Romans 10 confronts the kind of spiritual “dieting” many of us know too well: heroic religious effort, full of zeal and activity, but aimed in the wrong direction. In this episode, we look at Paul’s warning that it’s possible to be deeply serious about God and still miss Him—because instead of receiving righteousness as a gift, we try to build one of our own. Against that backdrop, Romans 10 announces wonderfully simple news: Christ has already done what we could never do, the word is near, and “everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.”
In this week’s episode, we explore:
- How the dieting analogy helps us see the danger of wrong-focused zeal in the Christian life
- Why Paul can both affirm God’s sovereign choice in Romans 9 and still pray and preach earnestly for Israel’s salvation in Romans 10
- What it means that Israel had “zeal for God, but not according to knowledge,” and how sincere religious activity can actually keep us from grace
- The contrast between “righteousness based on the law” that asks, What must I do? and “righteousness based on faith” that rests in what Christ has already done
- Paul’s famous words about confessing with our mouth that Jesus is Lord and believing in our heart that God raised Him from the dead—and why pride makes both so hard
- How gratitude, not performance, becomes the true engine of disciplined, obedient lives
- The chain Paul lays out—from calling, to believing, to hearing, to preaching, to being sent—and why God delights to use ordinary messengers to carry an extraordinary message
- What Romans 10 does and doesn’t say about those who have “never heard,” and why Israel in particular stands as a warning against resisting the light already given
- How persistent unbelief ultimately exposes a heart that prefers its own strength and glory to receiving life as a sheer gift from God
By the end of the episode, listeners will see more clearly why religious busyness can never substitute for real faith, and why our best “gift” to God will never be enough to earn His favor. You’ll be invited to lay down spiritual pride, receive Christ as God’s undeserved gift, and rediscover the beauty of simply calling on His name—and of being sent out with “beautiful feet” to help others hear and believe the same good news
How many of you have resolved to lose weight at some point? I have attempted scores of diets in my lifetime. Usually I start with a sense of heroic purpose! But of course the diet never lasts, and my zealous self-discipline always falls by the wayside.
I mention diets because essentially the same issues are raised in the passage before us this morning. This type of wrong-focused zeal is as useless in spiritual things as in physical diets. The problem we face is not the absence of religion. There is plenty of the wrong kind of religion (just like there are plenty of the wrong kind of diets). The problem is the absence of the wrong kind of religion, a lack of religious depth.
In Romans 10, Paul is answering the question of why some people who have little knowledge are saved while some who have much knowledge are not saved. He gave part of his answer in Romans 9. All of us are born lost, and God in His mercy and grace chooses to call some people to him. Paul continues his answer into chapter 10.
For more detail and explanation, please listen to the podcast.
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Series: Romans: Justification by Faith
Study: Romans Resources
Season 2, Episode 16
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