Chapter Nine: believeth that simple faith in their Messiah was God's way, and that
believeth that simple faith in their Messiah was God's way, and that the message meant "whosoever."
They should have been warned also that inasmuch as believing was God's way--the path in which those who walked would not be put to shame; those who chose the way of works, of self-righteousness, would surely be put to shame. This word "ashamed" or "put to shame" is in the Hebrew, to flee--from fear. Those who have exercised simple faith in Christ, and abide thus in Him, shall "have boldness: and not be ashamed before Him [Christ] at His coming"--";boldness in the day of judgment; because as He is, even so are we in this world" (I John 2:28; 4:17).
This "whosoever" message is further developed in verse 12, where we see the familiar words no distinction between Jew and Greek. We remember this as the exact expression used as to universal sinnerhood in Chapter 3:22; which is now used as to salvation. For, first, He is Lord of all, and second, He is rich unto all that call upon Him.
These great words must be laid to heart. They bring great comfort, directly to any Jews who desire the Savior, and also to the hearts of all of us, Jew and Gentile, because the universal availability of salvation is so gloriously opened out here, based as it is upon the universal lordship of Christ. As Peter said at Cornelius' house to Gentiles, "The word which He sent unto the children of Israel, preaching good tidings of peace by Jesus Christ (He is Lord of all)." It is a great day when a human heart turns to this Savior who is Lord of all, for he immediately finds Him "rich unto all."
Verse 13: And then the great word by the prophet Joel is brought forward: Whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved (Joel 2:32). Now who could miss the meaning of this simplest of all messages? Now, (if we should preach on this verse!) First, salvation is promised. Second, it is a be-saved, not save-yourself, salvation. Third, it is the Lord who is to do it. Fourth, He does it for those who call upon His Name. Fifth, He does it for the whosoevers, for anybody. What a preacher, Joel! But note that Paul is writing to Jews, and is giving Old Testament texts. For Paul's great gospel message is to hear and believe "the word of the cross, which is the power of God." This message goes away beyond that of the Old Testament. Paul preached the good news of a work finished. It was for the "whosoevers": and Joel's use of that word should have convinced any Jew of God's purpose of salvation to any one, to all. But Paul does not mean that his gospel was "Call on the Lord." His gospel was, Christ died for our sins: He was buried, and was raised, for you: hear and believe.
These "whosoevers" should have taught the Jews that the way of salvation was not by their Law or any special way for them, but for any and all. Alas, the word "whosoever" was too wide for the narrow Jewish mind in Joel's day and Paul's day and is so today. [214]
Verses 14 and 15: But now Paul takes these two "whosoever" verses, and from them answers the Jew, who not only relied on his law-keeping instead of on simple faith to save him, but also denied that either Paul or any of the apostles had any right to proclaim salvation by a simple message,--a message that left out the Law and Judaism. If salvation were to come unto them that "call on the name of the Lord" argues Paul, calling is impossible to one who has not believed on the Lord; and believing is impossible to one who has not heard the message about the Lord; and hearing is impossible unless some one comes preaching the message; and preaching is impossible except the messenger be Divinely sent! And again Paul clinches it with the Scripture (Isa. 52:7): How beautiful are the feet of them that bring glad tidings of good things! Moses' Law was not glad tidings, but a ministration of death and condemnation. "The Law worketh wrath." But the gospel--"Glad tidings! Good things!" And God who knows, calls "beautiful" the feet that carry such news. Are our feet "beautiful"--in God's eyes?
Paul now, with a saddened heart, goes back to the record of Israel's refusing the glad tidings:
16 But they did not all hearken to the glad tidings. For Isaiah saith, Lord, who hath believed our report? 17 So faith is from a report, but the report through the word of Christ. 18 But I say, Did they not hear? Yea, verily,
Their sound went out into all the earth,
And their words unto the ends of the world.
19 But I say. Did Israel not know? First Moses saith,
I will provoke you to jealousy with that which is no nation,
With a nation void of understanding will I anger you.
20 And Isaiah is very bold, and saith,
I was found of them that sought Me not;
I became manifest unto them that asked not of Me.
