ROMANS 10
The truth of God’s sovereignty had no hardening or narrowing effect upon Paul. Indeed, his great object was to show how that sovereignty acts in the way of mercy and compassion, securing a people and sons for God from amongst a world of fallen sinners. “Our Saviour God ... desires that all men should be saved”, and the Man Christ Jesus — the blessed Mediator of God and men — “gave himself a ransom for all”, 1 Timothy 2: 4 - 6. Paul was imbued with the same spirit — the true spirit of the dispensation — and his heart delighted in the thought of there being salvation for Israel. Though they had despised and rejected Christ, stumbled at the stumbling stone, his supplication was for their salvation. That is the [p. 172] kind of spirit with which God would imbue His sons. We are in the midst of a great profession which is in much the same state as Israel was, but we are there to be exponents of grace.
It is well to acknowledge any “zeal for God” which there is, even if “not according to knowledge”. But it is very sad for people who have the epistle to the Romans in their Bibles to be “ignorant of God’s righteousness, and seeking to establish their own righteousness”! The truth is that such, like Israel, “have not submitted to the righteousness of God”. It is not a question now of DOING, but SUBMITTING and BELIEVING. “For Christ is the end of law for righteousness to every one that, believes”.
God has brought in His righteousness on quite a different principle from that of law. Law applies itself to me, who am already a fallen and sinful creature, and it has no power to make me other than what I am. The most it can do for me is to give me the knowledge of sin. But God has brought in Christ — another Man altogether — and if we have Him before us we have no thought of the law as a means of attaining righteousness. Earlier in the epistle the apostle has shown us that we are “justified freely by his grace through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus” (chapter 3: 24); and that “to him who does not work, but believes on him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is reckoned as righteousness” (chapter 4: 5). It is now for the believer simply a question of CHRIST. It is not “righteousness which is of the law”, but the “righteousness of faith”. The two kinds of righteousness are as diverse one from another as possible.
There can be no mistake as to “the righteousness which is of the law”. Moses has laid down in writing what it is: “The man who has practised those things shall live by them”. But on that ground all for man is utterly hopeless, for man is a sinner; he does not practise the things which the law enjoins. But there is another kind of righteousness, even “the righteousness of faith”; and it becomes available when all hope of law-righteousness is lost. The scriptures quoted here from Deuteronomy 30 are most striking in reference to this. For the people are contemplated there as driven out, and scattered among the nations, by Jehovah on account of their sins. But there, by His mercy, they hearken to His voice, and return to Him in heart; and then they find that His word is very near to them. They have not to do any impossible things; they have simply to give place to the word which God puts in their heart. Now Paul tells us that the word which God puts in their hearts is “the word of faith”, and it has reference, not to any works of man, but to Christ.
“Do not say in thine heart: Who shall ascend to the heavens? that is, to bring Christ down; or, Who shall descend into the abyss? that is, to bring up Christ from among the dead”. When God works in the latter day of Israel’s history to turn the long captivity of His people, and to gather them again, and bring them into the land which their fathers possessed, He will put in their hearts the truth in regard to CHRIST. They will know how He has come down from heaven to die, and that God has raised Him from among the dead. This has no connection with law-righteousness; it is the mighty intervention of God in love and power, sending Christ down from heaven to be His salvation, and raising Him from [p. 174] among the dead when everything had been done that His glory required.
God presents CHRIST to us as ending all thought of getting righteousness by law. Many souls are unestablished as to this; they lack the blessed sense of repose which comes of seeing that righteousness is now simply a question of Christ. If it is CHRIST there is no defect, no imperfection, no shortcoming of any kind, nothing of which to be ashamed. It is a blessed Person whose origin was heaven, and who has descended into the abyss of death, and been raised by God from among the dead. We had no hand in this at all: it was all accomplished outside us by Christ and by God. His coming down was no work of ours, neither was His being raised from among the dead. It is in this way that righteousness has been made available for sinners entirely destitute of it in themselves. It is altogether of God from first to last.
It is impossible to mix the two principles. Law-righteousness depends on me and on what I do, Faith-righteousness depends on Christ and what He has done. God will yet put “the word of faith” in the heart of Israel, and that word will speak only of Christ. God is causing “the word of faith” to be preached today, and is thus bringing it to be in the mouth and in the heart of every believer. “The word of faith” says nothing of righteousness by works; it says, “That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth Jesus as Lord, and shalt believe in thine heart that God has raised him from among the dead, thou shalt be saved. For with the heart is believed to righteousness; and with the mouth confession made to salvation”.
