Chapter 10
The purpose of the dispensation of Israel, the previous dispensation, was fourfold. First of all, it was to establish Israel as a client nation to God and therefore to stabilise the laws of divine establishment with regard to any national entity -- to advertise how freedom exists and to provide the basic concept for a national entity. The nation Israel after the Exodus became the first client nation in all of history. Secondly, it was to provide a base for the formation of the canon of scripture. The Old Testament, of course, was written in the nation of Israel. The New Testament writers are all Jewish, with two possible exceptions. Thirdly, to establish a basis for the first and second advents of Christ. Christ is to come each time for the purpose of relating to Israel. He came the first time as the son of David and the Son of God, and was rejected. He will come the second time as the son of David and the Son of God, and will be accepted and re-establish Israel as a client nation to God forever, fulfilling the unconditional covenants. The fourth purpose was to establish a policy of God’s dealing with man. Israel, then, becomes the photograph of God’s dealing with man and God’s relationship with man, the policies of grace and judgment, and when each one applies to an individual or collective human situation.
The foundation of Israel is regeneration. The security and future of Israel is found in their unconditional covenants – the Abrahamic, Palestinian, Davidic, and New covenants. The client nation of Israel therefore is the major consideration in this passage. The punitive alternative for a client nation is found in the five cycles of discipline. The biblical signs of the 5th cycle of discipline are at least seven, and were all developed only for the last time the 5th cycle of discipline would be administered to the client nation of Israel.
The first of the biblical signs of the 5th cycle of discipline is the prophecy of tongues, mentioned in Isaiah 28:11ff. The second great sign which was a warning to the nation of Israel was the virgin birth – Isaiah 7:14ff. The fact is that the Jews understood that no man could ever become God, but what they failed to understand was that God would become man, the Emmanuel of Isaiah 9:6ff. So the only time in history that this miracle occurred was in Bethlehem and our Lord Jesus Christ became true humanity. God became man. The third warning and sign was the betrayal of Messiah. When Messiah, the Lord Jesus Christ, came in the flesh there would be betrayal – Zechariah 11:12,13. This was a warning to the Jews that they were about to go out and they would lose their client nation status under the 5th cycle of discipline. The fourth sign was the resurrection of Messiah after His physical death, described in Isaiah 53:12; 53:10. This in itself was unique. There had been resuscitations where a dead person came back to life in his human body and continued to live for a while. But a resurrection body that lived forever was something brand new, and it was a sign that the Jews were about to go out under the 5th cycle of discipline. The fifth sign was the forty years of evangelism to Israel before the 5th cycle in AD 70, apart from the gift of tongues – Malachi 1:5 and confirmed by the book of Acts. The sixth was given by Luke in Luke 21:20-24 in which he gave the prophecy of the siege of Jerusalem. He recorded the words of our Lord Jesus Christ, the last prophet to Israel and the one who warned them that suddenly they were going to be destroyed. The postponement, then, of the Age of Israel brings up the doctrine of intercalation.
With this in mind we will study the failure of Israel in two paragraphs of Romans chapter 10:
a) The failure of Israel to accept Jesus Christ as saviour – verses 1-11.
b) The failure of Israel to function as a client nation – verse 12-21.
Verse 1 – the apostle’s great concern for the Jews’ unregenerate status. The vocative which begins this, the plural of a)delfoj, is addressed to believers. It means “Brethren.” The question is to whom is the vocative addressed? We have already seen that Paul calls racial Jews “brethren,” and racially and nationally that is true. But here he is speaking to believers in the Lord Jesus Christ for primarily throughout the New Testament, especially in the epistles, “brethren” or a)delfoj is used for royal family of God, those who have believed in Christ and through the baptism of the Spirit have been entered into union with Christ, forming the royal family. So this is addressed to believers in the royal family of God in the dispensation of the Church. It is a reminder to such believers that the failure of Israel, having everything going for them, can be the failure of any Gentile nation throughout history.
Principle
1. Rejection of Christ has resulted in using the law as an instrument of self-righteousness, an expression of human arrogance.
2. The only righteousness that counts with God is His own which can only be imputed through faith in Christ.
3. The only righteousness which has credit with God is the righteousness of God which He imputes to the believer in Christ.
4. The Jews rejected Christ as saviour and in arrogance fell back on their own righteousness.
5. Such rejection arouses Paul’s concern for his own race and nation at the beginning of the Church Age.
6. Such a concern can only be expressed to those who would understand. Therefore he starts this chapter with the word “brethren.”
7. A principle comes out of this. Those who possess the righteousness of God through faith in Christ can never understand why anyone would desire to substitute human righteousness for divine righteousness.
8. Only the possession of divine righteousness is compatible with the grace policy of God.
9. To reject Christ as saviour is the substitution of human self-righteousness for God’s perfect righteousness.
10. Human righteousness/self-righteousness is filthy rags in the sight of God – Isaiah 64:6.
Next we have the Greek words h(, the definite article, plus the affirmative particle men. This is Classical Greek and it indicates that the clause in which it is found is being distinguished from another clause which is to follow. In other words, the word men is a guarantee that a statement will be made and then there will be another statement to follow, so that if you are short on concentration you get a warning. It is translated “on the one hand.” Paul desires the salvation of the Jew but they themselves through their own negative volition do not desire the salvation he is presenting.
With this we have the nominative singular subject e)udokia with the definite article, used for a wish or a desire which has a purpose and direction. But this has not been confirmed from the papyri, therefore it must be rejected. The papyri has something else to say, it says that this means “pleasure, purpose, intention,” therefore “motivation.” The papyri are Koine Greek and they explain much of Classical Greek. The King James version says “my heart’s desire.” Well that isn’t what it says at all. It is stronger than “heart’s desire,” it is mental motivation. With it is the generic use of the definite article which isolates Paul’s motivation from all others in the time in which he lived and of all other people in history. So far we have, “Brethren, the motivation.”
Next comes the possessive genitive from the possessive adjective e)moj which means “my.” And with it is the possessive genitive from the noun kardia which means “heart” but not in the New Testament, it is used for the mentality of the soul, the thinking part of the soul. “Brethren, the motivation of my heart [right lobe].”
