Gods Voice

Romans – A Treatise
Chapter Ten
GOD’S VOICE TO JEW AND GENTILE TODAY

Scripture Reading: verses 12-18

FOR THERE IS NO DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE JEW AND THE GREEK: FOR THE SOME LORD OVER ALL IS RICH UNTO ALL THAT CALL UPON HIM. FOR WHOSOEVER SHALL CALL UPON THE NAME OF THE LORD SHALL BE SAVED. HOW THEN SHALL THEY CALL ON HIM IN WHOM THEY HAVE NOT BELIEVED? AND HOW SHALL THEY BELIEVE IN HIM OF WHOM THEY HAVE NOT HEARD? AND HOW SHALL THEY HEAR WITHOUT A PREACHER? AND HOW SHALL THEY PREACH EXCEPT THEY BE SENT? AS IT IS WRITTEN, HOW BEAUTIFUL ARE THE FEET OF THEM THAT PREACH THE GOSPEL OF PEACE, AND BRING GLAD TIDINGS OF GOOD THINGS! BUT THEY HAVE NOT ALL OBEYED THE GOSPEL. FOR ESAIAS SAITH, LORD, WHO HATH BELIEVED OUR REPORT? SO THEN FAITH COMETH BY HEARING, AND HEARING BY THE WORD OF GOD. BUT I SAY, HAVE THEY NOT HEARD? YES VERILY, THEIR SOUND WENT INTO ALL THE EARTH, AND THEIR WORDS UNTO THE END OF THE WORLD.

In this passage, Paul declares there is no difference between Jew and Gentile. This is not precisely what is presented in chapter three, where it is asserted that there is no difference between the two because they have all sinned and together have become unprofitable. This passage reaches a little deeper. The lack of difference is not because both Jew and Gentile are sinners, but rather that God brings the same sunshine of goodness to shine on the heads of them both. So magnanimous is the grace of God that in spite of all sin and transgression, He presents a way of salvation to both Jew and Gentile and, in its presentation, recognizes no distinction. “The same Lord over all is rich unto all that call upon Him.” The fact is that Jesus Christ, the Messiah of Israel, is also Savior of the world and, beyond that, He is Lord of all. This goes beyond racial differences, touching this basic and elemental truth: apart from all religious or racial distinctions, we are God’s creatures away from Him and estranged from His face; and the Lord Jesus is available to every son of Adam’s race. This truly is a glad and glorious Gospel.

Paul now goes farther, giving us step by step the wonderful provision God has made in order that men everywhere might be reached by the testimony of Him who is Lord of all. In this connection, verses 14 to 18 present marvelous truths which, if properly understood, would thoroughly revolutionize the ideas that many of the Lord’s people have regarding evangelization.

In reading the Scriptures again and again one is impressed with the wide dimensions of God’s revelation, contrasted with the piecemeal apprehension of the creature. Paul says,

How then shall they call on Him in whom they have not believed? and how shall they believe in Him of whom they have not heard? and how shall they hear without a preacher? And how shall they preach, except they be sent?¹

“Who hath believed our report?” he quotes from Isaiah²; then he says, “So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God.”³ His brilliant argument does not stop there. Referring to Jew and Gentile, he goes beyond that and says, “Have they not heard?” Then he quotes the nineteenth Psalm in relation to the testimony of creation, “Their sound went into all the earth, and their words to the end of the world.”⁴

God uses many means to reach His creatures with acknowledgment of His Lordship. Here in this passage we have the normal means of reaching those who come under the sound of what we call the Gospel, and the steps indicated are these: God sends a preacher; the preacher communicates the divine revelation; the hearers hear it and, having heard, they believe and, having believed, they call on the Name of the Lord (as they did on Pentecost in Acts 2). But immediately the question may arise:

What about unbelievers to whom a preacher has never gone? Will God be frustrated in His purposes and condemn all those who have not heard the Gospel to a lost eternity?

Such an assertion is unthinkable, as well as untrue. Sometimes zealous believers lay massive guilt upon missionary-minded young people, insisting they must go to the heathen countries. That if they do not go, thousands will be damned because of their failure. Is the God of Heaven going to be frustrated or regulated because of our failure? One of the basic truths of true faith is that we cannot limit God. That is why verse 18 is so important. Paul says, “Have they not heard?” He is here referring to Jew and Gentile. Then he quotes Psalm 19:4, refering to God’s voice in creation – not the voice of God through a preacher:

The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth His handywork. Day unto day uttereth speech and night unto night sheweth knowledge. There is no speech nor language, where their voice is not heard. Their line is gone out through all the earth and their words to the end of the world.

