Romans 10
ROMANS 10
ISRAEL’S ROLE AND SALVATION (9:1–11:36), cont.
Two Approaches to the Law and Righteousness
(9:30–10:10), cont.
As Paul lamented Israel’s failure in 9:1–3, so he emphasizes his desire for their salvation in 10:1. He has already noted their failure to be saved because of their failure to depend on the rock, approaching the law wrongly as a matter of observance rather than trust in God (9:31–33).
When Paul testifies of Israel’s “zeal” yet laments that its object is misinformed (10:2), he has experience with this misinformed zeal (Gal 1:14; Phil 3:6). He contends that they seek righteousness by their means rather than God’s (10:3); God’s own righteousness includes his saving character that would put them right (see comment on 1:17). Their failure to “submit themselves” to God’s righteousness (10:3) was to be expected insofar as they were not depending on God’s superhuman power; mere flesh cannot submit to God’s law from the heart (8:7). They could not achieve righteousness by works to fulfill the law any more than any law code makes its non-transgressors truly righteous before God; only in Christ (5:17, 21) and by the Spirit (8:2–4) are people made righteous.
Thus, Paul argues, Christ is the “end” (telos) of the law for righteousness from the standpoint of faith. The Greek term for “end” can involve either “goal” or “termination.”1 “Goal” seems the likelier primary nuance, but the context (which defines the sense in which the law ends or climaxes) clarifies the sense of the statement in any case. Israel failed to attain the law of righteousness because they pursued it by works rather than by faith (9:31–32); Gentiles conversely attained righteousness by faith (9:30). The problem thus is not the law, but the wrong approach to the law (as Paul will further clarify in 10:5–8). Like faith (3:31), Christ is the goal of the law, what the law points to for those with the perspective of faith. But if the law is approached as a “law of works” (3:27), as in 10:5, recognizing the reality of Christ should finish off that approach; those who “believe” (10:4) will not take this approach.
Paul supports his argument exegetically in 10:5–8. Israel’s wrongheaded approach to the law was by works rather than by faith (9:31–32). In 10:5 Paul offers a basic text for this wrong approach of works, and in 10:6–8 he counters with a text for the right approach of faith. (Jewish teachers often defended positions by citing counter-texts to refute what they viewed as a misunderstanding of other texts.)2 We do in fact know that later Jewish teachers applied texts like those in 10:5 (especially Lev 18:5; also Gal 3:12) to eternal life,3 even though these passages originally meant just long life in the land,4 and it is entirely possible and even probable that Paul has heard this prooftext in his debates in the synagogues. Paul does not need to elaborate on why the approach to the law in 10:5 is unworkable, because he has already addressed the failure of law-works due to human sinfulness in 3:10–18 and elsewhere, most recently in 9:31–32 (cf. also 3:21; 4:13; Gal 2:21; 3:21; Phil 3:6, 9).
Paul articulates his own case for righteousness in 10:6–10. Instead of the righteousness based on works of the law, Paul advocates righteousness by depending on God’s righteousness (9:30–32; 10:3). Paul adapts the wording of his chief passage (“lest you say”) to “Do not say in your heart,” a small change but one that manages to incorporate Deut 9:4, which explicitly reminds Israel that God is not giving them the land because of their righteousness (for, as the context in Deut 9:5–6 reiterates, they were not righteous).
The heart of Paul’s argument here, however, derives from Deut 30:12–14. In a closely argued midrash, Paul offers an analogy with God’s way of salvation in Deuteronomy, expecting structural continuity on the level of principle and how God deals with humanity. Both cases involve an obedient response to God’s gracious acts in salvation history, rather than authoring such salvation ourselves.
Deut 30:12–14
Paul’s application in Rom 10:6–10
5
Do not say, “Who will ascend to heaven?” (to bring down Christ, God’s gift, 10:6)
Do not say, “Who will descend into the deep?” (to experience redemption again, crossing the “sea,” 30:13)
6
The Word is near you (the Torah, 30:14)
The word is near you (the message of faith we now preach, 10:8)
It is in your mouth and in your heart (30:14; as Torah was to be recited continually [Deut 6:6–7])
It is in your mouth and in your heart: confess with the mouth Jesus is Lord, and believe with the heart that God raised him (10:9–10)
The point in Deuteronomy was that the law was not too difficult for Israel (Deut 30:11), provided it was written in the heart (Deut 5:29; 10:16; 30:6). Paul would agree (Rom 8:2–4), while expecting it to be fulfilled only on a widespread scale in the new covenant (Jer 31:33). The law was not far from them, nor did they have to work to bring it near (Deut 30:12–13); it was a gift. By analogy with God’s earlier savific activity, Paul insists that righteousness is also a gift now. The word was near Israel, and that was why they could carry it out (Deut 30:14)—provided they welcomed its nearness, written in the heart (cf. Pss 37:31; 40:8; 119:80, 112; Isa 51:7). Just as God prefaced the Ten Commandments with a reminder of redemption (Exod 20:2), so now salvation from sin was by grace through faith, expressed by right-doing. God’s way of saving through the newer historical salvation event in Christ is analogous to the way he saved through the law:7 the divine word (the gospel) also involves heart and mouth, though not just by reciting for memory. The heart trusts what God has done for salvation, and the mouth acknowledges Christ as Lord (embracing all the behavioral consequences of this new master).8 The way of righteousness in 10:5–10 (climaxing in righteousness and salvation) is thus why Jews had no salvific advantage over Gentiles if both heard the message (9:30–31).