Summary
1. Proper prayer is based on proper motivation.
2. Like all production in the Christian life mental attitude motivation must precede and comply with divine policy of grace for the production to be legitimate.
3. False motivation destroys good production.
4. Good motivation can only exist where Bible doctrine is resident in the right lobe.
5. Arrogance produces false motivation, therefore the Christian production does not glorify the Lord but the individual who does the Christian deed or function.
6. Prayer which is not motivated from doctrine cannot glorify the Lord.
7. A principle: All Christian production must occur in the filling of the Spirit and motivated from Bible doctrine resident in the soul. These are basic in the use of any weapons which God chooses to give us.
8. Motivation is the key to Christian works. Without doctrine in the right lobe the motivation goes sour. Motivation which is not purposed to glorify the Lord will obviously exist to glorify self, and what glorifies self obviously cannot glorify the Lord.
“and prayer to God for Israel” – the connective use of the conjunction kai to indicate that motivation is related to the use of prayer. There is no verb but it is inserted because it is demanded by ellipsis. The nominative singular subject is dehsij. We have a definite article here used as a possessive pronoun and the first three words are “and my prayer.”
There are two things that happen to this great weapon which has been issued to each one of us as a part of our royal priesthood. First of all, we can neglect it. Secondly, we can abuse it. The concept of prayer as a weapon is based on the fact of its tremendous power, and used by the right person with understanding it is extremely effective.
Prayer
1. Prayer must have a target or an object. The categories of prayer received by God
the Father – He is the target, the object – are from three different sources:
a) The Lord Jesus Christ who is the superior marksman of all time in the use
of prayer – Hebrews 7:25, He makes daily intercession for us at the right hand of the Father.
b) The Holy Spirit is also functioning in this field, without any humanity but
as eternal God He has a special function of special prayer which is found in Romans 8:26,27.
c) The function of prayer from the believer priest. Only the prayers of the
believer can be heard. A lot of unbelievers may pray but they are totally a waste of time.
2. All prayer must be addressed to God the Father.
3. The channel of approach is through the Lord Jesus Christ – John 14:13,14.
4. The power of approach is the ministry of the Spirit. In order to be effective as royal family we must be praying under the filling of the Spirit. If we are not filled with the Spirit when we pray our prayers are not answered, or at least not answered in the way we desire. Ephesians 6:18 relates the ministry of the Holy Spirit to prayer. One of the most important factors in prayer is the rebound technique.
5. The Word of God is all involved in prayer – Psalm 116:1,2; Isaiah 65:24; Jeremiah 33:3 are legitimate prayer promises provided you appreciate the context.
6. John 15:7; Ephesians 3:16-19 are two passages which emphasise the principle that the greater the spiritual growth the more effective the use of prayer.
7. Prayer is merely an extension of the faith-rest technique. It is a soul exhale toward God – Matthew 21:22. Prayer is utilising and claiming by faith certain promises which demand dialogue with God, conversation with God.
8. Prayer demands cognisance of the will of God. You must know God’s will within a certain framework and certain limitations so that you do not become disappointed and frustrated by Matthew 18:19 or Mark 11:24. All prayer demands cognisance of the will of God and the sooner we learn doctrine the better. 1 John 5:14.
9. Prayer must be offered in the spiritual status of the filling of the Spirit or it is washed out immediately. Ephesians 6:18 says that there can be no effective prayer unless we are filled with the Spirit. Therefore rebound is important.
10. Mental attitude sins, which are generally hidden sins, destroy prayer effectiveness. Psalm 66:18.
11. Efficacious prayer exists to the extent that the believer is grace oriented.
12. The eternal decrees took cognisance of all effective prayer in time and incorporated the answers in the printout from the divine decrees.
13. Prayer effectiveness reaches its zenith at the time of maturity – Psalm 116:1,2.
1. Make sure of being filled with the Spirit, therefore confession. 1 John 1:9; 1 Corinthians 11:31.
2. Thanksgiving. This is your capacity for life, your orientation to grace, your appreciation of the source of all logistical grace and all blessing imputed from the justice of God to the righteousness of God – Ephesians 5:20; 1 Thessalonians 5:18.
3. Intercession – praying for others.
4. Petition: praying for your own needs and yourself – Hebrews 4:16.
Scripture to study for intercessory prayer: 1 Kings 18:42-46. The power of prevailing prayer: Acts 12. The prayer for the unbeliever. The prayer for the unknown believer: the guidelines are found in Colossians 1:3-11. Praying for a known believer: Ephesians 1:15-23; 3:14-21. The greatest intercessory prayer in the Word of God is the true Lord’s prayer: John 17, a prayer for the Church Age believer.
1. Positive, positive: the petition is answered and the desire behind the petition is answered. Cf. 1 Kings 18:36,37; Judges 16:28; Luke 23:42,43; John 11:41-45.
2. Positive, negative: the petition is answered but the desire behind the petition is negative. 1 Samuel 8:5-20.
3. Negative, positive: the petition is not answered but the desire behind the petition is answered. Genesis 17:18; 18:23-33; 2 Corinthians 12:7-10.
4. Negative, negative: there are about nine different reasons.
a) Carnality or reversionism, or both, casing failure to be filled with the Spirit, as per Ephesians 6:18.
b) Mental attitude sins in either carnality or reversionism – Psalm 66:18.
c) Blind arrogance and the infiltration of evil from that blind arrogance. Job 35:9-13.
d) Lust-type selfishness. Many negative, negatives deal with the fact that a person in self-centredness and selfishness develops inordinate lusts.
e) The malfunction of the faith-rest technique. Mark 11:24.
f) General lack of obedience or subordination to the will of God – 1 John 3:22.
g) Insubordination to the known will of God – 1 John 5:14.
h) Malfunction of marriage; lack of domestic tranquillity – 1 Peter 3:7.
i) Reversionistic lack of compassion; lack of grace orientation – Proverbs 21:13.
