrath against the sins of his people really was taken care of.

When we confess and believe these things, we are saying that now, Jesus is the Lord of our lives: he gets to tell us what we should and shouldn’t do, and we will obey him, because the alternative is unthinkable: it’s quite literally hell. And we are also saying that all of our hope for the present and for the future lies in the fact that as Christ was raised, we will be raised too: everything that is wrong with the world—including ourselves—will one day be made right.

Paul was reminding the Romans of these crucial elements for two reasons: because the Jews and Gentiles might themselves be tempted to imagine that they were saved for some reason other than God’s grace, and attempt to one-up each other in their own attempts at righteousness.

Secondly, he’s reminding them of these things because many of the Christians in that church, particularly the Jewish Christians, were fearful and distraught over the fact that their Jewish families and neighbors had rejected Christ. The same was true for the unbelieving Gentiles living in Rome—ordinary people who wanted nothing to do with the Christian God, and didn’t realize they actually needed him.

That’s the point Paul is going to press on today, by driving the church in Rome towards their mission—and in so doing, he’s going to drive the entire church, the global church, throughout all history, towards the same mission. He’s laying the groundwork for one of the reasons he’s writing this letter—to encourage the church in Rome to support him on his mission to Spain—but he’s doing a lot more than that.

The Logic of the Mission (v. 14-15)

First Paul explains the logic of the thing; and it’s so simple I’m almost surprised he feels the need to say it.

But I’m thankful he did, because so few Christians today ever really feel the need to share this good news with people. Or they do, but they’re afraid to go through with it. So this is a very helpful reminder.

Let’s start back at v. 13 again.

13 For “everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.”

14 How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching? 15 And how are they to preach unless they are sent? As it is written, “How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news!”

So there you have it: there’s his logic. The person who brings the gospel is beautiful: beautiful in the way an MRI is beautiful, the way farming is beautiful, the way any productive and life-saving tool is useful—but in a much more profound way, because what they’re bringing won’t just feed someone for a day, or diagnose a single illness that can be cured for a few years. What they’re bringing has eternal repercussions of joy for those who receive it.

But these people bringing the good news aren’t just beautiful; they’re necessary. They’re the proper tools God uses to save people.

Look at Paul’s logic again.

• Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.

• But to call on God, you have to believe that God can save you from eternal death and punishment for your sin.

• To believe that God can save you, you have to know who he is.

• To know who he is, you need someone to tell you who he is.

• For someone to tell you who he is, they need to be sent. (By that word “sent” he’s surely referencing the function of the apostles whom Christ commissioned to spread the good news and begin the church. But as we’ll see, it’s bigger than that.)

Now I said this a couple of weeks ago: sometimes God intervenes supernaturally to save someone, independent of any human intervention. He saved Paul by blinding him and speaking to him from the sky while he was on the road. Sometimes he saves people by giving them dreams about him. This does happen.

But here Paul lays out the normal way in which people come to faith, 99% of the time: this is the way God has ordained that this happen.

Someone is sent to preach the good news of Jesus Christ.

This person arrives at his destination and preaches the good news of Christ, and those who listen learn who Christ is. (So we haven’t reached the level of acceptance yet, just the level of comprehension.)

When the person listening learns who Jesus is, he believes. This is where God intervenes: Ephesians 1.13 tells us that Christians are Christians because when they heard the word of truth, the gospel, they believed.

And only then is a person truly able to “call upon the name of the Lord,” which means nothing less than what Paul said in v. 9: it means believing in your heart that God raised Christ from the dead, and confessing with your mouth that he is Lord, and asking him to save you as you cannot save yourself.

This is how it happens, most of the time. This is the normal way God chooses to save people.

Now there are a few things we should understand about how this works.

First off, sometimes it’s progressive. Paul talks about this in 1 Corinthians 3, when he talks about how he preached the gospel to the Corinthians, and another teacher, a man named Apollos, came and continued explaining the same things to them. Paul describes it as planting and watering.

Every time the gospel is preached, it is planted. But sometimes, it takes some time to take roots in our hearts. That was my case: I heard the gospel all my life, because I grew up in church, but God didn’t actually bring me to real faith in Christ until I was twenty-one. It’s not like flipping on a light switch, but like planting and watering a tree: sometimes it takes time, and sometimes there are dry spells where nothing seems to happen, and other periods where it seems to grow really quickly.

About ten years ago, a woman in our old church in Florida shared a story with us, right after Loanne’s mom died. She said her dad had passed away not long before. Although his wife and all of his children were Christians, he always refused it—wanted nothing to do with Jesus at all. He had cancer and fell into a coma. His children and his wife sat around his bed praying for him, and of course as they prayed, they prayed the gospel: they asked Jesus to save their dad, even though they had no reason to think he would wake up.

But he did—for a few minutes, he did, and he was lucid. So they got on the phone to the pastor and said, “Get over here right now, he’s awake! Come share the gospel with him!” The pastor rushed over, and sat down next to the dad’s bed. He shared the gospel with him.