It is this last verse that Paul quotes in Romans 10. God Himself has made every provision whereby the creature should be brought into the light of His goodness.

The normal way is that a preacher is sent, and toward this end we have a solemn responsibility. Then, the one who hears is responsibility to believe, and the one who believes is responsible to call on the name of Christ as Lord. But, at no time and nowhere is God ever left without a testimony. Paul says, “Have they not heard?” and he asserts that, although they may not hear the voice of a preacher bringing them the full light of the Gospel, still, they have heard God’s Word as it is voiced through creation. This brings us back to the truth of Romans 1:19:

That which may be known of God is manifest in them [that is, in the visible creation] for God hath shewed it unto them. For the invisible things of Him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse: Because that, when they knew God, they glorified Him not as God.

God’s testimony touches every man – the Jew with all his privileges of knowing the divine canon of sacred revelation under the enlightenment of Jehovah, and the Gentile in all his darkness, whether he be reached by the normal means of the announcement of glad tidings through human lips, or the Word of the testimony of God as voiced in creation. God has made every provision whereby men might be brought to a knowledge of Himself and it is in this way that Paul says, “There is no difference between Jew and Gentile.” In other words, in this day of grace the sunshine of God’s favor shines on the heads of all,

For the grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men, Teaching us that denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly, in this present world; Looking for the blessed hope.