Twice in prayer promises there is a reference to grace – Hebrews 4:16; 1 Peter 1:7. The principle is that prayer is the privilege of the royal priesthood. It is a grace privilege. Since grace is the basis for prayer no believer can come to God in prayer and expect to be heard on the basis of his own merit, ability, or works. So one of the major abuses of the weapon of prayer is seeking to gain answers to your prayers because of your “sweetness,” your “goodness,” your works – human merit, ability. Every believer approaches God in prayer on the basis of the merits of the Lord Jesus Christ. That eliminates ever having a prayer answered because of something you have done. The Father is propitiated by the blood of Christ and He is no respecter of persons as far as the believer is concerned. In other words, God does not hear and answer prayer because we are good or moral or sincere or religious, etc., or any other reason except the merits of the Lord Jesus Christ. God hears and answers prayer, then, on the basis of who and what Christ is, hence every believer gets through to the throne of grace because of (and for no other reason) the Lord Jesus Christ.
Paul is very confident. He understands the use of this weapon given to the royal family, so next he uses the prepositional phrase proj plus the accusative of qeoj – “face to face with the God” or “to the God.” It is a reference specifically to God the Father. All prayer is addressed to God the Father in the name of God the Son in the power of God the Holy Spirit. Prayer brings us face to face with God.
Then we have another prepositional phrase, u(per plus the ablative plural from the intensive pronoun a)utoj which is doubled for the personal pronoun, third person – “on behalf of them,” referring to unbelievers in Israel. Then we have to insert the verb e)imi – “is.”
We have one other thing here and that is the actual request made in this intercession, and the third prepositional phrase – e)ij plus the accusative of swthria, which means “for their salvation.”
Translation: “Brethren, the motivation of my heart [right lobe] and my prayer to the God on behalf of them [Israel], is for their salvation.”
The affirmative particle men in this verse [not translated here] indicates that the Jews themselves have through their own negative volition prevented their salvation. So when men is inserted it means, “Even though they have refused to believe in Christ I am still praying for them.” Prayer for someone’s salvation through faith in Christ can express the motivation of the intercessor but it cannot change the volition of the subject. Paul’s motivation in this prayer was also expressed in the first three verses of the previous chapter.
Principle
1. Prayer expresses conviction and motivation of the one offering the prayer but it cannot change or coerce the volition of the object of prayer.
2. Therefore prayer for the unbeliever must follow the policy of God since God Himself cannot coerce – otherwise everyone in the world would be saved.
3. Such prayer must include the presentation of the gospel and the clarification of the issue of salvation so that the volition of the unbeliever can make a decision based on fact. How do you pray for the unbeliever? You pray that he hears the gospel and that he understands the facts, that the issue is clear to him, so clear that when he says yes or no he knows exactly what he is doing. That is the reason to pray for the unbeliever. You don’t pray that he might be saved, you pray that he might get the facts. Your desire is for his salvation, as Paul expresses his motivation, but you pray that the gospel is clearly presented. God desires that everyone be saved but hell is filled with people who have rejected God’s personal desire in the matter.
4. Several doctrines must be understood in the light of prayer for the unbeliever.
5. God desires the salvation of all members of the human race – 2 Peter 3:9. Therefore, such a prayer is compatible with the will of God.
6. The doctrine of unlimited atonement confirms the fact that all members of the human race can be saved. Christ died for all.
7. The role of God the Holy Spirit in common and efficacious grace must be understood; that whether it is witnessing or evangelism that the message goes into the soul. But the message that goes in might be redemption, reconciliation, propitiation, imputation, justification, and regeneration. Some form of soteriology goes in but this is spiritual phenomena. So how can the unbeliever get the facts? He has no human spirit – 1 Corinthians 2:14. God the Holy Spirit acts as the human spirit to make the facts of the gospel clear in his soul. That is called the doctrine of common grace. Now, understanding the facts the unbeliever with his own positive volition – faith in Christ, non-meritorious – he can exhale faith in Jesus Christ. That is called efficacious grace.
8. In common grace the Holy Spirit acts as a human spirit so the true issue of salvation can be understood.
9. In efficacious grace the exhale of faith in Christ is registered by the Holy Spirit so that no decision to believe in Christ is ever lost, misplaced, but recorded in heaven.
The tenth and eleventh chapters of Romans is a classical illustration of interpretation being ignored minute details, minutia which is taken out of its place and telescoped into something that is ludicrous. The ninth chapter of Romans is the battleground for the hyper-Calvinistic position, and without the ninth chapter of Romans they would collapse in a heap. Instead, they misinterpret that passage. We are now in one of those areas where interpretation is so critical that we will have to be very careful.
Verse 2 – zeal for God is no substitute for salvation. It begins with the explanatory use of the postpositive conjunctive particle gar. Next is the present active indicative of marturew which means to testify on court in Classical Greek, and from that come several other derived meanings. Here we have “For I testify.” Paul is, as it were, giving evidence in court with regard to Israel. He is God’s witness with regard to the status quo of the Jew in the time in which he lived. The historical present tense views the past with the vividness of a present occurrence. The active voice: Paul as the human writer of Romans produces the action of the verb under the ministry of God the Holy Spirit. The indicative mood is declarative representing the verbal idea from the viewpoint of reality. The dative plural of reference from the intensive pronoun a)utoj comes next, used here as it generally is as the third person personal pronoun – “with reference to them.”
Next is the conjunction o(ti used after verbs of testimony for content – that,” plus the present active indicative of the verb e)xw which means to have. The retroactive progressive present denotes what has happened in the past and continues into the present time. This particular characteristic of the Jews continues. The active voice: the Jewish unbeliever produces the action of the verb. The indicative mood is declarative for historical reality. “For I testify that they have.”
Then the accusative singular direct object from zhloj. It is used in the Greek for both zeal and jealousy. Here it refers to zeal. With it is the objective genitive from the noun qeoj – “for God.” Zeal can be disastrous unless it is connected with correct and accurate thought. Correct and accurate thought in the scripture refers to Bible doctrine. Zeal without doctrine is disastrous.
They have a zeal
for God
1. This zeal for God must be related to rejection of Jesus Christ as saviour plus arrogance and self-righteousness.
2. The zeal is specifically religious. Religious zeal is simply arrogance plus self-righteousness. Religious zeal motivated the Jews to seek salvation through keeping the law.
3. Self-righteousness through keeping the law is no substitute for the imputed righteousness of God which comes through faith in Jesus Christ.
