Rom 9.30-10.13

How to be righteous

(Romans 9.30-10.13)

Jason Procopio

We all know what it’s like to have been hurt by someone, and the pain we feel when the person gets away with it, carries on with their life as if nothing happened, leaving us limping behind. That’s not fair—it’s not right—it’s not just. It should be them that’s limping, not you; or at the very least, they should be limping too.

There’s a certain standard of righteousness which we all agree upon. We all agree that cold-blooded murder should not go unpunished. If someone murders someone else, they should be punished for that. Why? Because it’s just—it’s right. So if we can agree on this, we’ve already understood a huge portion of biblical teaching: that there is such a thing as right and wrong, and that right should be rewarded and wrong should be punished.

Where we get stuck is our standard for measuring what constitutes right and wrong.

Here’s the Bible’s position—and I’m not asking you to accept this outright, but just to understand the Bible’s point, because it’s fundamental to understanding our text today.

The one being capable of defining right and wrong is the Creator of all things. God is that Creator; this is his world, so he gets to set the standard. And since God is wholly and infinitely good, the standard he sets for righteousness in this world is his own perfect character. That’s what we have to aim for. If we have not reached that, then we have missed the mark: if we have not reached that, then we are guilty of wrong. If we have not reached that, none of us are righteous.

And that’s problematic for us, because if we are all guilty of wrong, and all wrong should be punished, then we’re all looking down the barrel of that gun: we all deserve punishment.

Here’s why we need to understand this. This morning’s text talks a lot about righteousness. We’ve already established that none of us are righteous, so what do we do? We try to become righteous, to reach a state of righteousness by some means or another.

And there’s a lot of confusion that comes when we try to do that.

In this letter, Paul is writing to the church in Rome, which is made up of Jewish and Gentile Christians. These Jewish and Gentile Christians have conflicting ideas of what I just said: about what it means to be “righteous,” and how we get there. The Jews were God’s chosen people…but many of them were still rejecting God’s Savior, Jesus Christ, who is the fulfillment of those promises. On top of that, the Gentiles had received faith in Christ, though they weren’t even looking for it. It makes for kind of a confusing state of affairs.

So in today’s text, Paul is going to pick apart what’s really going on here, and he’s going to explain—mostly to the Jewish Christians, I get the feeling—why their Jewish friends and neighbors are failing to obtain the righteousness they’ve been working so hard to reach. And in exposing what’s actually happening, Paul is going to protect all of them—Jews and Gentiles—from putting up walls where they don’t need to be.

How to Miss Salvation (9.30-10.4)

Paul starts with a kind of summary statement of what he’s said so far, which is why I wanted to start at this verse today; it gives us the context we need to understand the rest. But whereas v. 1-29 of Romans 9 are almost all about God, and why God does what he does, in v. 30 he puts the focus squarely on people: on Gentiles and Jews, on those who attained righteousness, and those who didn’t.

V. 30:

30 What shall we say, then? That Gentiles who did not pursue righteousness have attained it, that is, a righteousness that is by faith; 31 but that Israel who pursued a law that would lead to righteousness did not succeed in reaching that law.

There are these YouTube videos where a guy approaches random people on the street, asks them questions, and if he finds out they’re going through some kind of personal struggle, he gives them $1,000 cash. I kind of like these videos, but I don’t really understand why the guy would do it (unless he has mountains of disposable income and just wants subscribers). In the end, I guess it doesn’t really matter why: for the person who gets that $1,000, it’s always overwhelming.

That’s sort of what happened to the Gentiles. We weren’t looking for God, we weren’t pursuing righteousness, and we didn’t do anything to earn it…but we needed it, and it fell right into our laps. If God has saved us, it is by faith, not because of anything we have done. (I know some will ask the question, why did the Gentiles place their faith in Christ? Paul already answered that question earlier, in 9.16: So then it depends not on human will or exertion, but on God, who has mercy. They had faith because God decided to give them faith. It’s God’s electing purposes at work.)

So the Gentiles received this righteousness without looking for it. Israel, on the other hand, was pursuing righteousness…or rather, they were pursuing a way to get to it. Paul says that Israel pursued a law that would lead to righteousness. But of course they never found it, because although they had the law of Moses, none of them were able to keep it. If the Gentiles received something like the guy giving them $1,000 for nothing, the Jews were like runners in a race they set up: the prize was $1,000, but no one managed to finish the race.

And that was the fatal flaw. Paul says in v. 32:

Why? [Why did they not succeed in reaching that law, which would lead to righteousness?] Because they did not pursue it by faith, but as if it were based on works.

