Israel’S Responsibility
ISRAEL’S RESPONSIBILITY
ROMANS 10:16-21
We read more about God’s offer of salvation.
Paul quotes Isaiah 52 in 10:16. His mind slips to Isaiah 53, the next chapter in the prophet. His thought moved naturally within the circle of the Old Testament. The quotation which suggested itself also coincided with an objection which arose from his use of Isaiah’s oracles as a preview of the gospel. Will all who hear believe? Is preaching the truth a guarantee of its acceptance? By no means. This, too, is prophesied. John quotes the same passage, no doubt with Paul in mind (John 12:38).
10:17. The same quotation caused Paul’s mind to flash back to the words of 10:14. Here was “hearing” and the proclaimed word, also in the ancient prophet. It is fascinating to watch his well-stored mind in action. Notice you cannot come to faith except by hearing God’s word.
10:18. Similarly Paul’s mind goes to Psalm 19:4. Paul refers, of course, to the revelation of God in nature, his earlier theme in the letter, and the natural theology he developed on different levels in his speech to the Anatolian peasants of Lystra, and to the philosophers of the Athens Areopagus. But Paul may also have had in mind the extent to which the message of Christ had been preached through the synagogues of the Dispersion. His information was complete. Ours is meager. If it were not for the story of the ministry of Apollos, we would have no inkling of the existence of Christianity in Alexandria. If it were not for the Nazareth decree, which is reliably dated at about AD 49, we would not know that Christianity probably reached Rome in Claudius’ day. See Colossians 1:6,23.
10:19. As for Jewish unbelief, there is the testimony of Moses “in whom they trusted” (Deuteronomy 32:21). The church regarded this testimony as extremely significant. Notice Deuteronomy 32:5 reflected in Philippians 2:15; the Septuagint version of Deuteronomy 32:43 (omitted from the Hebrew and most English texts) quoted in Hebrews 1:6.
10:20-21. If this was Moses, Isaiah goes further. Paul ranges his battery of texts against the hostile Jewish opposition with devastating force. The sum of such argument is that, if God has been found and worshiped where conditions seemed so adverse, how inexcusable was Israel for not comprehending their opportunity. The very prophecies should have opened Jewish eyes to the possibility of Israel’s supplanting. God’s arms outstretched (10:21) were moving testimony in Paul’s mind to the tragedy of rejected love, which he, by revelation, saw historically consummated in Christ.