4. Justification from God demands the imputation of God’s to the Jew who will believe in Christ, Paul being the illustration. The other illustration is the rich young ruler who was trying to be saved by keeping the law. He had not followed Christ in regeneration.
5. Righteousness manufactured from religious zeal and human arrogance can never replace the possession of God’s perfect and eternal righteousness which comes through faith in Christ, Jesus Christ being the God of Israel.
Next is the phrase “but not according to knowledge” – the adversative conjunction a)lla sets up a contrast between blind arrogance of the smart person and knowledge of doctrine resident in the soul of the believer. Then the strong negative which denies the reality of the fact – o)u. It is translated “but not,” plus the prepositional phrase kata plus the accusative singular of e)pignwsij for doctrine resident in the right lobe in contrast to another technical word, gnwsij, which is doctrine in the left lobe. So we have “not in conformity to the knowledge of doctrine” or not related to knowledge of doctrine.” It should be noted here that kata plus the accusative is also used as the norm and at the same time as the reason for something.
Translation: “For I testify that they have a zeal for God but not as a result of knowledge of doctrine.”
1. Arrogance is cognisance of self-righteousness but ignorant of the imputation of divine righteousness as the basis for justification.
2. Arrogance breeds zeal and self-righteousness.
3. All self-righteousness is works righteousness or energy of the flesh.
4. No one can be saved through the works of the flesh but only through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. This faith in Christ results in the imputation of divine righteousness as the only righteousness which will ever be acceptable to God.
5. Arrogance is amplified into zeal. Zeal manufactured from self-righteousness or works righteousness is always in direct conflict with the grace policy of God. Therefore, arrogant self-righteousness is always disassociated and disoriented from the plan of God.
6. Self-righteousness can be ecclesiastical or political or social.
7. Relationship between God and man is distorted and destroyed by any arrogance in the soul of anyone, but especially by the presence of arrogance and self-righteousness in a man regardless of the source of that self-righteousness.
8. The humility of man orients to God’s righteousness while the arrogance of man orients to self-righteousness.
9. Believing in the Lord Jesus Christ is the unbeliever’s only true act of humility.
10. Self-righteousness is so self-centred and so arrogant as to reject God’s righteousness through faith in Christ.
11. The Pharisaical self-righteousness of the Jewish unbeliever results in a zeal for God which in reality is antagonism for the plan of God.
1. True zeal for God cannot exist apart from knowledge of doctrine.
2. Knowledge of doctrine cannot exist apart from faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.
3. Faith in Christ results in that provision of logistical grace whereby the positive believer in Christ can perceive doctrine.
4. On the other hand religious zeal is ignorance of doctrine. True zeal for God is the motivation and the momentum of Bible doctrine in the soul through the daily function of GAP.
5. Religious zeal for God is a tyrant while doctrinal zeal for god is grace modus operandi.
6. The Jewish unbeliever of this passage has a zeal about knowledge while the reversionistic believer has erroneous knowledge without zeal.
7. True zeal is the momentum and the motivation of the plan of God. The believer who has doctrine begins to understand the plan of God and therefore perpetuates his momentum through that understanding.
8. There is a conflict between self-righteousness and divine righteousness. Therefore there is a conflict between ignorant zeal and cognisant zeal, between arrogant zeal and humble zeal.
9. The imputation of divine righteousness results in humility orientation. The development of self-righteousness results in arrogant inflexibility, legalism, mental blindness to doctrine.
10. Mental blindness to doctrine is ignorance of doctrine no matter how high the individual IQ.
11. The function of self-righteousness is arrogance resulting in the resistance of doctrine.
12. The imputation of divine righteousness orients to grace and motivates the believer to persist in the perception of doctrine while advancing to maturity. As he advances and finally attains maturity he glorifies the Lord Jesus Christ.
Verses 3 & 4 – the issue in the righteousness conflict.
Verse 3 – “For” is the explanatory use of the postpositive conjunctive particle gar. The verse starts a)gnoountej – is the present active participle of the verb a)gnoew which means to be ignorant, one of the worst things that can ever happen to us as believers in the Lord Jesus Christ. There is going to come a time when all of us are going to have to call upon the reserves of doctrine resident in our souls. Ignorance is one of the worst of all things that can happen to you as a believer because there is no excuse for ignorance. The present tense is the present of unity of time, known also as the present of duration, which gathers up past and present time into one phrase. The active voice: the Jews with negative volition at God-consciousness and again at gospel hearing produce the action of the verb. The participle is circumstantial expressing attendant circumstances. With this is the accusative singular direct object from the noun dikaiosunh -- +R, or one half of divine integrity, God’s righteousness. Then the possessive genitive singular from the noun qeoj – “God.” “For not knowing the righteousness of God.”
The integrity of
God
1. The integrity of God is part of the divine essence known as holiness. Holiness is composed of two divine attributes, justice and righteousness.
2. The justice of God is mankind’s point of reference.
3. The love of God has not been the point of reference since the fall of Adam. When Adam lived in the garden with the woman then the divine attribute of love was the point of reference.
4. In the period of innocence in the garden man’s point of reference was the love of God. There was no need for the justice of God to come into the picture until man sinned.
5. However, the warning from the justice of God is found in Genesis 2:17, the prohibition of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and the warning that they day that the fruit was eaten, “Dying thou shalt die.”
6. However, in the integrity of God righteousness demands righteousness demands justice.
7. In righteousness the divine love for holiness or integrity is revealed. In justice the divine hatred for sin, human good and evil is revealed.
8. What righteousness demands justice executes. Righteousness rejects man’s sinfulness while justice condemns man’s sinfulness.
9. At the cross the personal sins of all mankind were imputed to the Lord Jesus Christ and judged by the justice of God.
10. Therefore the integrity of God supersedes the love of God. This is demonstrated by the cross where God the Father set aside His eternal love for god the Son and justice imputed all of our personal sins to Christ on the cross and the justice of God the Father judged every one of them.
11. The imputation of divine righteousness at salvation is the basis for all blessings of mankind from the integrity of God. All blessing comes to us because we as believers possess the righteousness of God.