This is huge. From the moment God gave the law to the people through Moses, it was clear they wouldn’t be able to keep it.

And that was the point, at least in part. God wanted the people to see they couldn’t perfectly obey the law, and that some kind of sacrifice had to be made to make up for their disobedience: on their own, they would never be able to stay right with God.

The law’s goal wasn’t to get them to God, but to show them God—to draw their eyes and their hearts in his direction. That’s why they memorized and recited the famous “schema” from Deuteronomy 6, where God tells the people to love him with all their heart, soul, mind and strength, and to repeat his commandments, to teach them to their children, to always keep them before their eyes. The law was always a law of grace, because through the law, they got to see what God was like, and how God solves the problem of sin—through sacrifice. And in that way, if they pursued the law rightly, their hearts were awakened to love for God and faith in him, rather than feeling burdened by him.

Fortunately, many Jews understood that. It’s why David could write an epic love poem to the law of God in Psalm 119: he’s not just celebrating “the law”; he’s celebrating God himself.

But at the same time, many other Jews—the ones Paul is talking about here—had missed it. They missed that faith in God’s grace was the crucial component for understanding the law; and because they missed that fact, their attitude towards the law became legalistic—they pursued the law as if it were based on works.

You might think that you don’t do this, but nearly all of us do it from time to time, and some of us do it much of the time. It’s hard to give an example of what it looks like because we’re all so different, but we can tell if we do this or not by asking ourselves how we respond to our own sin.

If you’re pursuing righteousness based on works, you’ll respond to your sin in one of two ways.

The first way is you’ll respond to your sin if you’re pursuing righteousness based on works is, you’ll get depressed. You feel so ashamed that you run away from God. The last thing you want to do is pray, because you think that God is disgusted with you. (And you feel even worse if someone notices your sin and calls you on it, because you’re embarrassed—even if they did it with love, in exactly the right way and for the right reason.) When you hear people speak about the grace of God, you hear it as being for everyone else but not for you. You just wallow in your misery, unsure of how to escape it.

And if you keep going like that, eventually it gets so bad that you just give up.

The other thing that happens when you pursue righteousness based on works is just the opposite: you’ll minimize your sin and maximize everyone else’s. You’ll minimize your sin because you can’t stand the idea that you’re not as good as you think you are. But you’ll be quick to notice the flaws in everyone else. So the first way you respond if you’re pursuing righteousness based on works is obvious: you become self-righteous.

That’s exactly what Paul says these Jews’ problem is: they did not pursue [God’s saving righteousness] by faith, but as if it were based on works. They believed they could become righteous, or be declared righteous, because they followed the law, rather than through faith in Christ.

That is how (we see in the second half of v. 32):

They have stumbled over the stumbling stone, 33 as it is written,

“Behold, I am laying in Zion a stone of stumbling, and a rock of offense;

and whoever believes in him will not be put to shame.”

The quote in v. 33 is a kind of mix of Isaiah 8.14 and Isaiah 28.16. The idea behind both quotes is that the integral part of God’s plan of salvation—the cornerstone that would make the foundation of his plan sure—is something that will cause some to stumble, and give others refuge…depending on how they came to it.

My mom grew up in Oklahoma, and of course in Oklahoma there are a lot of tornadoes, so every house has a storm cellar. It’s usually in the backyard, dug into the ground, and the top of the storm cellar and the door poke up about two inches off the ground. It is the only safe place to be if you’re in a tornado. But if you’re playing in the yard, and you’re not careful, it’s easy to trip over the door sticking up and fall.

Same idea here. The enemy at our heels is eternal death, a consequence of our own sin. The “stone of stumbling,” the “rock of offense”, is Christ: he is the only shelter, the only rescue, we have from the enemy; and if we place our faith in him for our salvation, we are saved. But if we don’t see him for what he is, instead of being saved by him, we trip over him. We see him as a threat to our faith, a threat to our freedom, a threat to our way of life; and in the end we reject him.

That’s what happened to the Jews Paul is talking about: they tripped over the stumbling stone.

Now, like I said a couple weeks ago, this doesn’t mean that Paul hates them or even thinks badly of them; he loves them. But he is lucid enough to recognize that they have a problem; and he describes their problem at the beginning of chapter 10:

Brothers, my heart’s desire and prayer to God for them is that they may be saved. 2 For I bear them witness that they have a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge. 3 For, being ignorant of the righteousness of God, and seeking to establish their own, they did not submit to God’s righteousness. 4 For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes.

