Romans 10

I'm back from the winter break and gearing up for the new semester, glad to be able to resume the blog on Paul's letter to the Romans.

Chapter 10 is a reprise of the main point Paul has to make in his book-length essay: God offers salvation to all, Jews and all other ethnicities, on the same basis. The Jews, says Paul, were strongly committed to God, but insist on relating to him on their own terms. What they refused to accept is that "The perfection of the law (Torah) is Christ so that all who trust fully in him will be accounted as righteous" (v. 4). That is, it is trust that places your life on the line for God, who came as Jesus, that makes you right with God.

Paul continues by expanding on the concept. In verses 9 and 10 he argues that "if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. You see, with your heart you trust and become righteous and with your mouth you confess and are saved." In other words, when you trust in your inmost being that Jesus will always be who he said he is, you stake your very life on it, and you verbalize it, you come into relationship with God, who brings you into the eternal kingdom of God. Submit in humility and set to serving others. That is what "salvation" means.

In the remainder of what was designated much later than the writing as Chapter 10, Paul makes very clear that "everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved (v. 13)." He is quoting the prophet Joel at 2:32, again insisting that this has been God's purpose all along. He ends the section by quoting from the Torah and the prophets sections that declare that those who did not seek God (the non-Jews) found him, while of the Jews he says "all day long I (God) have held out my hands to a disobedient and contrary people (NRSV)," implying that they missed his coming as a result.

I have commented before to the effect that context is everything. That is, we always must take the entire context of a book into account when we interpret. That said, please keep in mind what Paul has just laid out clearly as we deal with Chapter 11, where Paul talks of the restoration of Israel and which we will take up in the next blog post.