Prayer for Israel
Romans 10:1-5 continues Paul's outreach to the Jewish non-believers. It was his desire to see all of his fellow Jews accept Christ as their Savior. Do we have the same desire for all of those of our ancestry, pure or mixed as it might be?
Paul realized the difference between the Jews of his day and the Gentiles to whom he was called to be a missionary. Paul knew that they had a zeal for God. Before the Damascus road experience, Paul too had that zeal. He was persecuting every Christian he found and was on the way to Damascus to continue that persecution. Believe me, Paul knew zeal. But then, on that road, Paul added knowledge to that zeal and realized he didn't have a clue what he was doing before. He was literally blinded for three days.
He also realized that the law that they attempted to follow to look righteous in God's sight was insufficient. Christ's sacrifice on the cross put an end to the sacrificial law. You could no longer follow that law and have any form of righteousness. In fact, from the time the Romans destroyed the second temple and the ritual sacrifices stopped, Jews haven't even been able to follow the law.
The righteousness that Christ gives includes the ability and strength to make better choices if we allow Him to help us. The Holy Spirit has always worked on people's hearts to lead them to God, at least until they rejected His help and the work of the Holy Spirit completely. But the Baptism of the Holy Spirit that the early church and then Paul experienced gave a whole new perspective on righteousness and a strength to carry on as God wants us to do.
Key Verses for Salvation
Romans 10:6-13 then proceeds to another group of key verses in the Roman road to salvation that Paul preached. It is not in the power of men to ascend to heaven to bring Christ down when we want him to come down to us. It was also not in man's power to resurrect Christ from the dead.
The righteousness of God instead lives in us by the Holy Spirit.
Then Paul gives the great oft memorized summary of what it takes to be saved in Romans 10:9-13 :
9 That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved.
10 For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.
11 For the scripture saith, Whosoever believeth on him shall not be ashamed.
12 For there is no difference between the Jew and the Greek: for the same Lord over all is rich unto all that call upon him.
13 For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.
What a simple promise. It isn't necessary to buy your way into heaven. In fact, no matter how hard you try, good works won't get you there. Confess the Lord Jesus, believe that God resurrected Him from the dead. That's it. simplicity in itself.
Living out that Christian life might be bumpy. Depending on what your life was like before you accepted Christ, you may have many changes to make and some may be hard. God will direct you through the Holy Spirit on what to concentrate on first. It doesn't matter what your background was before you accepted Christ. In Paul's case here, he was referring to the Jewish race, or everyone else.
But just as God made no distinction there, so He makes no distinction today. No matter how badly you've failed in the past, no matter what you've done, the steps for salvation for you are exactly the same as someone born and raised in the church. Confess and believe. That's all it takes.
The thief being crucified with Jesus confessed, believed, and asked Jesus to forgive him. Christ declared he would be with Him in paradise. He didn't have an opportunity to be baptized in water, confirmed, baptized in the Holy Ghost, or anything else some denomination may consider important. Confess and believe. It's that simple.
Whether the events around the time of Christ's death - the darkness, the earthquake, the fact that Jesus died as peacefully as possible on the cross and didn't get His legs broken to speed up the process, not that any crucifixion is easy, may have changed the other thief's heart and led him to repent as well. The Bible doesn't say. We'll have to wait to get to heaven to see. Whether it changed the lives of the Romans standing nearby who declared that surely this must have been the Son of God we don't know either. All we know is that the path to salvation is easy. Confess and believe.
Steps to Reach the Lost
Finally, in Romans 10:14-21 Paul concludes these thoughts by examining what must be done for salvation to come about.
How can people call on Jesus Christ for salvation if they don't believe in who Christ was or what He came to do? There are many today who agree there was a historical Jesus, but the number of ideas about exactly how He came to be and what happened after He died and was resurrected are numerous.
Some think Him a historical figure. Some think Him a prophet. Both of these are true. But some believe He was limited to that. Muslims don't believe He could have been God because God would never allow Himself to die on a cross. The cross is a stumbling block for them.
Some believe all of that, but don't believe Jesus was God. They think He was just an angel or other glorified man like they expect they'll be some day. Also incorrect.
So anyway, the first thing is you have to believe the whole nine yards about Jesus Christ. God, the creator of everything, to Man, lived a sinless life, died on the cross as a sacrifice for our sins, rose on the third day to return to His position in the trinity. Still simple.
Paul then asks how they can believe if they never hear the truth in the first place. That problem is still true today. With the technology that we have, there isn't any major reason for the majority of the world to investigate the subject of Christianity in depth if they so choose.
Yet even today, many haven't be brought up in an environment that even mentions Christ, or if it does, only uses His name as a swear word. The coarseness of the English language is truly overwhelming at times. It isn't that people didn't swear in my day, but it was still something that was a surprise when you encountered it in books, television, or movies. Not today, that's for sure.
We each have a responsibility to help people to hear the gospel. You need to be secure in the Holy Spirit and responsive to His nudges in this. There are some who tell everyone they encounter about Christ. I won't say whether or not this is right or wrong. I will say that there are times when declaring God's love to someone will hit them at the wrong time and push them further away from Christ. Perhaps God just wants you to be friendly and wait for them to ask why you are helping them. Then you have the opportunity to spread the Gospel more effectively. At any rate, listen to the nudges and do your part so that more can hear.
That leads into the next step Paul talks about. How can they hear without a preacher. As above, that preacher could be anyone. But it is also true that every Christian needs good teachers and preachers to help them understand the Bible. Most of it is pretty easy to understand. It may seem harder to apply some parts to today, and that is where a good preacher or teacher can help.
Next Paul asks how a preacher can be effective unless the preacher is sent. If all of the students who take on a vocation of pastor stayed in their seminary, would they be any good? Well, today, with the internet, maybe they could be if they had an awesome internet connection. But in Paul's day his question was very basic. Unless ministers were sent to where the people were, how could those people learn about Christianity? They simply couldn't. Even in port cities, word traveled slowly. The Roman roads made communication easier, but unless you were high priority message traffic, dissemination of information wasn't fast. Paul declared that those who worked to spread the gospel were especially blessed.
Sadly, he had to recognize that even with the best evangelists, of whom he was near the top of his day, many still chose to not believe. God didn't give up. Using Jewish history as an example, he detailed how Moses and Isaiah both tried to push the people to follow the law. But God recognized that the people hardened their own hearts to what was being said. People haven't changed much in several millennia.