He wants them to be saved, and the fact that they “have a zeal for God” makes that desire all the stronger. It’s not like these are hard, cruel people, who are entirely insensitive to God. They want to be holy; they want to be God’s people. But they have gone about it all wrong.

They have a zeal for God, Paul says, but not according to knowledge.

Most of you know the story of my marriage. Loanne and I had a whirlwind romance and got married nine weeks after we met. We were crazy about each other, in the way only twenty-two-year-olds can be. But about five months into our marriage, we hit the first difficult season in our life together…and we both realized, “Hold on—this is not the person I thought I married.” I had a lot of loving feelings for Loanne (and vice versa), but those feelings were based on my idea of who she was, not on who she actually was.

So the first few years of our marriage were really bad.

Same thing here. If how we interact with God does not correspond to who God really is, what God says about himself, then we’re not worshiping God, we’re worshiping an idea of God we’ve set up in our minds. And that’s what these Jews have done. They love the idea of God…but they don’t actually know him. They love the idea of God, but they don’t worship him—they worship the idea. They have a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge.

And how does Paul know that? Because these Jews don’t follow and submit to Jesus Christ, who is the end of the law—the goal of the law—for righteousness to everyone who believes. Perfect obedience to the law could never make us righteous, because none of us could ever perfectly obey it. So Christ fulfilled the law for us; he made it possible for us to be imperfect human beings, and still be declared righteous.

Paul explained how God did that all the way back in chapter 3; but in the next part of chapter 10, he tells us how we gain access to it.

How to Obtain Salvation (10.5-13)

So the Jews who have rejected Christ have not obtained righteousness—they have not obtained salvation, because their zeal is not based on knowledge; they imagined that if they could obey the law in the right way, they could become righteous; they could become worthy of salvation.

But Paul refutes that, starting in v. 5—and he shows us just how EASY salvation actually is. V. 5:

5 For Moses writes about the righteousness that is based on the law, that the person who does the commandments shall live by them.

This is a loaded sentence. He’s saying what he’s said multiple times already in this letter: that the law is a good thing. The law, in itself, brings life, not death; if you can manage to obey the commandments, you will be righteous—you will live.

Here’s the catch, though… If you’re going to go down that road, and depend on obedience to the law for salvation, you have to obey all of it. From beginning to end. No foul-ups; no shortcuts; no wrong turns or missteps. You have to be perfect.

So obviously that’s not going to work.

Thank the Lord that from the beginning, that’s not how human beings become righteous—that’s not how we are saved. V. 6:

6 But the righteousness based on faith says, “Do not say in your heart, ‘Who will ascend into heaven?’ ” (that is, to bring Christ down) 7 “or ‘Who will descend into the abyss?’ ” (that is, to bring Christ up from the dead).

These questions he asks are quotes from the Old Testament (Deut. 30.12-13)—that’s why they might sound a bit confusing. He’s quoting them here to show that these questions have been answered in Christ: we don’t need to go to heaven to bring Christ down to earth, because God has already done that; we don’t need to bring Christ back from the dead, because God has already done that too. God does everything we cannot do.

So contrary to the righteousness of the law, which requires you to perfectly obey all the commandments, the righteousness of faith says, “No one can do what Christ did. We can’t obey enough to be righteous; we can’t save ourselves or anyone else through absorbing God’s wrath against sin. Only Christ can do that…and he did it.”

The God who once seemed far, we now realize, has come right to our doorstep.

V. 8:

8 But what does it say? “The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart” (that is, the word of faith that we proclaim); 9 because, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. 10 For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved. 11 For the Scripture says, “Everyone who believes in him will not be put to shame.”

Listen closely, because what we just read is one of the most important things anyone has ever written, and one of the most important things you could say to anyone else.

Last week, we talked about the doctrine of election. At the end of that sermon, I went through a series of frequently-asked questions about this doctrine. But there was one question I left out (on purpose, because I knew we were coming here)—it’s one of the top five questions I get asked the most often about election, and it’s by far the simplest: How do I know if I am “elect”? How do I know if God has chosen to save me? People get tied up in knots with worry over this, wondering if somehow they’ve been faking themselves out, and assuming they have faith when they don’t really have faith.

What Paul says here is the answer to that question, and it’s so simple we have a hard time believing it.

The word of faith we proclaim isn’t something we have to achieve. It’s something that comes to us—the gospel goes out, and God causes it to spring into faith, inside of us, and once it’s inside, it comes out. If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. To put it another way: If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, that is all the proof you need that before the foundation of the world, God chose to save you.

The real question is, what does it mean to do that?