21 But as to Israel he saith, All the day long did I spread out My hands unto a disobedient and gainsaying people.
Verses 16, 17: Astonishing thing,--refusing good news! Men will hearken to good news along all other lines,--business, pleasure, social preferment, ambition, physical health. Go to any stock exchange and see them watch the ticker tape; or behold the political candidates sitting up all night for election news favorable to them. But the apostle mourns along with Isa. 53:1: Lord, who hath believed our report? Probably men's unbelief is the greatest final burden before God of every man who speaks for God, "Lord, they do not believe." They said to Moses, "You take too much upon yourself!" (Num. 16:3); to Ezekiel, "Is he not a speaker of parables?" (Ezek. 20:49) ; to Amos, "The land is not able to bear all your words: Flee away to Judah and eat bread"--you are just looking for money! (Amos 7:10-13); to Jeremiah, "As for the word that thou hast spoken unto us in the name of Jehovah, we will not hearken unto thee" (Jer. 44:16-19). And hear that weeping prophet tell of his trouble:
"Hear ye, and give ear; be not proud; for Jehovah hath spoken. Give glory to Jehovah your God before He cause darkness, and before your feet stumble upon the dark mountains, and while ye look for light, He turn it into the shadow of death, and make it gross darkness. But if ye will not hear it, my soul shall weep in secret for your pride; and mine eyes shall weep sore, and run down with tears, because Jehovah's flock is taken captive" (Jer. 13:15-17).
Our Lord said to those of the multitudes that gathered to hear Him,
"This people's heart is waxed gross,
And their ears are dull of hearing,
And their eyes they have closed;
Lest haply they should perceive with their eyes,
And hear with their ears,
And understand with their heart,
And should turn again,
And I should heal them" (Matt. 13:15).
And He prophesied that His preachers would find "wayside hearers," "rocky ground hearers," "thorny ground hearers"; and then, in one out of four cases, a "good ground hearer."
Verse 17: So faith is from a report; but the report through the word of Christ--The Greek term here for "word" is hrema, not logos. It literally is, "saying," "speech," as in John 3:34; 14:10; Acts 11:14. Faith, indeed, however, does come from a report; and there must be a message and a messenger, sent of God; as we have seen. But Christ accompanies this preached word by His Almighty "voice," as we know from John 5:25: "The hour cometh, that the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God, and they that hear shall live." It is a "quickened" word, that creates living faith.
It is here that the missionary urge comes! Christ must, indeed, utter His creating word from Heaven to the dead soul, saying, Live! But in II Corinthians 5:18, 19, 20, we see that while "God was, indeed, in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself," He has "committed to us [Greek, "placed in us"] the word of reconciliation." So that God is entreating by us: we beseech (people) on behalf of Christ, "Be ye reconciled to God!"
Faith, indeed, comes of hearing. Do not imagine men will be saved in any other way. Earnest, prayerful Cornelius is commanded (and that by an angel) to send for "Simon whose surname is Peter, who shall speak to thee words by which thou shalt be saved" (Acts 11:14). "It pleased God by the foolishness of preaching [lit., the preached thing--Christ crucified] to save them that believe" (I Cor. 1:21 marg.). Note also that "faith cometh." If you hear, with a willing heart, the good news, that Christ died for you; that He was buried; that He was raised from the dead:--by truly "hearing," faith will "come" to you. You do not have to do a thing but hear! So there is God's part--He gave, by the Spirit, the written Word. And Christ's part,--He speaks, quickening the Word. And your part: "He that hath ears, hear."
Verse 18: But Paul goes on to mourn: But I say, Did they [Israel] not hear? Yea, verily. And then he makes a quotation from a wholly unexpected Scripture, even Psalm 19:4:
Their sound went out into all the earth,
And their words unto the ends of the world. [215]
Verse 19: Paul proceeds: Did Israel not know?--concerning this whosoever-plan, this believing-plan, this calling upon the Lord's name and being saved? Yea, even about this constant warning by their own Scriptures that if they were unfaithful God would extend His mercy to the Gentiles? First, he calls Moses to witness (Deut. 32:21):
I will provoke you to jealousy with that which is no nation,
With a nation void of understanding will I anger you.
That which is no nation--compared with the marvelous place and privileges of the race of Israel, it could be said of every other people, "It is no nation, a nation void of understanding" (of the things of God). I will anger them--for Israel can be reached in no other way--either then or now! God seeks to provoke them to jealousy: beware how you palaver over them.
Verse 20: Now finally Paul calls Isaiah again to the witness stand; and Isaiah gives a double testimony: he is indeed very bold in his prophecy of Gentile salvation:
I was found of them that sought me not;
I became manifest unto them that asked not of me.
Then Isaiah becomes exceedingly mournful as to wretched Israel's disobedient and gainsaying attitude (see verse 21).
How Jews could read this passage and remain unmoved, in their traditions, formalities, and unbelief, only faithful preachers can imagine,--who have had to deal with the titanic possibilities of evil and unbelief in the human heart.
