Bible evangewomanblogspotcomThe three-year Lectionary that many Catholics and Protestants hear in public worship gives us a great variety of Holy Scripture.

Yet, it doesn’t tell the whole story.

My series Forbidden Bible Verses — ones the Lectionary editors and their clergy omit — examines the passages we do not hear in church. These missing verses are also Essential Bible Verses, ones we should study with care and attention. Often, we find that they carry difficult messages and warnings.

Today’s reading is from the English Standard Version with commentary by Matthew Henry and John MacArthur.

Romans 10:1-4

10 Brothers,[a] 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.[b]

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Last week’s post discussed Romans 9, wherein Paul explained why the Church opened to the Gentiles as well as the Jews. This was difficult for Paul’s audience of Jewish converts in Rome to understand.

Romans 10 picks up where Romans 9 leaves off. Here are the concluding verses from that chapter (emphases mine):

30 What should we say then? Those who aren’t Jews did not look for a way to be right with God. But they found it by having faith. 31 Israel did look for a law that could make them right with God. But they didn’t find it.

32 Why not? Because they didn’t look for it by faith. They tried to get it by working for it. They tripped over the stone that causes people to trip and fall.  (Romans 9:30-32)

Powerful words.

Paul wanted desperately for his audience to understand that the way to salvation and belief in God is through Jesus Christ alone (verse 1).

Matthew Henry says that verse is a prayer of Paul’s:

It was not only his heart’s desire, but it was his prayer. There may be desires in the heart, and yet no prayer, unless those desires be presented to God. Wishing and woulding, if that be all, are not praying.

Paul says that the Jews have a ‘zeal’ for God, but not one that is based in ‘knowledge’, true understanding (verse 2).

There are many instances where Paul discussed his prior life as a Pharisee and how he was missing out on the truth of Jesus Christ. John MacArthur discusses several instances of these. Here is one from Paul’s letter to the Galatians:

… Galatians 1:13, “For you have heard of my manner of life in time past in the Jews’ religion, how that beyond measure I persecuted the church of God and wasted it and profited in the Jews’ religion above many, my equals and my own nation, being more exceedingly zealous of the tradition of my fathers.” He says I bear witness. I bear witness that they have a zeal for God. How do you know that? I had it. I was so zealous for God, I was so zealous for what I thought was the truth of God and the tradition, I was so zealous for that that I relentlessly persecuted the church of Jesus Christ. I did all I could to slaughter the Christians. I was zealous for God.

Henry explains the knowledge that the Jews missed out on:

Their zeal was not according to knowledge. It is true God gave them that law for which they were so zealous; but they might have known that, by the appearance of the promised Messiah, an end was put to it. He introduced a new religion and way of worship, to which the former must give place. He proved himself the Son of God, gave the most convincing evidence that could be of his being the Messiah; and yet they did not know and would not own him, but shut their eyes against the clear light, so that their zeal for the law was blind.

Because of this, they closed their hearts and minds to God’s righteousness and refused to submit to Him (verse 3), even though they thought they were through the law.

MacArthur characterises Romans 10 as follows:

In chapter 9, as I said, the reason they’re unsaved is the sovereignty of God. Concurrent with that in chapter 10 is their own unbelief. And the theme here is the ignorance of Israel, a willing, unbelieving ignorance.

Paul goes on to say that the coming of the Messiah, Christ Jesus, put an end to the law of the Old Covenant (verse 4). The law was there only to prepare God’s chosen people in the way of holiness for Christ, the Redeemer. Note that Christ preached to the Jews first. He instructed His apostles to preach to the Jews. See last Sunday’s Gospel reading from Matthew 10:

10:5 These twelve Jesus sent out with the following instructions: “Go nowhere among the Gentiles, and enter no town of the Samaritans,

10:6 but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.

Jesus wanted His Father’s people to be the first to know that He came to redeem them.

Henry explains this in a way that we can also apply to ourselves:

Christ … did what the law could not do (Romans 8:3), and secured the great end of it. The end of the law was to bring men to perfect obedience, and so to obtain justification. This is now become impossible, by reason of the power of sin and the corruption of nature; but Christ is the end of the law. The law is not destroyed, nor the intention of the lawgiver frustrated, but, full satisfaction being made by the death of Christ for our breach of the law, the end is attained, and we are put in another way of justification. Christ is thus the end of the law for righteousness, that is, for justification; but it is only to every one that believeth. Upon our believing, that is, our humble consent to the terms of the gospel, we become interested in Christ’s satisfaction, and so are justified through the redemption that is in Jesus.

Even so, the following was the disappointing result that Paul desperately wanted to remedy. MacArthur says:

Number one, Israel was ignorant of the person of God. Can you imagine how devastating that is to them to hear that? They were ignorant of the person of God. Two, they were ignorant of the provision of Christ. Three, they were ignorant of the place of faith, the role that faith played. Four, they were ignorant of the parameters of salvation, the extent of it, the wideness of it, the inclusiveness of it. Fifth, they were ignorant of the predictions of Scripture. They were ignorant of the person of God, the provision of Christ, the place of faith, the parameters of salvation, the predictions of Scripture. The whole chapter then comes together to say Israel is lost because Israel is in the ignorance of unbelief.

And I say to you again that no man is ever lost because God makes some decree somewhere utterly unconnected to how that man chooses. They come together. And how God does that is His problem. The present rejection of Israel is not simply and only because of sovereign election, as if God withheld His grace. In fact, He preached and preached and preached and called and called and called and they refused to believe. And so they are found in chapter 10 in unbelieving ignorance.

This theme continues next week, when Paul cites Isaiah preaching to his own people who rejected his prophecy.

Next time — Romans 10:16-21