Furthermore, To question how they could ascend into heaven in order to find a way of perfection was a denial of the incarnation of Christ. We have God and man in presence, so to speak. One does not have to mount a ladder to heaven in order to beseech God to send Christ down. It is fit that God should be honoured with the mouth, for he made man's mouth (Exodus 4:11), and at such a time has promised to give his faithful people a mouth and wisdom,Luke 21:15. "Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, and changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man," etc. And it is well for those ignorant of it to know that here, in verse 4, the apostle speaks first of "walking not after the flesh, but after the Spirit." Here is where the passage becomes really difficult. Then he enlarges, and points out that there is a remnant of grace in the worst of times. Of these only a remnant would be saved. Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him for righteousness. A voice cries "Who shall ascend into heaven?" If salvation for man is possible by any other means, if man can be saved by the law, if man can be saved by his own efforts, by his good works, if a man can be saved by sincerity, then, God, let this cup pass from Me. Gods word provides a system to live by. Again, we cannot neglect the emphasis on personal responsibility. God pronounces against the unrighteousness of such; for if the knowledge, however exact, of God's revealed mind was accompanied by no renewal of the heart, if it was without life towards God, all must be vain. When we drift away from it, we become confused, and we begin dividing, bickering and fighting among ourselves. No man can tell. The things about which we are in doubt are far fewer than we would like to think. 10:5-8: For Moses writeth that the man that doeth the righteousness which is of the law shall live thereby. The condition of the Roman saints called for a setting forth of the gospel of God; but this object, in order to be rightly understood and appreciated, leads the apostle into a display of the condition of man. The Gentiles the despised heathen were to be brought in; the self-satisfied Jews are left behind, justly and beyond question, if they believed the law and the prophets. (that is, to bring Christ down from above:): In Moses sermon these words mean the law that he commanded Israel to obey was not some far off impossibility requiring heroic superhuman efforts to discover and obey. How could the Jews say that this meant themselves? Pastor Mark Schlamann. The point is best understood by examining the source of Pauls information. You are free to opt out any time or opt in for other cookies to get a better experience. Seventh day adventist Bible Commentary reference series volumes 1-10. There is mutual confirmation. No man could believe this who did not also believe all the truths dependent on it. There was no law there or then; for Abraham died long before God spoke from Sinai. You can also change some of your preferences. "The righteousness which is of faith speaketh on this wise, Say not in thine heart, Who shall ascend into heaven? There must be a radical submission to the righteousness of God, putting away our own righteousness. In the end the soldiers so pitied him that they brought him dressed meat, which was not pork, and told him to eat it and say that he had eaten pork. $150.00 + $30 . It is with that objection Paul deals; and, as he deals with it in its various forms, on each occasion he clinches his answer with a text from scripture. (a.) Undoubtedly divine judgment fell on Him; but this is not "the righteousness of God," as the apostle employs it in any part of his writings any more than here, though we know there could be no such thing as God's righteousness justifying the believer, if Christ had not borne the judgment of God. What could be conceived closer or more even than this? The second passage is from Isaiah 65:1 where God says that, in a strange way, he has been found by a people who were not looking for him at all. Our website uses cookies to store user preferences. We should not ignore how scandalously simple this is (whoever calls upon the name of the LORD shall be saved) and what an affront this is to every attempt of the flesh to be justified or any attempt to find salvation based on national or ethnic foundation. or, Who shall descend into the deep?" 1. To question the need for bringing someone from the deep was a denial of Jesus resurrection (CBL, Romans, p. 163). He says his prayers every day. They get so extreme in the election predestination and all, they get so extreme that there are some churches that will not put a scripture on the board out in front, lest some sinner who has not been elected might walk by and believe in Jesus Christ and get saved when he wasn't predestined to do so.Don't get extreme. Grace in the soul is its new nature; the soul is alive to God, and has begun its holy happiness which shall endure for ever. He fell and a soldier kicked him. This time Paul quotes Psalms 19:4: "Their voice goes out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world." There are in reality very few times when we can honestly say: "I never knew that things would turn out like this." There is really no other hope, for if you get a little bit of your own works put into the building, of your hope, you have just so much rotten timber in the fabric, and that rot will plague the whole house, and turn it into dust at the last. Salvation isn't way off in heaven some place. He dwells in the heart by faith. Of course, it could hardly be the law: that was the boast of Israel. It must possess this place because the gospel is Gods power to save us (1:16). First of all, the groundwork