[p. 175] What God does in His grace for us, and what He will do for Israel in a coming day, is to bring the word very near to us, “in thy mouth and in thy heart”. But the word is concerning “Jesus as Lord”; He puts that “word” as a confession in the mouth of every one of His called ones. It may seem a simple thing, but salvation lies in it. “Thy mouth” refers to the place which you take publicly; you are known in this world as a confessor of Jesus as Lord.
I do not think confessing Jesus as Lord means telling Christians that you have believed on the Lord Jesus. Confession is not, if we may so say, on Sunday evening after the preaching, but on Monday morning when you go back to school, or to office or works. It is truly a good thing to tell the preacher or Christian friends that you have trusted the Saviour. That is confiding the secret of your heart to sympathetic ears. But confession properly is in the presence of those who are not sympathetic. It involves reproach in a scene where the Lord and His rights are disowned. A loyal subject of the rejected King cannot expect to be in honour amongst those who are unsubject to Him. The confessor’s heart has become a sanctuary for the Lord, and therefore he confesses Him in the scene of His rejection. I remember F.E.R. being asked in a large meeting if there was any definite thing which believers should be prepared to stand for at all costs, and if so, what was it. He answered, The Lordship of Christ. The vital point of all testimony in this hostile scene, which has thrown off subjection to Christ, is that we should confess Jesus as Lord. It is what the enemy is specially set against with each of us.
It is confessing JESUS as Lord, That Man is [p. 176] supreme. It raises the question whether we are subdued to Him. Do we really admire and honour the qualities and character seen in Jesus? Is He supreme with us, or do we adhere practically to the features of man after the flesh? To confess JESUS as Lord is to run counter to all that men generally esteem and cultivate. Philippians 2 gives us some of His features, and shows us what God thinks of Him. He is in the highest place in the universe of God, and He will undoubtedly support those who confess Him here, and they will be approved of God. A “confession” is generally an answer to a challenge; it was so when Christ Jesus “witnessed before Pontius Pilate the good confession”, 1 Timothy 6: 13. As having come under the Lordship of Christ in grace and blessing, one begins to take an entirely new course, and it leads to questions being asked. We shall not be challenged if we are steering a course as near to the world as possible. But do we believe that all the moral features of the world are displeasing to God, and that it is really an honour to be a peculiar people here, as carrying the marks of God’s world? If we were more definitely separate from the world we should be more often challenged. A brother told me recently that he had been praying for opportunity to confess the Lord more than he had done, and the general strike came along and gave him what he desired, and he said that he had a great sense of divine support in confessing the Lord in the face of a good deal of opposition.
Peter supposes that hope will shine so brightly in believers that people will ask what is the source of it; 1 Peter 3: 15. When the Lord the Christ is sanctified in the heart it makes the Christian radiant with [p. 177] hope, and people ask questions. Then is the time for the “mouth” to confess the truth, that Jesus has become Lord to us. It means a definite separation from the world, which does not and will not own or confess Him as Lord. It means that we publicly take sides with God, as having availed ourselves of the wondrous and blessed administration of grace which He has put in the hands of Jesus as Lord.
A confessor of Jesus as Lord is freed from the influences which govern men in the world — influences which are really the enemy’s power over men’s souls — and he comes under the protective power of the One whom he confesses. Hence it is that with the mouth confession is made to salvation. If a Christian finds himself falling under the power of the world it is well for him to be exercised about his “mouth”. Let him remember that God has put a “word” in his mouth, and that word is the confession of Jesus as Lord. As he allows that “word” to come out of his mouth, he will find that it means reproach and rejection here, but that it carries with it the power of God’s salvation.
When Jesus is confessed as Lord it means that He has become Lord to us. There is something behind the confession to support it. Souls are sometimes pressed to confess what has not yet become true to their faith, but this is very injurious, and only tends to put them in a false position. How could I confess boldly and clearly Jesus as Lord if He were not Lord to me? The blessed reality that Jesus is Lord is known in the heart; then it is confessed definitely and publicly here; and salvation is found thereby. There is immense power in the spiritual confession of Jesus as Lord; it arrests the conscience of the one [p. 178] to whom He is confessed, for he knows in the depths of his soul that Jesus ought to be Lord to him also. There is the power of a divine salvation with the confessor of Jesus as Lord. Every young believer may be assured that when he says simply in the sense of grace, “Jesus has become Lord to me”, he is taking ground in this world which will ensure the support of divine power.