As showing how far Christendom has lost the whole spirit of the gospel, we remind you that everywhere people have the idea they ought to "seek" salvation; they are everywhere told they ought to "go to church." [216]
How many now reading these words believe that Romans 10:20 is God's program for this Gentile day? You say, Should we not seek God? No! You should sit down and hear what is written in Romans: first, about your guilt, then about your helplessness, and then about the inability of the Law to do anything but condemn you; and then believe on Christ whom God hath sent; and then praise God for righteousness apart from works, apart from ordinances! hear how God laid sin, your sin, on a Substitute, His own Son, Jesus Christ our Lord, and that now, sin being put away, God has raised Him from the dead. Seek God? No! God is the Seeker, and He has sought and is now seeking those that asked not of Him, and has been found of those who sought Him not!--but simply heard the good news and believed! Praise His Holy Name!
Verse 21: But, alas, poor Israel! Jehovah, through Isaiah, speaks thus of them: All the day long did I spread out my hands unto a disobedient and gainsaying people (Isa. 65:2). What yearning, what love, what pleading, what patience! And it is The Creator, God Himself, here, spreading out His hands! Towards whom? Towards a disobedient people; a people that, being rebuked, did deny and gainsay their prophets, and even their own Messiah,--as they do unto this day! [217]
It should astonish and warn us--every unbelieving Jew we see! Astonish us, that the human heart should treat God so! And warn us: for, as we shall see in the next chapter, we Gentiles are now being "visited" by God,--this same God of Love: and He is stretching out His hands to usward! May we early yield to Him!
And here, lest we miss the lesson for us, in considering wretched Israel's rejection of their Messiah, let us read a message to our own hearts:
THE GREAT UNKNOWN
WHY dost Thou pass unheeded,
Treading with piercèd feet
The halls of the kingly palace,
The busy street?
Oh marvellous in Thy beauty,
Crowned with the light of God,
Why fall they not down to worship
Where Thou hast trod?
Why are Thy hands extended
Beseeching whilst men pass by
With their empty words and their laughter,
Yet passing on to die?
Unseen, unknown, unregarded,
Calling and waiting yet--
They hear Thy knock and they tremble--
They hear, and they forget.
And Thou in the midst art standing
Of old and forever the same--
Thou hearest their songs and their jesting,
But not Thy name.
The thirty-three years forgotten
Of the weary way Thou hast trod--
Thou art but a name unwelcome,
O Savior God!
Yet amongst the highways and hedges,
Amongst the lame and the blind,
The poor and the maimed and the outcast,
Still dost Thou seek and find--
There by the wayside lying
The eyes of Thy love can see
The wounded, the naked, the dying,
Too helpless to come to Thee.
So Thou art watching and waiting
Till the wedding is furnished with guests--
And the last of the sorrowful singeth,
And the last of the weary rests.--
C. P. C. (in Hymns of Ter Steegen). __________________________________________________________________
[207] 1."The Jew knows the Law better than his own name . . . The great feasts were frequented by countless thousands, . . . Over and above the requirements of the Law, ascetic religious exercises advocated by the teachers of the Law came into vogue . . . Even the Hellenised and Alexandrian Jews under Caligula died on the cross and by fire, and the Palestinian prisoners in the last war died by the claws of African lions in the amphitheatre, rather than sin against the Law. What Greek would do the like? . . . The Jews also exhibited an ardent zeal for the conversion of the Gentiles to the Law of Moses. The proselytes filled Asia Minor and Syria, and--to the indignation of Tacitus--Italy and Rome." Surely the Jews of Josephus' day had a "zeal for God."
[208] 1."This is what God calls subjecting ourselves to God's righteousness': finding a righteousness which is neither of nor in ourselves, but finding Christ before God and the proud will, through grace, submitting to be saved by that which is not of or in ourselves. It is Christ instead of self--instead of our place in the flesh." Roland Hill, at the close of a great meeting, saw a lady riding in an elegant carriage, who commanded her coachman to halt, and beckoned Mr. Hill to approach her. "Sir," she said, "my coachman came to your meetings and says you told him how to be saved; so that he is now very happy. Please tell me how a lady of the nobility is to be saved, for I also desire to be happy." "Madame," said the preacher, "Christ died for the whole world. God says there is no difference. All are to be saved through simple faith in Him." "Do you mean," she said haughtily, "that I must be saved in the same way as my coachman?" "Precisely. There is no other way." "Then," she said, "I will have none of it!" and she made her coachman drive away.