The dad listened politely, showing no resistance. Then the pastor asked, “Do you want to receive Jesus Christ s your Lord and Savior?”

The dad looked surprised. He said, “I already have.”

To which the kids finally spoke up. “Dad, you have refused this your whole life. You never wanted to come to church with us, or talk to anyone. When did this happen?”

He said, “I was asleep, and I heard you praying. And I remembered all those times you guys told me about Jesus. I didn’t want to hear it, but you told me. And while you were praying for me, I realized you were right: I’m about to die, and I’m a sinner, and I need Jesus.”

He died a half hour later.

If you share the gospel with someone and nothing happens, that doesn’t mean that nothing will happen.

So that’s the first thing: sometimes it’s progressive.

Secondly, it’s always active. Paul talks about hearing and believing and confessing—choosing to accept something and to say something. Salvation will never come to its full fruition in our lives without our knowledge and our participation.

It’s like when babies are born: babies don’t choose to be born, they just are. But at a certain point in their development, they become aware that they exist, and they have to make a conscious choice to engage in their existence: to live their lives.

Paul describes salvation in just this way in Ephesians 1 and 2. In Ephesians 1, he takes us through the whole process of our salvation, and most of what happens is God’s doing, not ours. He sends the gospel out, he opens our eyes to see the truth of the gospel, and he gives us new hearts to desire it. But there always comes a point at which the individual is required to engage with what God has done in them. They make the choice to live according to what God says is true about them now. They start to do the “good works which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them” (Ephesians 2.10).

Our participation in our salvation is never passive. It isn’t something we make happen, but it doesn’t just happen either. No matter what the timeline looks like, salvation is always real, and conscious, and active.

Now why do we need to understand these things? Because understanding these realities completely does away with the idea that we can become Christians because our parents (or spouses or aunts or uncles) are Christians, or that we are saved because our parents baptized us when we were babies.

No—we do not inherit salvation from any family or culture or lifestyle. Salvation is a collective reality, absolutely—we are saved into a people—but it is still intensely personal.

The Success of the Mission (v. 16-17)

So that is the mission—that is how God saves people: through the proclamation of the gospel to people who have not heard it.

But anyone who’s been in ministry for any length of time knows that it doesn’t always happen in quite the way we expect it or want it to. V. 16:

16 But they have not all obeyed the gospel. For Isaiah says, “Lord, who has believed what he has heard from us?” 17 So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ.

Paul knows that these Romans have likely already shared the gospel with many of their friends and neighbors, and been met with mile-long stares or even hostility. Not all obey the gospel—not everyone believes and confesses that Jesus is Lord and that God raised him from the dead.

This can be profoundly disappointing, and even disillusioning. So Paul reminds them that the prophet Isaiah predicted it would be like this. Many people have gone through the exact process Paul laid out in v. 14-15…but never believed. This happened even to the apostles—even to Jesus! They announced the good news, people heard the good news, they understood who Jesus is…and they rejected him anyway.

It doesn’t always “work” the way we want it to.

So here’s what he wants us to remember: if it doesn’t “work” the way we want it to, that does not suggest any deficiency in the gospel itself, or on the part of the ones who announced the good news. Remember Romans 9: God has mercy on whomever he wills, and he hardens whomever he wills. Salvation is his doing, not ours. He decides how it will work.

That can be disheartening for someone who wants to share the gospel, but it shouldn’t be. No matter what the outcome, the mission remains the same—because although God knows whom he will save through the proclamation of the gospel, we don’t.

So we keep at it. Faith comes through hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ. That’s how it works.

Keep going. Keep proclaiming the word of Christ, and praying God will cause it to give birth to faith in those who hear it.

Mission in Practice

This call to go, to proclaim, to make Christ known, is a call for all of us. It’s not just for apostles or pastors or evangelists.

It’s even for those who might consider themselves to be the worst of us. The first person in the Bible—other than Jesus or the apostles—to actively share the gospel with people was a Samaritan adulteress: a woman who wasn’t Jewish, who was regarded poorly even by her own peers because of her lifestyle—and a woman to boot! (A woman at that time would not have been a likely candidate for such a task.)

This is how we are all called to live; this is the mission of every Christian throughout history. When Isaiah says, “How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news!”, he’s talking about all of our feet.

But there is a reality to our world that needs to be accounted for, and that is that we all live in a specific place, and we are all surrounded by specific people. No one person can share the gospel with everyone.

So what does it look like for the church—for all Christians—to accomplish our mission to proclaim the gospel?

First of all, we plant churches.

It’s not necessarily self-evident, so it needs to be said: sharing the gospel with people without bringing them into a community which will teach them to live for Christ is an uphill battle—and it’s an understatement to put it that way. Sometimes it’s necessary to share the gospel in this way—because some people happen to live in areas in which there are no churches—but life for that new believer is going to be very, very difficult.

So we plant churches.

