“There for the asking”
By Rev. Michael Stonhouse
Meditation – Tuesday, March 28, 2023
Romans 10:1-13 (Forward, p. 58) CEV p. 1181
There are those who suppose that Jesus came to save every single person on earth, and in this they are undoubtedly correct. It is exactly as the apostle Paul stated in his first letter to Timothy (1 Timothy 2:4a). But 2:4a). But that in no way says or guarantees that all people will be saved. There will be some people who choose to be saved and there will be some people who choose otherwise. And in today’s passage from Romans Paul lays out in detail what ways ‘work’ and what ways do not.
Paul is quite explicit about this. Here is what he says about the ‘wrong way’:
“I know they [his fellow Jews] love God, but they don’t understand what makes people acceptable to him. So they refuse to trust God, and they try to be acceptable by obeying the Law” (verses 2-3).
Now, this sets up a very odd dichotomy in our minds, so we often think that loving God is plenty enough, that it is ‘all that it takes’. And we assume or surmise that if we are trying actively please God, then that is merely the ‘icing on the cake’, a rather wonderful but somewhat unnecessary addition. However, as Paul is clearly saying, they are missing out on the essential aspect, the one and only way, the essential means, to salvation.
In this regard, Paul is most explicit and straight-forward:
“So you will be saved, if you honestly say. ‘Jesus is Lord.’ And if you believe with all your heart that God raised him from death. God will accept you and save you, if your truly believe this and tell it to others” (verse s 9-10);
“The Scriptures say that no one who has faith will be disappointed, no matter if that person is a Jew or a Gentile. There is only one Lord, and he is generous to everyone who asks for his help. All who call out to the Lord will be saved” (verses 11-13).
Paul is then saying the same thing in several different ways. There is the matter of intellectual belief in certain things—such as Jesus being Lord and the fact of His resurrection-- and a mental acceptance of them, but this needs to be augmented by a wholesale trust in Him. Calling out to Him and asking for His help are merely expressions or examples of that active trust or faith in Jesus.
So, why is the habitual practice of Paul’s fellow Jews in trying to be acceptable to God by their own works, their own attempted adherence to the Law, so distasteful to God—or so wrong? There are certain reasons for this:
a) Firstly, because measuring up to the Law, fully embracing and obeying all of it is absolutely impossible for us humans. Yes, Moses did say, “If you want to live, you must do all that the Law commands” (verse 5), but he didn’t say that it was also possible. In fact, elsewhere in the Scriptures they allege that the Law was there to show us our guilt and our insufficiency and drive us to God to ask for His mercy and help.
b) And that is exactly what God has done in Christ Jesus. He has done three things: He has perfectly fulfilled the Law with all its demands, He has erased the penalty of our wrong-doing, and in Jesus, He has made us new and righteous and fully acceptable to Himself;
c) And all of this, He offers to us as a free gift of grace, an unearned, unmerited gift. And so, to spurn this gift, and say, in effect, to God: ‘no, I don’t accept or want your gift; I prefer to do it myself’, is to reject the gift and throw this free gift back in the fact of God. And, of course, it is pure and blatant insanity, for we can never hope to even get close to earning this gift on our own.
And so the bottom line comes down to this: the gift of salvation, of eternal life, is fully available to everyone, no matter who they are or what they have done. They can either receive it or reject it: the choice is theirs. But then, it takes a bit of humility to admit that we can’t do it by ourselves, which some people don’t want to own up to. But then, the choice is fully theirs. It is there for the asking.
Forward notes: “For Christ is the end of the law so that there may be righteousness for everyone who believes” (verse 4).
“I ran a red light once. Well, more than once, but on this one particular day, I had not noticed the ‘No Turn on Red’ sign next to the light, and the police officer across the way had been waiting for a dupe like me.
“’Officer, there are people speeding recklessly on the interstate,’ I argued as cars sped along going way faster than 80 mph. The officer was unswayed and wrote me an expensive ticket anyway.
“Christ is the end of the law, Paul writes, but that does not mean that I can run all the red lights. The Ten Commandments are not mere suggestions. On the other hand, Paul is not advocating full observance of Moses’s 613 laws. I don’t need to join a local stoning club.
“While many laws help us to love one another—pray for your enemies, for instance—Paul reminds the Romans that Jesus as the Christ has lifted us to a higher plane, one on which the primary law is love. We live by love because we have experienced this amazing God who loved us first!”
Moving Forward: “Are some ‘laws’ okay to break?