We’ve already seen what it doesn’t mean. It doesn’t mean saying certain words aloud, or assenting to a certain intellectual idea (remember the Jews Paul mentioned earlier—they have a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge). Intellectual knowledge alone isn’t enough, and zeal alone isn’t enough.

We must a) confess that Jesus is Lord, and b) believe in our heart that God raised him from the dead.

Why these two things in particular?

Why must we “confess” that Jesus is Lord? What does that even mean? It can seem kind of simplistic to us, but in Paul’s time it would have been a dangerous thing to “confess that Jesus is Lord,” because in first-century Rome there was only one Lord, and that was Caesar. When you confess someone as “Lord”, you are saying that only this person has ultimate authority over my life. Only this person calls the shots in my life. When we confess that Jesus is Lord, we say that only he has ultimate authority over me.

The public confession of that reality is important, because if you say it publicly, that means that there are witnesses. There are people who hear us say it, and who will hold us to that commitment. That’s why baptize upon profession of faith, in the presence of the church. The church stands as a witness that we have confessed that Jesus is Lord.

And if we really do accept and confess that Jesus is Lord over our lives, then that will change what our lives look like. We will do what he tells us to do. We will stop doing what he tells us to stop doing. We will obey him, and we will help others to obey him. It’s not optional. Either Jesus is Lord of our lives, or he isn’t. Go read 1 John if you don’t believe me; there’s no middle ground here.

Now before you freak out, remember what we saw in Romans 7 and 8: Paul is aware that there is a struggle within us, between our human natures that pull us in the direction of sin, and the Holy Spirit that draws us to Christ. And he reminds us in Romans 8 that, contrary to the Jews who pursued righteousness as if it were based on works, our righteousness is given to us—it doesn’t depend on our obedience.

But if we are saved, obedience to Christ becomes the trajectory of our lives; it is the framework in which we now live. I believe it’s Abraham Kuyper who said, "There is not one square inch of this world of which Jesus does not say, ‘Mine.’” He is Lord of my life now—not me.

And funnily enough, in this way, passages like Psalm 34 suddenly make sense: it’s David saying God answers the prayers of the righteous. For a long time I read those passages thinking, “Well too bad for me then—I guess this one’s not for me, because clearly I’m not righteous.”

Yes you are, no matter how miserably you’re living your life today: if you have placed your faith in Christ and been saved by his Holy Spirit, you are righteous in God’s sight.

Which is absolutely essential, because what basis for growth do you have otherwise?

You see, this is how we actually become righteous—in practice. God gives us faith in Christ; we confess that Christ is Lord of our life; God declares us righteous by our faith in Christ—so to speak: he puts the stamp on our spiritual passport that says “RIGHTEOUS”—, so we are saved; and because we are now declared righteous, the Holy Spirit living in us constantly places us before the reality that Jesus is Lord, and helps us to obey him, helps us to be more like him. God says we’re righteous through faith, and God makes us righteous in practice, because Jesus is Lord of our lives. It’s unbelievable.

So we must confess with our mouths that Christ is Lord, and we must believe in our heart that God raised him from the dead.

Why does Paul say it like that? Why is belief in the resurrection so important?

There are two main reasons. The first is more fundamental, and that is that if Jesus didn’t rise from the dead, then all of this is for nothing. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15.14: If Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain. Why? Because the resurrection is the ultimate proof that Christ is who he says he is. Lots of people have performed or faked miracles; no human being can fake resurrection after three days in a tomb.

Most of you know that Tim Keller died last week; during his struggle with cancer, he wrote about specifically about the resurrection of Christ. In that book, he says this: “If you are looking at Christianity, start by looking at Jesus’s life as it is shown to us in the gospels, and especially at the resurrection. Don’t begin, as modern people do, by asking yourself if Christianity fits who you are. If the resurrection happened, then there is a God who created you for himself and ultimately, yes, Christianity fits you whether you can see it now or not. If he’s real and risen, then just like Paul, even though he had none of the answers to any of his questions, you’ll have to say, ‘What would you have me do, Lord?’”

That’s the first reason why belief in the resurrection is crucial: it is the lynchpin on which our entire faith hangs. If it’s not true, we’d be better off doing something else; if it is true, then our only option is to confess that Christ is Lord.

The second reason is simpler. Belief in the resurrection of Christ is crucial because it is the ultimate hope of humanity—it is how we know that Christ’s work was a once-and-for-all success.