12. Justice can only bless where perfect righteousness exists. Justice blesses under two categories: logistical grace and supergrace blessings.
13. Self-righteousness is excluded from any phase of the plan of God. Self-righteousness is the basic overt manifestation of human arrogance.
14. Imputed righteousness and self-righteousness are mutually exclusive.
15. Self-righteousness brings cursing from the justice of God while the imputed righteousness of God is the source of blessing from the justice of God.
16. The Mosaic law produces a self-righteousness which is hostile to the imputed righteousness of God.
17. The true purpose of the Mosaic law is not to produce self-righteousness but to condemn man and man’s resources, and exclude self-righteousness as the mean’s of attainment of blessing from God.
18. The only benefit which can come from God comes through adjustment to the justice of God.
The failure of certain ones in the human race has never abrogated the integrity of God. God’s integrity is never cancelled because some person has rejected Christ as saviour or because some believer has failed to advance to maturity. God’s integrity is not cancelled because the believer fails to utilise grace. Lack of integrity in mankind has never cancelled the integrity of God toward us. While salvation adjustment to the justice of God results in imputed righteousness from the justice of God salvation maladjustment results in condemnation from the justice of God. Therefore the justice of God is the source of both blessing and cursing, but the justice of God is never neutral, doing nothing. Therefore, whether justification or condemnation the integrity of God is maintained and constantly functioning in connection with the human race. The very function of the justice of God maintains the integrity of God. Since God is infinite, eternal, invisible and incomprehensible it is necessary for God to reveal Himself to mankind, and He does so through Bible doctrine. The content of the Bible reveals and vindicates the integrity of God. Through comprehension of God we learn of the integrity of God and we adjust to the justice of God. Furthermore, maximum doctrine in the soul through the daily function of GAP is the attainment of maturity adjustment to the justice of God plus maximum blessing for all eternity imputed to our resurrection body. This is the way in which we glorify God. In other words, we learn from self-righteousness versus God’s righteousness that man by man’s efforts seeks to acquire human integrity. Such activity is maligning God and ignores God’s grace. For man to be justified before God he must have the righteousness of God imputed, and this is only accomplished through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.
So we have to conclude, then, that the integrity of God is infinite, absolute and eternal, part of His perfect essence. The integrity of God is not the mere absence of sin or evil but the sum total of His divine attributes, their perfection, their infinity. The integrity of God is not maintained by the will or sovereignty of God. It is His immutable, unchangeable self. The integrity of God is not maintained by the self-righteousness of man. “Not knowing the righteousness of God” is what Paul is saying in this passage. It is blasphemous to assume that your self-righteousness or unrighteousness promotes divine integrity. Divine righteousness totally rejects man’s self-righteousness. God in grace provides all that His integrity demands of the human race; consequently there is nothing man can do to destroy or to compromise the integrity of God. The essence of God, which includes His integrity, stands eternally without any help from mankind. God does not need our help; we need His help.
Imputed righteousness at salvation is the beginning of blessing from God. It also can be very dangerous because if you try to compete with the righteousness of God resident in you by arrogant self-righteousness then you are in for a life of terrible discipline and you are going to fail in the purpose for which God supports you and sustains you under logistical grace. Imputed righteousness is when God begins to share His integrity with us. God found a way to bless mankind without compromising His essence, and that is the imputation of divine righteousness. And God did not do this from human sentimentality or emotional attraction to pleasant personalities. Man often concludes that his self-righteousness pleases God but all of our righteousnesses are as filthy rags in His sight. Neither man’s sinfulness nor man’s self-righteousness advances the glory of God. The principle is: Only God can glorify God; divine integrity advances the glory of God, and one half of divine integrity resides in us as of the moment we believe in Christ. In other words, only what God has provided for man in grace can glorify God. Any member of the human race who ignores his personal sins as a manifestation of spiritual death and at the same time presents his self-righteousness to God for salvation has neither respect nor awe for the integrity of God. So maladjustment to the justice of God at salvation means no relationship with the integrity of God, no eternal life, no imputation of God’s righteousness, and therefore the point of reference, the justice of God, can only condemn the unbeliever.
This is not to say that the unbeliever does not have blessing. The only way, however, he can have this blessing is by somewhere in his life he has association with a mature believer. Blessing by association is the third category of special blessing to the mature believer. This explains why the wicked are blessed.
So we need to remember that God’s righteousness and self-righteousness are mutually exclusive. Furthermore, no nation can possess freedom prosperity and blessing apart from the integrity of God. That means that social, economic and political reform apart from the integrity of God is useless.
That brings us to the principle here because “For not knowing the righteousness of God” means that these people as Jewish unbelievers, in their legalism and their pride and their arrogance, do not understand that the integrity of God is never arbitrary. Righteousness demands righteousness, justice demands justice, therefore as long as God is God (which is forever) He must punish sin, He must punish human good, He must punish self-righteousness, He must punish reversionism and evil. This explains the Mosaic law, then, as an instrument of condemnation rather than self-righteousness. The law is incapable of making man righteous before the integrity of God, the only thing that can make man righteous before the integrity of God is to believe in Jesus Christ and receive the imputation of divine righteousness. The law cannot justify, only the justice of God can justify. Remember that justification is a judicial act or verdict from the justice of God recognising the imputation of divine righteousness at the moment anyone believes in the Lord Jesus Christ. Justification, then, recognises the imputation of divine righteousness and vindicates the one who possesses it. Justification is not forgiveness. Forgiveness is subtraction; justification is addition. Forgiveness subtracts sin but justification adds the righteousness of God through a judicial imputation. Justification is the basis for the first aforitiori, the afortiori of blessing in time. If the justice of God can provide the greater, which is the imputation of divine righteousness, it follows afortiori that He will not withhold the less, i.e. the imputation of great blessing in time, that special blessing that glorifies God.
“For not knowing the righteousness of God.”
The principle of
this phrase
1. It refers to divine righteousness imputed – one half of divine integrity imputed to the believer at the moment of salvation.
2. When it says, “For not knowing the righteousness of God” this is, in our context, the Jewish unbeliever who is ignorant. He is ignorant with guilt because these Jews had every opportunity to know and to understand the issue of justification or imputation of divine righteousness at the moment of faith in Christ.