[209] As Stifler so well says: "The Jews claimed that in following the Law they were submitting to God, for He gave the Law. No, says Paul; in so doing you are not submitting to the righteousness of God. For Christ [whom God gave and you reject] is the end of the Law for [with a view of] righteousness to every one that believeth.' The Jew's system was one of doing; but God's was one of believing, one of grace. Law and grace are mutually exclusive and antagonistic systems. Because the Jew held to Law he was not in subjection to God. The proof that he was not is the great principle of grace here recorded."
[210] It is with unutterable sadness that we contemplate the even worse condition of the Laodicean Church of today! "Wretched, poor, miserable, blind, naked"--and knowing it not! Christ on the outside of the door! Yet outwardly rich, and increased with goods!
[211] It is so to this day, and sad to say, the tendency to demand "signs" is increasing rather than lessening. If a man come announcing "healing meetings" (although no such "meetings for healing" are known in Scripture), the place will be crowded. History is full of spiritual wreckage caused by "Lo, here," and "Lo, there!"
[212] Our Lord plainly said he would be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth (Matthew 12:40). This was not Joseph's tomb (which was on the surface of the earth), but the Hebrew Sheol (Greek, Hades), which is always in Scripture located below the earth's surface--even "the lower parts of the earth" (Eph. 4:9). To another compartment of these "lower parts" the wicked also went; as see Ps. 63:9. That this was in the general region called Hades, the rich man of Luke 16:22, 23 proves. (Always read the Revised Version about the words Sheol--Hades: for it transliterates them. The King James simply obscures them by various renderings.) While Christ's body lay in Joseph's tomb "not seeing corruption," His soul (or quickened spirit, I Peter 3:18)--as Peter and Paul, quoting Ps. 16:10, plainly show (Acts 2:31; 13:34, 37) was duly brought up again "from the depths of the earth" (Ps. 71:20).
[213] 1.Faith is directly connected with the word "righteousness" or "justification," about twenty times in the New Testament, but faith is directly connected with the word "salvation" only four times; and these four instances (Rom. 1:16, I Pet. 1:5, 9, 10) themselves show that whereas righteousness expresses the present standing of a believing one; salvation is a larger and more inclusive word--in the sense of Rom. 13:11: "Awake out of sleep, for now is our salvation nearer to us than when we believed." (In this verse our bodily redemption at Christ's coming, is included). And, I Peter 1:5: "Guarded through faith unto a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time." This shows that although we do "receive the end of our faith, the salvation of our souls" (I Pet. 1:9), the word salvation in general includes not only the salvation of our souls, but also the consummation of our final deliverance at Christ's coming. I do not find "salvation," then, connected in Scripture with any but those who shall thus be found in Christ at His coming. The words of Paul in Corinthians (I Cor. 15:1-4) outlining His gospel, are, "Ye are saved, if ye hold fast the word which I preached unto you." In the preceding verse, he declares that they had "received" the gospel which he had preached unto them. But this gospel was not to be let go. As our Lord says concerning the good ground hearers in Luke 8:15: "These are such as in an honest and good heart, having heard the word, hold it fast, and bring forth fruit with patience." In I Thess. 5:21 the same word is translated "hold fast that which is good." It is solemnly used also in Heb. 3:6, 14 and 10:23. This is no argument against Divine election, or the eternal security of the saints. But it is a truth that must be, and really is, faced by every godly soul. Over and over, of course, in the Gospels, the word for saved (sodzo) is used. The word of our Lord is, "Thy faith hath saved thee," (or, A.V. "made thee whole"--same Greek word). It is also used concerning salvation: Matthew 19:25, Acts 2:21, 16:30, 31. Paul also uses this word in Rom. 5:9, 10; 10:13, etc. What we are urging is that we connect in our own thinking, and confession of our Lord,--the word "faith" with righteousness, as Scripture in the Epistles so constantly does. In times of darkness and weak faith such as this, the rescue from doom is uppermost in the believer's mind; whereas God would have his standing in Christ uppermost! How constantly we hear in a testimony meeting, "I have been, or I was, saved ten years," etc.; and how very seldom, if ever, the testimony is: I have been declared righteous by faith, and have peace with God. I am righteous before God, through my Savior's death. I thank God I have been made the righteousness of God in Christ. The old Methodists used to testify to their justification,--"justified state," they called it. But then old-fashioned Methodist preachers, preached of coming judgment, of eternal punishment, of the sinner's terrible danger; and they boldly spoke of pardon as what the sinner needed. We believe God has given still more light upon Scripture since those days, but would God we had the moral earnestness and the wonderfully bright experiences of the old-fashioned Methodists! Again we say, God generally connects faith with righteousness. Let us do likewise.
[214] And alas, also, there are those who insist that the Jew has a special place right through this dispensation; that he must always be "first," that there is a difference, although God says plainly in