Footnotes:
¹ Two of the big words Paul had just used were “no distinction” (Rom. 10:12) and “whosoever” (Rom. 10:13), and these amply supported his position of extending the Gospel to all people, Jews and Gentiles alike, on the same terms. We noted that this great leveling of all people before God and considering them as one race lost in sin was offensive and repugnant to Jews, causing a deep resentment against Paul. Paul vindicated his own conduct in these two verses. Charles Hodge (Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans, p. 346) has the following clear word on the construction of Paul’s defense here: “As invocation implies faith, as faith implies knowledge, knowledge instruction, and instruction an instructor, so it is plain that if God would have all men to call upon him, he designed preachers to be sent to all, whose proclamation of mercy being heard, might be believed, and being believed, might lead men to call on him and be saved. This is agreeable to the prediction of Isaiah, who foretold that the advent of the preachers of the gospel should be hailed with universal joy .... It is an argument founded on the principle that if God wills the end, he wills also the means; if he would have the Gentiles saved, according to the prediction of the prophets, he would have the gospel preached to them.” These verses are the enabling charter of every true missionary labor on earth. God’s answer to the wretchedness of earth’s sin and squalor is a messenger, yes a preacher, with the message of redemption authenticated by the Name, “For neither is there any other name under heaven, that is given among men, wherein we must be saved” (Acts 4:12). “How beautiful the feet” ... from heaven’s viewpoint, there is nothing more beautiful than the message-bearer of God’s merciful offer of salvation to people. Hope for lost and fallen humanity does not derive from anything that man can do for himself, nor from anything that he might either build on earth or hurl out into space. Nothing that man can send up into heaven can save him, for it is God’s message alone that can cleanse his sins, break the chains of his bondage, and endow his spirit with love and hope. How pitiful, ineffectual and utterly inadequate God’s plan appears to the dim eyes of mortal people. Save the world by preaching? Ridiculous. Paul himself acknowledged this when he wrote: “It was God’s good pleasure through the foolishness of the preaching to save them that believe” (1 Cor. 1:21). Therefore, people must look again at the method God has chosen; and, remembering the omnipotence of Him who chose, the divinity of the message, and the power of the living Word, they must dare to trust and use the means God elected as the instrument of His holy will. Churches should cease their striving after new methods, novel devices, and so-called “modern approaches” to saving people’s souls. There is only one way: preach the Word. The last sentence of these two verses is a quotation from Isaiah 52:7; and, as H.C.G. Moule noted (The Epistle to the Romans, p. 274): “The immediate reference of Isa. 52:7 is to good news for Zion, rather than from her to the world. But the context is full not only of Messiah but of ‘many nations’ (Rom. 10:15).” Of course, as already noted twice in this chapter, Paul’s meaning was often extended beyond the context of his Old Testament quotations. “How shall they believe him whom they have not heard” ... has the significant implication of making Christ the One heard in His preachers and also the One believed. By the same sacred logic, Christ was said to have baptized more disciples than John, although the disciples, not the Lord, administered the ordinance; but still it was Christ who did it “through them.” (See John 4:1, 2.) In this remarkable clause is also the compelling inference that the preacher must preach the Word of the Lord, for in no other way may his hearers hear Christ. The preacher who preaches the opinions of himself and his fellow mortals to the near exclusion of the Scriptures fails in a double category: (1) his audience does not “hear Christ,” and (2) he forfeits the dignity that belongs to the faithful messenger.
² This is Isaiah’s opening statement in chapter 53, a chapter rich with reference to the Messiah, and is therefore very appropriate here. Just as ancient Israel did not believe the prophets regarding the Messiah, that He should be a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief, despised and rejected by people, etc., just so the Jews of Paul’s day would not believe and obey the Gospel in order to be saved.
³Conybeare and Howson (Life and Letters of St. Paul, pp. 306, 524) translated this verse: ?So, then, faith comes by teaching; and our teaching comes by the word of God (There is no English word which precisely represents the word for teaching in its subjective as well as objective meaning, which is literally, ?word received by hearing,? that is, ?the spoken word.?)? ?Word of Christ? ... instead of ?word of God,? as in KJV, does not alter the meaning, the Word of Christ and the Word of God being identical. Jesus said: ?For I spake not from myself; but the Father that sent me, he hath given me a commandment, what I should say, and what I should speak.? (John 12:49) The only thing capable of producing faith in human hearts is the Word which receives its authority from God and has as its subject the life and work of Jesus Christ, together with all of His teachings through the apostles; and, since that is true, anything that reduces, obscures, or replaces the Word of God in men?s preaching must be hailed as counter-productive. It is what God has revealed which, alone, can carry conviction to the human heart; and one can only deplore the amazing scarcity of Bible reference in modern pulpits. It is precisely in that omission that the widespread unbelief of this generation originates. ?Faith comes by hearing God's word? ... this means that faith does not come directly from the Holy Spirit, but comes from that Spirit through His authorship of the Holy Scriptures, and in the sense of His being the living and causative agent in that Word. We mean that the Holy Spirit does not enter people?s hearts to produce faith, that being the appointed function of the Word of God, as revealed here. The Spirit enters our hearts ?after we have believed? (Eph. 1:13) and after we have become sons of God (Gal. 4:6) and in consequence thereof. ?Hearing? ... here is not the same as "hearkening" in the preceding verse, but refers merely to the sense of hearing, and should not even be understood as excluding ?reading;? for a deaf person still might learn the Word of God through reading it, as a blind person might learn it through yet another sense, that of touch; and in this 21^st Century the Internet provides yet another way to take the message of the Gospel of Christ to the world through ?reading.?
⁴ Paul?s use of the word ?hear? in this place contrasts sharply with ?hearken? in Romans 10:16, where obedience is meant, hence the necessity to distinguish between them. If the KJV had been followed in Romans 10:16, there could have been no confusion. ?But I say, Did they not hear? Yea, verily? ... Paul had just said in Romans 10:16, ?They did not all hearken,? but this is not a contradiction. He meant there that they had not all obeyed, and here the meaning is that they certainly had heard. Here we have another instance of Paul using an Old Testament text out of context. Psalm 19:4 speaks of the universal knowledge of God through the revelation of nature; but here Paul applied the words to the worldwide preaching of the Gospel. As John Murray noted (The Epistle to the Romans, Vol. II, p. 61): “Since the gospel proclamation is now to all without distinction, it is proper to see the parallel between the universality of general revelation and the universalism of the gospel. The former is the pattern now followed in the sounding forth of the gospel to the uttermost parts of the earth. The application which Paul makes of Ps. 19:4 can thus be seen to be eloquent, not only of this parallel, but also of that which is implicit in the parallel, namely, the widespread diffusion of the gospel of grace.” “The ends of the earth” ... translates a Greek expression which means literally, “the inhabited earth,” as seen in the English Revised Version (1885) margin.