3. These Jews by defending self-righteousness by keeping the law have rejected the righteousness of God through faith in Christ.
4. In their arrogance they established an imaginary orthodoxy, which does not exist in the plan of God, but in their evil and arrogant imagination it is real.
5. Since Christ is the source of righteousness of God imputed they have excluded Him from their imaginary system of orthodoxy, and as a result they have maligned Him with blasphemy and rejection.
6. This arrogant self-righteousness of the law has motivated Jewish participation in the crucifixion of our Lord.
7. Such arrogance and self-righteousness is the basis of Jewish persecution of Christianity in Paul’s time. Paul was under constant pressure from his Jewish brethren. Cf. John 16:2. The Jews assumed that they were doing God a favour by killing Christians.
8. Where arrogance exists there is always self-righteousness. This self-righteousness is divorced from reality and gathers momentum in zeal, zeal to destroy those who know the truth, witness to the truth, communicate the truth.
9. Arrogance always chooses personal righteousness or self-righteousness over any other righteousness, including the righteousness of God.
10. Arrogance approves of self-works and rejects the work of God, known to us under the title “grace.”
11. Arrogance is the vacuum of the soul which sucks in every false doctrine, every evil thought, accepting the false as true and accepting the true as false.
12. It is therefore inevitable that rejection of God’s imputed righteousness through faith in Christ will be replaced with arrogant self-righteousness.
13. Rejection of Christ as saviour leads to the establishment of some form of self-righteousness.
“and going about to establish their own righteousness” – or better, “and seeking to establish their own righteousness. Again, we have the noun dikaionsunh, but it is not repeated, it is understood. What we have is the connective use of the conjunction kai, plus the verb, the present active participle of zhtew which means to seek what is lost. In the case of self-righteousness what does not exist to God is what is being sought. As far as God is concerned self-righteousness doesn’t exist. This is a pictorial present tense; it presents to the mind a picture of an event in the process of occurrence. This was occurring in Paul’s day. The active voice: those who reject doctrine, both unbeliever rejecting the gospel and the believer rejecting doctrinal teaching, produce the action of the verb. The participle is instrumental; it indicates the means by which the action of the main verb is accomplished. Therefore it is translated “and by seeking.”
Next is the aorist active infinitive of the verb i(sthmi – to establish or confirm. The constative aorist is for a fact or action extended over a period of time. The active voice: those who reject the gospel or believers who are negative toward doctrine produce the action of the verb. In this context we are dealing with the unbeliever, but it does have application to the believer as well. This is the infinitive of intended result, which combines both purpose, and result in one concept. The result indicates the fulfilment of a deliberate objective -- to establish their own righteousness. And with it is the accusative singular from the adjective i)dioj, which means “their very own,” and again we have dikaiosunh used as a noun which means the self-righteousness of the negative Jew. There is the accusative singular definite article used as a possessive pronoun, and we translate: “and by seeking to establish their own [righteousness].”
1. While this passage pertains to the Jewish unbeliever in Paul’s time the same conflict versus divine righteousness exists in the realm of Christianity right now.
2. The issue, therefore, has application to us right now. Whose righteousness are you building your life on? You can be positive toward doctrine or negative toward doctrine and still be building on your own righteousness. But you can only be positive toward doctrine and build on the righteousness of God. It is a matter of ignorance versus cognisance of the doctrine of imputation/justification.
3. In this context the unbeliever who rejects the gospel seeks to establish his own righteousness as the means of salvation. One of the most common systems of establishing one’s own righteousness is to say no to the gospel. That means you have rejected the work of Christ on the cross as the way of salvation, and once you say no to that you must link up your own self-righteousness with some system. This is what man inevitably does, and for the Jew he had the law there and he reached out and said he would keep the law.
4. The believer in Christ who rejects Bible doctrine and Bible teaching always seeks to establish his own righteousness. So we know a principle now: When people reject the truth, either at the point of the gospel or after they are saved they resist Bible doctrine, it is inevitable that they will seek to establish their own righteousness.
5. The imputed righteousness of God is the only true foundation for the Christian way of life. Again, ever life support system under logistical blessing comes from the justice of God to the righteousness of God resident in us.
6. Imputed righteousness of God is the home or target for the imputation of logistical blessing and, if you crack the maturity barrier, the imputation of special blessing.
7. This affinity between God’s righteousness and God’s blessing of the believer cannot exist without Bible doctrine in the soul. We must go from ignorance to cognisance.
8. God cannot impute personal blessing to His own righteousness in the believer until capacity for blessing exists.
9. The residence of God’s imputed righteousness at salvation demands the residence of Bible doctrine for capacity for special blessing. This special blessing is imputed after maturity.
10. Therefore the imputed righteousness of God can only be established by the daily perception of Bible doctrine, in contrast to human self-righteousness which, being motivated by arrogance and established by systems of spirituality by works – morality, taboos, and which have no relationship to doctrine as such, all seek to establish our own righteousness.
11. Therefore the believer must face the issue of grace versus blasphemy. Or, the question: On whose righteousness do you build?
12. Whose righteousness is the motivating factor in your life? Your own works righteousness or God’s imputed righteousness? You cannot say that God’s imputed righteousness is the motivating factor in your life until you understand the pertinent doctrines.
“have not” – the negative o)u with the indicative which indicates that Jewish unbelievers have rejected Christ, plus the aorist active indicative from the verb u(potassw. U(potassw is one of the systems of humility that orients us all to life. No one can ever be oriented to the realities of life until he recognises the authorities of life. God has set up a system of authorities which we call establishment. God has set up a spiritual system of authorities as well. Orientation to the realities of life and the ability to cope with life is based in large measure on authority orientation. So this means, “they have not been obedient.” It means to be subordinate, to submit to authority. The middle voice means here to subject one’s self, but here we have the passive voice to connote being subordinate and the passive denotes a result only. They have not been obedient. The culminative aorist tense views the rejection of the gospel in its entirety. They have rejected the gospel and its authority. But they regard it from the viewpoint of its existing results, and that is what the culminative aorist does – rejection of God’s imputed righteousness, and therefore they have accepted their own self-righteousness. The Jews heard the gospel but they rejected the gospel. The gospel offered them God’s perfect righteousness and they said no to it because they were satisfied with their self-righteousness. They had been keeping the law for salvation, they had been following some system of morality for salvation, they hade been doing something themselves, and therefore they thought more of their own righteousness than they did of the righteousness of God. So as unbelievers they had set up their own righteousness and therefore rejected the righteousness of God. The passive voice notes the results of rejecting Christ as saviour as not being subordinate to the imputed righteousness of God. The indicative mood plus the negative is the declarative indicative and it presents the verbal idea from the viewpoint of reality.