of it is laid in the first four verses, the last of them leading into every-day walk. It would not have been righteous in any sense to have remitted the sins, until they were actually borne by One who could and did suffer for them. That is - This is the use which the apostle makes of it; not that Moses referred to the gospel. How are they to hear without someone to proclaim the good news to them? He saves those who are always confessors of sin, always needy in themselves, and therefore always glad of him. I do not come to-day with a gospel veiled in mystery and shrouded in doubt; I do not bring a message which you cannot understand or receive; neither do I come with "ifs" and "buts" and "peradventures," but with this, "Whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved." ( Romans Commentary) Paul's main point is the ready availability of Good News. a. This occupies the central part of the chapter, which then closes with the unfailing and faithful power of God for us in all our experiences here below. There never can be solid peace with God without both. This was the key to their difficulties this alone, and fully explains their coming ruin as well as God's solemn warnings. So I have found by my making over my other grandchildren she'll come elbowing her way in to get close to Grandpa. They thought they needed not to be beholden to the merit of Christ, and therefore depended upon their own performances as sufficient to make up a righteousness wherein to appear before God. It was for her he cared, and for those about him as for himself, all was rest. Then the apostle introduces the ground, certainty, and character of God's judgment (verses 4-16). You must carefully guard against the notion of its being a question of Paul's own experience, because he says, "I had not known," "I was alive," etc. "There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus. It is not said to be revealed in the gospel. It is true that Christ was in the grave, and it is as true that he is now in heaven; but we need not perplex and puzzle ourselves with fancied difficulties, nor must we create to ourselves such gross and carnal ideas of these things as if the method of salvation were impracticable, and the design of the revelation were only to amuse us. "The just shall live by faith" (not by law). . A good witness, as a reason of his good wish (Romans 10:2; Romans 10:2): I bear them record that they have a zeal of God. Then he knows that Jesus will blot out his transgressions, and create in him a clean heart, and restore him to himself again, though now, like David, his sin is ever before him. Obedience was possible and the consequences of obedience (Gods blessings) were sure. There is no mystery or obscurity about it. I confine myself to its doctrinal import, and the full Christian sense of the word; and I maintain that salvation signifies that deliverance for the believer which is the full consequence of the mighty work of Christ, apprehended not, of course, necessarily according to all its depth in God's eyes, but at any rate applied to the soul in the power of the Holy Ghost. Yet, how many times we take the promises of God and say, "Oh, God, just help me to believe. The righteousness of faith, on the other hand, is easily available to all men upon the conditions mentioned in the next phrases. Romans 10:5-9 . The gospel means His glad tidings for man. The way of justification and salvation has in it no such depths or knots as may discourage us, no insuperable difficulties attending it but, as was foretold, it is a high-way, Isaiah 35:8. Here you have it, "Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved." No prayers, or tears, are wanted to bring him down: he has already come and is near at hand. As Cottrell says, "The word of faith is another shorthand expression for the entire way of grace" (Vol. Our need is our warrant, and if that be gone, all is gone. He would not therefore have them ignorant how they had lain on his heart for a visit (ver. A passage like this may seem strange to us and unconvincing; and it may seem that some at least of the texts Paul quotes have been wrenched out of their context and made to mean what they were never intended to mean. It is not doing, but believing; therefore it is what is proclaimed to them, and what they receive and believe. Do some great brave wonderful marvelous thing. To a disobedient and contrary people.. as it is written, How beautiful are the feet of them that preach the gospel of peace, and bring glad tidings of good things! Thus one could not fail to see these two weighty inferences: the bringing in to be God's sons of those that had not been His people, and the judgment and destruction of the great mass of His undoubted people. Yes indeed: Their sound has gone out to all the earth, This is where so many religious people even sincere Christians go astray. This it was before it was his prayer. The righteousness of faith lies not in dreams and visions, delusions or depressions: it lies only in reliance upon the work of Jesus finished for you. To say You can be right before God if you work hard enough is not a gospel of peace, and that message does not bring glad tidings of good things. He spent the whole night in trying to cheer and comfort others: he had no trembling thought about himself. No, if by keeping the law, then that encourages boasting, but it is eliminated because I am saved just through simple faith in Jesus Christ. In Romans 14:1-23 and the beginning ofRomans 15:1-33; Romans 15:1-33 we have the delicate theme of Christian forbearance in its limits and largeness. The word of faith - The doctrine which requires faith, that is, the gospel; compare 1 Timothy 4:6. Hence, what he is here discussing is not remission