Response of Israel and the Gentiles (10:11–21)
Paul has argued that the law does not give Jewish people an unfair advantage over Gentiles with respect to God’s righteousness (9:30–10:10). Now Paul makes explicit from Scripture this equality of opportunity (10:11–13). He will afterward show from Scripture that the “message of faith” (10:8) is in fact widely available, but has not been accepted by Israel, a tragic pattern that Scripture predisposes us to accept (10:14–21).
Recalling the believing heart for righteousness in 10:10, Paul shows from a text that he has recently quoted (in 9:33) that whoever trusts in God will not be shamed (in the day of judgment; 10:11). Following the ancient Jewish exegetical principle of linking texts based on a common key word, Paul shockingly uses “all” as the key word (though “not ashamed” and “salvation” are also synonymous in the day of judgment): “Whoever calls on the [divine] Lord’s name will be saved” (10:13; Joel 2:32). By “all” or “whoever” (pas) in both verses, Paul argues that the same Lord (Jesus, 10:9–10) is over all, both Jew and Gentile, who call on him (10:12). (This is also how he used “no distinction” in 3:22; cf. Col 3:11; Acts 15:9.)
In 10:14–17 Paul recognizes that to call on Jesus presupposed access to the gospel message (the “word of faith,” 10:8). Paul develops another rhetorical chain in 10:14–15,9 concluding with a confirmation in 10:15 from Isa 52:7, which refers to the “good news” of “salvation” and God’s reign, when God graciously restores his people.10
Thus access to the gospel message is needed for salvation; yet Israel’s problem, Paul now argues, is not ignorance, but disobedience (10:16, 18–21). Having quoted Isa 52:7, Paul now skips just a little ahead in the same context (as even synagogue readers were allowed to do). From the beginning of a passage about the suffering servant, Paul reminds his audience that Israel itself did not embrace this good news about their restoration (Isa 53:1). This passage belongs to a section (52:13–53:12) that early Christians regularly applied to Jesus’s mission (see comment on Rom 4:24–25). Salvific faith is available through hearing the “report” about Christ (10:17), but Scripture warned that Israel would reject this very report about Christ (10:16). Far from Jewish unbelief posing a credibility problem for Paul’s Jewish message, it simply fulfilled what the prophets had predicted.
Paul demonstrates Israel’s moral accountability (i.e., they are guilty of rejection, not just less culpable ignorance) in 10:18–21. The interlocutor insists in 10:18–19 that perhaps Israel has never heard (hence should not be held so accountable), repeating the objection in different words so that Paul can respond with two different arguments from Scripture. The first, in 10:18, cites Ps 19:4, which might allude back to the testimony of creation available to even Gentiles in Rom 1:19–20.11 Or perhaps Paul appeals to the biblical revelation about Christ; the context in Psalm 19 seems to link the message about God pervasive in creation (19:1–6) with God’s word in the Torah (19:7–11).12 Alternatively, Paul may make a simple analogy about the gospel message becoming pervasive just as creation’s testimony is (Rom 15:18–19; cf. Col 1:23).13
More intelligible are the texts Paul cites for Israel’s disobedience in 10:19–21, each of which Paul applies to God welcoming outsiders in relation to Israel’s disobedience. In 10:19 Paul quotes Deut 32:21, where Israel made God jealous with idols, so God will make them jealous by a nation that lacked his law.14 This concept becomes foundational for Paul’s eschatological strategy: he believes that his successful Gentile mission will provoke Israel’s jealousy, to motivate them to conversion (11:11, 14). Paul then (in 10:20–21) cites Isa 65:1–2, where a nation not seeking God (like the Gentiles of Rom 9:30) found him, an outcome that he contrasts with Israel who rebelled.15 In Isaiah 65 the second verse may be parallel to the first, so that even 65:1 may originally refer to Israel rather than Gentiles (cf. Rom 9:25–26). Nevertheless, Isaiah does include indications of Gentile adherents being incorporated into Israel (Isa 56:3–8), even nations welcomed as God’s people (Isa 19:24–25). Paul’s exegesis in this section invites the objection that perhaps God has rejected Israel, an objection that he hastens to refute in 11:1–32.