We belong to a network of churches that plant churches called Acts 29. We interned at a church in Val d’Europe for two years, before they sent us out to plant this church. Eglise Connexion is a church plant—we didn’t exist before September of 2014. We moved our family to Paris to begin this church. And the only reason we could exist as a church is because one Acts 29 church in the United States took our project to heart, and agreed to pay half of my salary. Then two other churches agreed to pay the other half. Our church has taken on more and more of my salary over the years, but these three churches in Colorado still pay for a large chunk of my salary every month—over ten years later.

And when the church in Saint-Lazare was planted, we sent several of our members to join that church plant. We couldn’t afford to contribute financially, but we could send people. So that’s what we did, and that’s what we’ll continue to do.

For new Christians to have a place to live out their faith once they meet Christ, they need to have churches to go to. And there are many areas in France—some entire regions—where there are no churches. (One pastor in our denomination, Jean-Rémy Otge, planted what is still today the only evangelical church in the entire region of La Corrèze.)

This—church planting in our city and in our country—is a local expression of the final, much larger field for this mission God gives us to share the gospel, and that everywhere. We fulfill this mission to share the gospel by sending missionaries to places that need them.

Now I know this is hard, because it feels more abstract—it feels far away. It’s hard to care about people we don’t know, whom we’ve never seen, in countries we’ve never been to.

But it is essential. Missionary work is how the church began. Every church that has ever been planted exists, ultimately, because people went out, to cities and countries and peoples they didn’t know, and shared the gospel in those places.

From the beginning of our church, we have benefitted from the presence of many missionaries here. Some missionaries—like Joe and Debs and Noémie and Rachel—were sent here, to Paris, and have taken up active roles of leadership in the church. This church would not work without them.

Many other missionaries have joined us for a short time, while they were (or are) learning French, and we’ve simply benefited from their presence with us. This too is essential: this church wouldn’t be the same without them.

But they won’t be with us for long: pretty soon they’ll be sent out to other places. (Josh & Stephanie, )

Here’s the question: what possessed these people to do this? What possessed them to leave their homes, to leave their cultures, to learn a new language (and sometimes multiple new languages)?

They did it because, how will people call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching? And how are they to preach unless they are sent?

We have brothers and sisters in Christ we don’t know yet (but we will someday) in cities in villages all over the world. They will never hear the gospel if no one is sent to preach it to them. That’s why these missionaries have come, and that’s why they’re going where they’re going.

But I’m not saying this to just pat our missionaries on the back (though I am profoundly grateful for them). I’m saying this, mainly, because there are other people in other places who need to hear the gospel too—people whom God has already chosen to save.

And the means through which God has chosen to save them might well be someone in this room.

I’m not talking about this so that you’ll “support” foreign missions (though you should—you should pray for them, send them money if you can, do all you can to support them). I’m talking about this because for some of you, this may be the first time you’ve ever considered it, and God may well be calling you to go to a country you don’t know, learn a language you don’t speak, live among a culture you’re unfamiliar with, in order to share the gospel.

Now most Christians throughout the world won’t be called to go out in quite this way. But that doesn’t mean we’re off the hook.

The most basic and fundamental way we accomplish the mission God has given us—the way that is the norm for church growth and for spreading the gospel in a given place—is through ordinary Christians, sharing the gospel with ordinary people. The more I see, the more I’m convinced that even our best efforts at putting together events, moments at the church where we can invite people to come, are good, but will never be as effective as the ordinary conversations that take place in our own personal relationships, with the people who surround us, the people whose paths we run across. Our neighbors and friends and family members, the people we run into on the street, the old lady sitting next to us on the bus.

This is how most Christians fulfill their mission: it’s not through anything spectacular or showy, but through ordinary, human interactions.

This is scary, but it doesn’t have to be. That’s one reason we have an evangelism team: it’s not just to share the gospel with people, but so that you can go out with the team, and watch them, and hear them do it, to see how it works. It’s not as difficult as it sounds.

My favorite evangelism story comes from Matt Chandler. Matt came to Christ in high school, because he had a friend on the football team who shared the gospel with him.

But the way this guy did it was fantastic. One day after football, Matt’s friend just came up to him and said, “Oh by the way, I’m going to talk to you about Jesus. So let me know when you want to do that.” And he walked away. It was such a strange encounter that Matt came to him pretty soon after and said, “What did you want to talk to me about?”

It doesn’t have to be that hard, especially if we’ve gotten used to thinking about the gospel all the time, and talking about it. For people who eat, sleep and breathe the gospel, talking about it is second nature.

To put it another way: our fulfilling our mission begins when we are all by ourselves, meditating on the goodness of God in Jesus Christ, and works itself out when we naturally speak about the Savior we love.

I cannot wait for the day when we’ll be in heaven with Jesus, and we’ll be able to see gathered together brothers and sisters and Christ who will be there because people in this church shared the good news of the gospel with them. I can’t wait to see the multitudes they will represent.

This is our call. It’s necessary, and it’s a joy. Let’s enjoy it.