HUMAN DESTINY

The Responsibility of Human Choice
(Romans 9:30-10:21)

Why do some people believe in God, and others not? Paul, vexed by the failure of many of his fellow-Jews to believe in Jesus as their Messiah, sheds light on this painful and perplexing topic. He shows that Jesus is God’s ultimate revelation, who brings to light peoples’ hidden attitudes and motives – saving some and stumbling others. In this address, given at Greyfriars’ Classical Service on 9 September 2007, Rob Yule shows that we are personally responsible for whether or not we accept God’s revelation in Jesus Christ – and in so doing choose, or forfeit, our ultimate destiny.

How do you explain the fact that some people believe in God and other people don’t?

It’s a division that separates people in every country and every workplace, in every neighbourhood and in many families. Is it an accident of birth — like being tone deaf or colour blind? Or are we individually responsible? Why do some people believe and others not?

In Paul’s day many Jews — religious people who might have been expected to believe — failed to believe in Jesus as their Messiah. And many Gentiles — pagan people living immoral lives who might have been expected not to believe, responded to Jesus as Saviour and Lord. How come?

In Chapter 9 of his letter to the Romans Paul says God was responsible. God has overruled the fall of the Jews to bring about the call of the Gentiles. God’s sovereignty is involved in this situation.

Now in Chapter 10 Paul turns to the other side of the equation. Human responsibility is involved as well. God’s choice and our choice. God’s sovereignty and our responsibility. Divine initiative and human response.

We can’t fully understand how these two apparently contradictory things are related. But human experience tells us that both are true. I remember my Dad — who was also a preacher — used to illustrate this with the simple analogy of a pulley. We see two ropes going in opposite directions. But it is actually the same rope running over a pulley that is out of our sight and beyond our reach.

The same revelation, a different result (9:30-33)

Paul illustrates these two aspects of our destiny — the divine initiative and the human response — in a surprising illustration. He quotes from two passages from the prophet Isaiah which compare the Messiah to a rock, a stone laid in Zion:

‘…he will be a sanctuary,
but for both houses of Israel he will be
a stone that causes people to stumble
and a rock that makes them fall.’
(Isaiah 8:14)
‘See, I lay a stone in Zion, a tested stone,
a precious cornerstone for a sure foundation;
the one who trusts will never be dismayed.’
(Isaiah 28:16)

Paul says that the same revelation of Jesus as Messiah stumbles some people and saves others. Jesus the Messiah is both a stone of stumbling and a rock of security. Some people trip on the stone and fall and injure themselves. But other people find the stone is a refuge and a sanctuary — a place to stand, where they can be secure and safe.

Jesus brings out what is latent in people’s hearts: acceptance or rejection, faith or unbelief, trust in God or reliance on ourselves — which Paul in Romans calls our ‘works’. Faith or trust leads to salvation by Christ; unbelief or self-reliance takes offence at Christ. It is exactly as the aged Simeon prophesied over the baby Jesus in the temple:

‘This child is destined to cause the falling and rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be spoke against, so that the thoughts of many hearts will be revealed.’ (Luke 2:34-35).

God’s initiative in sending Jesus Christ lays bare our inner motives and our secret attitudes. It elicits our human response — a response for which we are responsible.

This insight into what was happening in Paul’s day illuminates what is still happening in our own day. Like a farmer at the sorting gate separating sheep as they come down the sheep yard race, Jesus still causes division between people’s underlying attitudes today.

Many failed to accept the righteousness of God (10:1-13)

The Jews, says Paul, had a zeal for God, but without knowledge (10:2). They tried — but failed — to achieve righteousness by keeping the law (Torah). They were relying on self, rather than trusting in God’s salvation.

Paul says Christ, the Messiah, is ‘the end of the law.’ By this he doesn’t mean that Jesus does away with the law — as so many Bible translations and commentators have supposed, providing an unwitting justification for Christian attitudes of disdain towards Jews and so of anti-Semitism. The Greek word Paul uses is the word telos, which means ‘end’ in the sense of ‘goal’.

Jesus is the goal of the Jewish law, God’s ultimate revelation to mankind. As a human being — in our humanity — he perfectly kept and fulfilled God’s holy law. So it {text:soft-page-break} is not by our moral or religious efforts —by scaling the heights or plumbing the depths, by grasping heaven or grabbing hell (10:6-7) — but by believing in Jesus the Messiah, that Jews and Gentiles can be saved:

‘The word is near you…, the word of faith we are proclaiming: That if you confess with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.’ (10:8-9)

Everyone who believes in Jesus Christ is saved; and everyone who doesn’t isn’t. Those who accept Jesus are saved and those who reject him aren’t.

Notice that saving faith isn’t just a private matter: ‘For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you confess and are saved.’ (10:10). Faith is both an inner personal conviction — something you ‘believe in your heart’ — and an outer or public confession — something you ‘confess with your lips’. Biblical faith is a public faith. It may be time that some of you blew your cover and went public with your convictions.

Many failed to acknowledge the revelation of God (10:14-21)

God’s message comes to us in two ways: through the natural world and through human history. Paul tells us that the Gospel of Jesus Christ comes to us as a revelation from God and as a message through missionaries like himself.

Through the glory of creation and the beauty of nature God’s revelation has ‘gone out to all the earth’ (10:18). Here Paul is quoting a famous psalm of God’s revelation through nature:

‘The heavens declare the glory of God;
the skies proclaim the work of his hands….
Their voice goes out into all the earth,
their words to the ends of the world.’
(Psalm 19:1, 4)

Paul has already said in Romans that there is sufficient revelation of God’s ‘divine nature and eternal power’ through the world of nature to leave people without excuse (1:19-20).

But the knowledge of God also comes to us through human intermediaries in the course of history. It’s not just through the glory of creation and the beauty of nature that we learn of God, but through the story of missionaries and the duty of nurture that people hear the Gospel, the good news of God revealed in Jesus Christ:

‘How can people have faith in the Lord and ask him to save them, if they have never heard about him? And how can they hear, unless someone tells them? And how can anyone tell them without being sent by the Lord? The Scriptures say it is a beautiful sight to see even the feet of someone coming to preach the good news.’ (10:14-15, CEV).

In Paul’s day, to his surprise, many of his fellow Jews, assiduously religious people, were rejecting the message of Jesus, but many Gentiles, non-Jews who weren’t even seeking after God, were gladly accepting Jesus. ‘I was found by those who did not seek me; I revealed myself to those who did not ask for me.’ (10:20).

We are saved by God’s grace. But we are condemned by our own attitudes. People who reject their God-given destiny have no excuse. In Paul’s day or in our day, whether they are Jews or Gentiles, many people hear but don’t heed, look but don’t see, search but don’t find. They miss God’s purpose for their lives by refusing plain revelation. God holds out his hands to them like a loving father, but like an obstinate child they refuse his love (10:21).

Rob Yule, 9 September 2007
© 2007, Greyfriars Presbyterian Church