With this is a dative singular of reference from the noun dikaiosunh, used here for the righteousness of God because with it is the possessive genitive of the noun qeoj – “they have not been obedient to the righteousness of God.”
Translation: “For not knowing the righteousness of God, and by seeking to establish their own righteousness, they have not been obedient to the righteousness of God.”
Principle
1. There is only one way to be submissive or subordinate to the righteousness of God.
2. First, the individual must believe in the Lord Jesus Christ so that the righteousness of God can be imputed. Illustration: the father of the Jewish race. “Abraham believed in the Lord and it [his faith in Christ] was imputed to him for righteousness.” The Jewish race was founded on regeneration and, as a result of that, logistical grace support until Abraham cracked the maturity barrier and the moment of his circumcision and he became the father of the Jewish race. How did he get there? God kept him alive, providing all of the necessary life support systems. It was the imputation of the justice of God to the righteousness of God. The issue, then, was the integrity of God.
3. Once the righteousness of God is resident in the believer it becomes the foundation for the Christian modus vivendi.
4. There is no sense in developing self-righteousness in the Christian life to compete with divine righteousness. The fact that you are developing any self-righteousness merely indicates the amount of arrogance, blind or known, resident in your life.
5. The very existence of God’s righteousness in the believer demands something higher, something greater, something compatible with grace. Remember that grace is the policy of the justice of God in imputing blessing to the righteousness of God. First logistical blessing and then, if you advance to maturity, special blessing.
6. Therefore God’s righteousness is the foundation while doctrine is the building material.
7. The erected building is the mature believer who receives the imputation of special divine blessing to the target or home – imputed righteousness. This imputed blessing glorifies God in time.
8. Subordination to divine righteousness demands faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. Then for exploitation of the possession of divine righteousness consistent perception of doctrine.
9. The divine plan excludes any form of human self-righteousness. To construct your life on human self-righteousness is to build on a foundation of sand, and when adversity and disaster and catastrophe strike you will be destroyed.
Principle
1. All of this is the obedience of faith in Christ by which God’s righteousness is imputed. This verse is saying we have God’s righteousness through obedience of faith. Righteousness is imputed on the basis of a non-meritorious system.
2. This is the believer’s obedience to the discipline of doctrinal inculcation through the daily function of GAP.
3. There can be only one righteousness in the life of the believer – God’s imputed righteousness.
4. All systems of self-righteousness are both arrogance and blasphemy, a denial of the divine policy of grace.
5. Self-righteousness is produced by human volition apart from divine help or sponsorship.
6. There is a place for morality in Christianity but never as a system of self-righteousness.
7. Pride or arrogance sets up one’s own self-righteousness to blaspheme and reject the very purpose and plan related to the righteousness of God. God has imputed His righteousness for a purpose: to carry out His predetermined plan.
8. Therefore all legalism is based on self-righteousness; all grace function is based on the imputed divine righteousness at salvation.
9. God cannot impute blessing to self-righteousness. Such legalism is blasphemous and a compromise to the attributes of God.
10. Self-righteousness is a curse to the possessor. For the unbeliever, an eternal curse – the lake of fire; for the believer, the source of divine discipline in time, loss of special blessing in time, loss of eternal rewards.
11. The principle: Self-righteousness cannot glorify God, only the person who possesses it. Self-righteousness glorifies the individual; God’s righteousness precludes any glorification of the individual. God’s righteousness imputed can only glorify God.
Verse 4 – generally what is left out of considerations of this passage is the phrase “for righteousness.” The phrase in the Greek begins teloj gar nomou. “For” is postpositive conjunctive particle gar. The postpositive conjunction is a cause or a reason for the preceding statement. The fourth word actually comes next as far as we are concerned in forming the English sentence – Xristoj, the nominative singular of one of the names for our Lord Jesus Christ. It is the subject in the nominative case; it refers to the second person of the Trinity, the Lord Jesus Christ. So we begin, “For Christ.” The absence of the definite article in front of Xristoj emphasises the qualitative aspect of the noun and emphasises, therefore, the hypostatic union – the uniqueness of the person of Jesus Christ. He is eternal God, co-equal with the Father and with the Holy Spirit, and at the same time He is true humanity but superior to all humanity as the last Adam, impeccable and perfect.
Then we insert, as we are authorised to do (no verb is there) the present active indicative of the verb e)imi. This is legitimate in the function of ellipsis where the words that follow are in the nominative case. The verb to be can only take the nominative case. The word that follows is the first word in the Greek sentence, teloj, which is in the nominative. It is a predicate nominative meaning on the Koine Greek “end, termination, cessation, void, objective or goal. In the Attic Greek it also means achievement, fulfilment, or the carrying out of something. It also meant the completion of a state, therefore the final step or the supreme stage. It was also used for an obligation, and there are three translations which are permissible in this verse. The first is “objective,” the second is “termination,” and the third is “obligation.” “For Christ is the objective, termination, or obligation.” “Obligation” is eliminated as unique in the writing of Demosthenes and therefore having no connotation in the Koine Greek of the New Testament, even though Paul was familiar with Demosthenes. This leaves two possibilities: objective or goal, termination, end or cessation. But before we can reach a conclusion as to what it actually means we must first understand what Paul meant by the word nomoj – “law.’