I was close to both of my grandparents on my mother’s side; both of them died after I moved to France. When my Grandpa died, I couldn’t afford to go to America for his funeral, so a big part of me didn’t even realize he was gone. I spoke to him on the phone the day before he passed, but I wasn’t there.

When Grandma died, though, I was able to go to Oklahoma for the funeral, and my mom and my aunts and uncle asked me to prepare her eulogy.

I didn’t expect it to be as difficult as it was; you guys know me, I cry easily. For Grandma’s funeral, I was a wreck. I could barely get through it. Part of it, of course, was because I was sad—it felt like I was giving a eulogy for both of my grandparents at the same time, since I wasn’t there for Grandpa’s funeral. I was sad that I didn’t get to see either of them at the end of their lives. I missed them, so of course there was sadness there.

But mostly, I was a wreck because I was so happy. Both of my grandparents knew and loved Jesus Christ—so it was okay. I could stand there, and look at that box with my grandma’s lifeless body inside it…and it was okay. I knew, and I still know, that both of them are happier now than they ever were in this life. And I knew I’ll get to spend all of eternity with them. Because I believed God raised Jesus from the dead, all the sadness was secondary. It was okay, because God raised Jesus from the dead, and my grandparents had faith in him…so death was not final for them. Their bodies are dead, but they are very much alive, and will be forever.

That truth makes every suffering in this life bearable. J. T. English said it like this: “What could possibly go wrong in your life that a good resurrection can’t fix?” Think of one thing that you have suffered that will not be made right in heaven. It’s not possible. Everything will be made right—every injustice, every tragedy, every mental illness, every stressful situation—because God raised Christ from the dead.

That is why Paul says it like he does—that is why if we confess with our mouth that Jesus is Lord, and believe in our heart that God raised him from the dead, we will be saved. Because wrapped up in those two simple statements is the entirety of what it means to have faith in Christ.

And this is how both Jews and Gentiles, people from every background, with every possible problem and personality, can have access to the same salvation.

V. 12:

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.”

Salvation comes from God alone; it is a gift he bestows on us, and his gift both allows us to call on him, and responds to our call. God holds his salvation up like a lighthouse in a storm—if we didn’t see that light, we’d be lost. But for those he chooses to save, he holds up the light and shines it right in our eyes, and we call out for him to rescue us, and he reassures by saying: “I’m coming. I’m here. You’re safe.”

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

Training for Life

There’s one more question we need to ask: Why does Paul say all this to Christians? We could understand him articulating the gospel like this to unbelievers…but the church of Rome is filled with Christians, who presumably know these things already. Why does he say it to them?

He says these things to these Christians because he is training them, both for their life within the church, and their life outside of the church.

Paul knows how easy it would be to forget how and why the Jews and Gentiles in the church are on equal footing. The truth of the gospel is easy to forget, because it’s hard to accept. We have a hard time believing it really is that simple, so we’ll always be be tempted to establish a righteousness of our own, like the Jews who have rejected Christ.

But there is no one in the church who is more or less deserving than anyone else, because we all come to faith in exactly the same way: not through our efforts, not through our will, but through God, who shows us mercy. 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. God has no teacher’s pets.

And because we are all on equal footing, we are called to encourage one another, to know that even when we call each other on sin, even when we fight our own sin, it’s not to make ourselves more favorable in God’s sight. We can’t possibly get any more favorable than we are now, because we are wearing the perfect life of Jesus Christ. It doesn’t get any cleaner than that. When we fight our sin, it is not in order to gain our own righteousness, but in order to enjoy the righteousness we’ve been given—to live out in practice what is already true of us in God’s sight.

In repeating the gospel to the Romans, Paul is training them for life inside the church.

And he’s training them for life outside the church.

He knows how easy it would be to be intimidated by the discussion they’ll have to have with family members and friends and neighbors who want nothing to do with Christ. A lot of you know what that’s like: it’s a scary conversation.

So Paul is training them in how to talk about the gospel with other people. The message is so simple, it can be summarized in a couple of sentences.

We are all terrible lords of our own lives. We need a good Lord. Even worse, we have actively rebelled against the only good Lord we have.

But the good Lord loves us, and his name is Jesus Christ. He lived our life, and died our death, and was raised to ensure our resurrection, which will fix every inconsistency, every suffering, every relational problem, every tragedy.

So let him be Lord of your life—confess that he is Lord. And believe—trust—that God really did raise him from the dead: that every wrong really will be made right. Call on his name, ask for his rescue, and he will rescue you.

This is what you need to know if you share the gospel with someone; and this is what you need to know if you don’t know Christ, and you happen to be here this morning.

If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved; everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.