1. A similar interpretive crux appears in 2 Cor 3:13; in both, Paul might think in terms of eras of salvation history, in which case the Mosaic form of law prepared for the current end-time era (Gal 3:24–25). Origen, Erasmus and Calvin preferred “completion” rather than “termination” (Reasoner 2005: 113, 117). For “end,” see e.g., Dunn, Käsemann, Rhyne, Sanday and Headlam, Schreiner, Stuhlmacher, Talbert, Watson; for “goal,” e.g., R. D. Anderson, Cranfield, Donaldson, D. Fuller, Haacker, Hays, G. Howard, Jewett, Johnson.
2. Sometimes they even temporarily came down to the level of their erroneous interlocutors (e.g. Daube 1960: 54). Comparing one’s argument with that of an opponent was common (Anderson 2000: 22). “Righteousness-by-faith” speaking (as if human) here is personification and prosopopoiia, familiar rhetorical devices.
3. See comment on Rom 1:17; also Gathercole 2002: 100–102 (on CD 3.14–16, 20); Evans 2005: 226. Other texts make the connection between obedience and life (e.g., Neh 9:29; Ezek 20:11–13, 21; 33:12–19), probably echoing Lev 18:5; it might reflect court idiom (Gen 42:18).
4. Cf. Deut 4:1, 26, 40; 5:33; 8:1; 16:20; 30:16, 20.
5. Jewish traditions viewed Moses as having ascended to heaven to receive the Torah (Sipre Deut. 49.2.1; cf. Bar 3:29 with 4:1), though in Scripture he ascended only Sinai.
6. In the most common Greek version of Scripture, one could speak of the depths of the sea as an “abyss” (e.g., Job 28:14; 38:16, 30; Ps 33:7; Sir 24:29; Man 3), even in contrast to heaven, as here (Ps 107:26; perhaps also Gen 7:11; 8:2; Deut 33:13; Ps 135:6; Sir 1:3; 16:18; 24:5). Most relevant for Paul’s usage here are texts about God bringing his people through the abyssos of the sea in the exodus (the point of Deut 30): Ps 106:9, where God “saved” them (106:8–10) despite their rebellion (106:7); and Isa 51:10, emphasizing God’s “righteousness” and “salvation” (Isa 51:8); and others (Ps 77:16; Isa 63:13; Wis 10:19); and possibly a new exodus in Isa 44:27. Shifting terms might allow Paul to play on the image’s associations with death (Ezek 31:15). Philo and others felt free to adapt this passage’s language (Tobin 2004: 344–45), and a later targum speaks of “abyss” here.
7. The parallel between Christ and law here makes sense in view of the early Christian association of Jesus with wisdom (e.g., 1 Cor 8:6; Col 1:15–17; later, John 1:1–18); wisdom was often associated with Torah (Sir 24:23; 34:8; 39:1; Bar 3:29–4:1; 4 Macc 1:16–17; Sipre Deut. 37.1.3; cf. further Epp 1975: 133–36). As Paul presumably knew, Bar 3:29–30 in fact applies this very Deuteronomy passage to wisdom/law.
8. Confession from the heart of Christ as the risen Lord thus contrasts with claiming one’s own merit in one’s heart, as in Deut 9:4, alluded to in Rom 10:6. The language of “confession” as “Lord” by itself would probably connote deity, a connotation confirmed by 10:13.
9. See Anderson 1999: 237; idem 2000: 57–58; and comment on 5:3–4.
10. The runners’ feet probably were mostly exposed (hence would have scrapes and mud from their mission), and other ancient sources comment on the beauty of feet. The idea here, however, is probably a metonymy (cf. Rhet. Her. 4.32.43), hence a way of praising the message they bring.
11. Cf. e.g., Ps.-Heraclitus Ep. 4; 3 En. 46:3; and comment at 1:19–20.
12. Johnson 2001: 174, thinks it refers to reading of Scripture with messianic significance in the synagogues, not Christian proclamation (a task Paul still strove to complete, 15:20–24).
13. One could speak hyperbolically of a message spread “throughout the world,” not intending that every individual has heard (Pliny Ep. 6.10.3). Paul could thus intend “representative preaching” to all regions (Munck 1967: 98; Morris 1988: 393; Sanders 1993: 107).
14. Hays (1989: 83) notes that Paul may thus implicitly echo Israel’s lack of faith in Deut 32:20 LXX.
15. By contrast, elsewhere in Romans Paul speaks of Gentiles’ obedience (1:5; 15:18; 16:25). For Paul’s use of Isaiah’s restoration theme, see further Wagner 2002: 29–33. Because another part of Isa 65:1 speaks of “calling on the Lord’s name,” Paul possibly connected it implicitly with Joel 2:32 cited in Rom 10:13, at least in his own mind (cf. Grieb 2002: 104).