of sins, but deliverance from sin. That is, the Jews did not need to wonder about or ask how God would treat those who obeyed and disobeyed. I will instruct thee and teach thee in the way which thou shalt go: I will guide thee with mine eye.". They have a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge. Take the Sabbath law. Is there no call, no mercy, of God for any besides? John MacArthur New Testament Commentary, Book of Romans 2 Volume Set. Of whom does it declare all this? He speaks of the sovereignty of God having elected that it might stand by election. In Romans 10:1-21 Paul made this same point. Thus then, if Paul gave his own sense of Jewish privileges, there was no unbelieving Jew that rose up to his estimate of them. The word is nigh thee There is no occasion to seek high or low for the saving power; the word of reconciliation is nigh. But it is quite possible for the unconverted to be tenacious of the truth, yet unrighteous in their ways; and so much the worse for them. 5 For Moses describeth the righteousness which is of the law, That the man which doeth those things shall live by them. He says rema is "the word of faith" that is proclaimed by the followers of Jesus. But this is not all; and the objection of the Jew gives occasion for the apostle to bring out a fuller display of what God is. He had this, of course, in a revelation that was from God; he had law; he had prophets; he had divine institutions. . Paul was entirely ready to admit that the Jews were zealous for God; but he also saw that their zeal was a misdirected thing. Surely it would need that I mount to heaven to own my sin, or dive to hell to bear its punishment. This last relation was the direct subject of the prophetic testimony, and Jesus had come accordingly. We have the tenour of it, Romans 10:9; Romans 10:10, the sum of the gospel, which is plain and easy enough. d. But what does it say? 18). 8.What does it say? Copyright - Enduring Word       |      . Let me call your attention again to its force. 7). 1 Brethren, my heart's desire and prayer to God for Israel is, that they might be saved. And so you will see them at the wailing wall, you will see them as they tie to them a little box, the phylacteries as they bind them to their foreheads and as they put on their prayer shawl and they go up to the wall and they begin to bob up and down and they go through their prayers and all, a zeal for God but not according to knowledge. Those that were under the law were to do all themselves, Do this, and live; but the gospel discovers the greatest part of the work done already, and what remains cut short in righteousness, salvation offered upon very plain and easy terms, brought to our door, as it were, in the word which is nigh us. Two things are required as conditions of salvation:-- (a.) (325) The contrast, by which the difference between the law and the gospel appears, is indeed to be understood: and from this distinction we learn, that as the law demands works, so the gospel requires nothing else, but that men bring faith to receive the grace of God. I have had almost thirty years among you, and God has been very gracious to us, so that we have lost very few comparatively by death; but now many are going home, and, according to the course of nature, many of our honored brethren and sisters will soon follow. a. He must not only know about Christ: he must know him. It is no longer in our power to dream of a perfect, life-long obedience. Moses said, "That the man which doeth those things shall live by them." He observes Sabbath; he loves God. The law demanded, but could never receive righteousness from man. Then call upon the Lord, and you shall be saved. For of him, and through him, and to him, are all things: to whom be glory for ever.". By proceeding, you consent to our cookie usage. Beneath it there runs the conviction that there are certain kinds of ignorance which are inexcusable. He was "declared," says the apostle, "to be the Son of God with power, according to the Spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead" ( , ver. () in Romans 10:8, as afterwards . Romans 10:9-10 are of prime importance. Read this verse, "All that the Father giveth me shall come to me; and him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out." They're both true. What he meant was: "Christ is the end of legalism." You won't get glad tidings of good things. Cottrell cites Leon Morris in summary: "The righteousness of faith does not demand that we be supermen; it does not set some impossible task before us. For we are God's fellow workers; you are God's field, God's building. I cannot get lower than that, can I? A soul may as truly, no doubt, be put into relationship with God be made very happy, it may be; but it is not what Scripture calls "peace with God." Therein God is both vindicated and glorified. Hence it is essentially founded on the gift not only of a Saviour who would interpose, in the mercy of God, to bear our sins, but of One who is already revealed, and the work done and accepted, and this known in the fact that God Himself has interposed to raise Him from among the dead a bright and momentous thing to press on souls, as indeed we find the apostles insisting on it throughout the Acts. then, go out to Gentiles? First, We need not go to heaven, to search the records there, or to enquire into the secrets of the divine counsel. What is near us may be easily reached. Now the doctrine which we saw asserted in the latter part ofRomans 5:1-21; Romans 5:1-21 is applied to both. He has Gods law; all that remains is for him to obey it. "Christ's Prayer for his People.". He was the promised Messiah, born King of the Jews. 17.) 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