The “word of faith” is “in thy heart”; it is there as faith’s blessed assurance “that God has raised him from among the dead”. It is not believing something about ourselves, but believing what God has done to Jesus our Lord, after that blessed One had died for us and borne our sins. God has raised Him from among the dead, and we believe it that we may get righteousness that way, and not by any works of ours. “With the heart is believed to righteousness”. And Paul beautifully adds, “For the scripture says, No one believing on him shall be ashamed”.
In the third chapter he had said, “For there is no difference; for all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God”. Jew or Gentile, all had sinned; all might be justified freely by grace. Now he says again, “For there is no difference of Jew and Greek; for the same Lord of all is rich towards all that call upon him”. Jesus is the universal Lord for the administration of all divine wealth in grace, But men have to put on the link with Him from their side by calling upon Him. We call upon Him when we hear how rich He is; when we hear what wealth of grace and blessing is in Him. “For every one whosoever, who shall call on the name of the Lord, shall be saved”. That is the position at the present time. How infinite the grace of it!
[p. 179] But then it is not left to men, if we may so say, to find out for themselves what a rich Lord there is to call upon. Certainly they would not call on One in whom they did not believe. But in order to believe on Him they must hear of Him, and they cannot hear without a preacher, and a preacher is of no value unless God has sent him. So God has sent preachers to make known to men what a rich Lord there is, so that they may hear of Him, and believe on Him, and call upon Him. It does not suffice here to believe on Him; there must be the personal calling upon Him; it is the calling upon Him that definitely links one with all the power of God’s salvation that is in Him. It is, as before said, a definite putting on of the link from our side; it is how we avail ourselves of Him for salvation. Christians are characteristically “those that call upon the Lord”.
Speaking of the sent preachers leads Paul to apply to them words spoken prophetically of Christ. He changes the “him” of Isaiah 52: 7 into “them”! How beautiful were HIS feet! Their feet are beautiful also, for they move from place to place announcing glad tidings of peace, and of good things that are altogether of God. They tell how God reigns in grace, and of the rich Lord who is exalted that He may be called upon by “every one whosoever”. It should be a matter of exercise to us all that we may be marked by beautiful feet.
But, alas! all do not obey the glad tidings. Esaias, as a representative preacher, has to say, “Lord, who has believed our report?” And this gives occasion for a statement of great importance. “So faith then is by a report: but the report by God’s word”. Faith is not something that springs up in the heart [p. 180] of man apart from what he hears, or apart from what he hears being “God’s word”. People often tell us that they have “faith” about things which have never come to them as a divine report. They succeed in persuading themselves that certain thoughts of their own, or of other persons, can be relied on; they have arrived at certain inward convictions, and think that these are “faith”. But faith is “by a report” — a definite communication made concerning matters which would never come within man’s knowledge if they were not reported to him. And this report is “by God’s word”; it is God speaking to men in grace that they may know Him, and have a direct and personal link with Him through what is reported to them. No mind of man could ever have conceived such thoughts in regard of God as are presented to us in the glad tidings. God made known to His sinful creatures in grace, righteousness, power and love, through redemption, and through the Lord Jesus Christ as a risen and glorified Man! That is the “report”, and it is “by God’s word”; there is such a report because it has pleased God to speak to men thus with regard to Himself. Where the report is believed, God is known in the heart according to the revelation He has made of Himself, and this is faith.
The report is now as universal as the testimony of the heavens in Psalm 19. Indeed, that Psalm has its answer now in Christ being set in the heavens as the true Sun of the moral universe. Things cannot be limited now to Israel; Messiah according to flesh might be peculiarly theirs, and in a sense limited to them; but the Messiah rejected and crucified by His own Israel, and set as a glorified Man at the right hand of God in heaven, could not be limited in any [p. 181] way. The sun shines for every creature under heaven, and Christ is the true Sun shining now from the heavens where God has set Him. And the divine voice goes out now “into all the earth, and their words to the extremities of the habitable world”. In the wisdom and sovereignty of God’s ways the testimony of His grace may be more in one part of the world than another, but the scope of His grace is towards all; it cannot be restricted. That encourages us to speak freely to people about Christ.
“But I say, Has not Israel known?” Yes, indeed! God had been faithful to His Israel. He had given the long-promised One to be in their midst; going about doing good, and healing all that were oppressed of the devil. They had had Immanuel with them in gracious power. But they had rejected Him, and now they were being provoked to jealousy through God blessing the Gentiles. God was being found by those who did not seek Him; He was becoming manifest to those not inquiring after Him. All this was, indeed, known to Israel, but it did not affect them in any gracious way. The prophetic word of Isaiah was true! “All the day long I have stretched out my hands unto a people disobeying and opposing”.