Everyone Who Calls (part 1)

For everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. – Romans 10:13 (NET)

A great truth. A great hope. A great comfort. An oft quoted statement, but regularly and almost exclusively set forth with a complete lack of context. Regularly, this verse is lifted from its setting here in the tenth chapter of Romans and made to serve duty as part of a statement regarding nothing more than a personal salvation, as a free-floating aphorism. It is a duty for which the statement is ill-equipped, especially when we consider that the personal salvation with which it is always associated is a salvation of the soul, so as to enable a believer to “go to heaven” when he or she passes from this life. This falls well short of the message of the Gospel. So while these words do represent a great hope, putting them in their proper context will serve to make the hope even greater, as it demonstrates God’s covenant faithfulness.

Throughout chapters nine and ten of Romans, Paul is speaking a great deal about his brethren, the Jews. This dissertation concerning the Jews provides the context for verse thirteen, as well as what comes before and after. After outlining Israel’s rejection of the Gospel message (Jesus is the crucified and resurrected Messiah of Israel and Lord of all creation), Paul begins the tenth chapter by writing, “Brothers and sisters, my heart’s desire and prayer to God on behalf of my fellow Israelites is for their salvation” (10:1). It was well understood that, until the messiah came---until their God personally acted within history to deliver His people from oppression and exile---that Israel was still under God’s curse and the exile that began with the Babylonian conquest of Judah in 586 B.C. The coming of messiah, their acknowledgment of God’s faithful fulfillment of His promise in the sending of that messiah, and their submission to the claims of that messiah and his lordship, would signal Israel’s salvation. That is, Israel would be delivered from the curse of separation from God, with their long exile from fellowship with Him brought to an end. That is a part of what it would mean for Israel to be saved.

To the words of the first verse, Paul adds, “For I can testify that they are zealous for God, but their zeal is not in line with the truth” (10:2). What was the truth? The truth was that God had sent His Messiah, that being Jesus, but that He had been rejected. By rejecting Jesus, they also rejected the model for the inauguration of the kingdom of God that Jesus presented. Israel believed that the kingdom of God---the kingdom of heaven---must be ushered in through the overthrow of those who oppressed them, that being the Romans. They were zealous for this. Not only were they expecting their messiah to accomplish this overthrow, but they expected that messiah, with the power of God at his back, would subjugate all nations (Gentiles) to themselves. This was a zealously held position, but it was not in line with the truth that God intended to bring all nations, both Jew and Gentile, into a single covenant family under the rule of His Messiah, Jesus. This was not going to be accomplished through a zealous taking up of arms, but rather, through a laying down of nationalistic claims and aspirations.

The next verse follows in the same vein, as Paul writes: “For ignoring the righteousness that comes from God, and seeking instead to establish their own righteousness, they did not submit to God’s righteousness” (10:3). Paul says that they ignored God’s righteousness, that is, God’s covenant faithfulness to His desire to draw all nations to worship Him because of the light of His glory that they would see in His people Israel. Rather, they sought to establish themselves as the separate and autonomous people of God, setting up boundaries of covenant markers such as circumcision, Sabbath-keeping, and food-laws, that would serve to identify them as God’s chosen people. In that day, these things would be referred to as the “works of the law,” and their purpose was to mark them off from the Gentile nations that stood against Israel and did not deserve God’s blessings. In all of this, they did not submit to God’s plan of covenant faithfulness, which was that all peoples would be blessed through His chosen people, beginning with Abraham, with whom the covenant had originally been struck.

Rounding out this line of thinking, Paul writes, “For Christ is the end of the law, with the result that there is righteousness for everyone who believes” (10:4). What the Anointed One, the Messiah, the Christ would accomplish would be the tearing down of those boundaries of the “works of the law” (circumcision, food laws, Sabbath-keeping). Tearing those things down, He would set up, in their place, a new standard for entering in to the blessings of God’s covenant faithfulness, which would be that of believing upon Him, upon Jesus, as Lord.