We know that the Mosaic law refers to Codex #1, Codex #2, Codex #3. Codex #1 refers to the Decalogue, the ten commandments, which includes a number of sins all stated in a negative way to define freedom under establishment. Freedom is absolutely necessary as a part of the laws of divine establishment for evangelism, for advance or retrogression in the Christian way of life, to fulfil the angelic conflict. And so freedom is described in terms of privacy, property, relationships in life. Next is Codex #2 which presents a complete Christology and soteriology. In other words, it presents the Lord Jesus Christ who is the God of Israel as the only saviour. Codex #3 dealt with the laws of divine establishment in general. It dealt with the functions of government, its limitations and its rightful functions related to freedom. It defined in terms of a client nation to God income tax, for example, which is ten per cent of anyone’s income. It defines the military function of a nation, the basis for maintaining the freedom of a national entity. It also too up dietary habits and defined diet in terms of foods that are acceptable and foods that are prohibited. It set up a system of all of the social relationships in life and defined it in terms of crime, as sin, and also in terms of how people should be condemned and what punishments they should receive for criminal actions.
Paul is referring to the Mosaic law, though nomoj is used for other parts of the Word and occasionally even for the entire canon of scripture. The law is not an instrument of salvation, therefore keeping the law would not provide salvation. However, the law presented the way of salvation through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. Keeping the law for salvation produced self-righteousness, but by understanding and listening to the law, Codex #2 where Christ was presented, and believing in Christ, produced not only salvation but the imputation of divine righteousness. So we have the Mosaic law considered in two ways in this passage. First of all, as a way of salvation. That produced self-righteousness. The Mosaic law also presented Christ as the only way of salvation, and for those who believed in Christ they received the imputation of divine righteousness. So once again the Mosaic law is brought into focus in this general overall subject of the passage, human self-righteousness versus divine righteousness.
The Jews to whom Paul addresses this were trying to be saved by their own self-righteousness, by keeping the Mosaic law. Cf. Romans 3:20, 28. These verses indicate that Christ is the termination, the cessation, the end of the law for those who believe in Him. According to these verses teloj would indicate termination. The first advent of Christ fulfilled Codex #2 of the Mosaic law, for all of the Levitical sacrifices portrayed in Codex #2 of the law the various types of the modus operandi of the Levitical priesthood, the functions of the holy days, the work of the Lord Jesus Christ in receiving the imputation of all of our personal sins and being judged for them. In that sense, then, Christ fulfilled the law. Christ is the termination of the law. Every type, every illustration, every declaration of doctrine regarding soteriology on Codex #2 was fulfilled by the first advent and the spiritual death of our Lord on the cross, bearing our sins and taking our place. So it must be understood that the first advent of Christ fulfilled Codex #2 of the Mosaic law. But the Jews are blind to the first advent and therefore they chose their works righteousness over imputed righteousness.
There are also certain passages of scripture which indicate that Christ fulfilled the law which uses other words and other connotations of teloj. For example, Matthew 5:17 – “Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil.” Here the law or the prophets refers to Old Testament scriptures and therefore is not pertinent to the subject of the Mosaic law. “Law and prophets” was used for the first section of the Old Testament [Law], the Pentateuch, and the other two sections of the Hebrew Old Testament [the prophets]. Pertinent is another passage, however, Galatians 3:24 – “Wherefore the law was our school bus [pedagogue] to lead us unto Christ, that we might be justified by means of faith.” Codex #1 of the Mosaic law demonstrates that man is a sinner and needs a saviour. It also defines freedom in terms of morality. Codex #2 of the Mosaic law reveals Christ as the only saviour, and therefore the law is a school bus, a pedagogue, leading us to Christ. By the way, a pedagogue was never a teacher in the school, a pedagogue was the Greek slave that acted as a body guard for the children, taking them to school and back from school, so that they would not be kidnapped or harmed.
While this conception of the law is true doctrine, pertinent to this context is the fact that Christ is the termination, the end, the cessation of the Mosaic law for believers. Self-righteousness produced by keeping the law will not save, will not justify, and furthermore, after salvation will not advance the believer. The law will not save or justify, only the possession of divine righteousness imputed at the moment of faith in Christ.
So we translate this, “For Christ is the cessation of the law.” The word “cessation” is legitimate for teloj and it also explains the change to another dispensation. When our Lord died physically on the cross He was three days in the grave, He was resurrected, then He ascended, and He was seated at the right hand of the Father. By being seated at the right hand of the Father He became the cessation of the law. That means that the Age of Israel, which was not completed as yet, was interrupted and the Lord Jesus Christ having a new category of royalty needed a royal family. So there was an interruption of the Age of Israel and we live in the Church Age, the dispensation of the Church where the royal family is being formed. So when it says that Christ is the cessation of the law it also implies that Israel as a client nation to God is finished. This, the Church Age, is called the times of the Gentiles in which only Gentile nations can function as a client nation to God, and it is a time in which no Jewish nation is recognised by God as a client nation. Any Jewish nation that does exist therefore must be regarded in the same light as Gentile nations. This will continue until the end of the Tribulation and the second advent when Israel will be restored to their client nation status and the four unconditional covenants to Israel will be fulfilled.
But this, “For Christ is the cessation of the law,” is speaking not of dispensations but of something very specific. The next phrase is a prepositional phrase, e)ij plus the accusative singular of dikaiosunh – “with reference to righteousness.” Paul states it this way for a very specific reason. The Jews are like the rich young ruler; they are trying to be saved by keeping the law. The Lord admitted later that the rich young ruler had followed the commandments very well but there was something missing. When the disciples asked what it was He said, “He has not followed me by means of regeneration” – believing in the Lord. In other words, the law cannot produce a saving righteousness. Only faith in Christ can produce a saving righteousness.
“to every one that believeth” – the dative singular indirect object, also the dative of advantage, from adjective paj. Paj means “to all” but in the singular it means “to each one” or “to every one.” The adjective is used here as a substantive. We translate it “to each one.” Then an articular present active participle from the verb pisteuw, the basic word for believing. The participle has a suffix, the dative singular of advantage. The definite article is used as a personal pronoun. The aoristic present is for punctiliar action in present time. The active voice: positive volition at gospel hearing produces the action of the verb, i.e. faith in Christ. The participle is a causal participle. So we translate it correctly: “to each one because he believes.”
Translation: “For Christ is the termination of the law with reference to righteousness to each one because he believes.”
Principle
1. Because the believer believes in Christ, Christ is the termination of the law with reference to righteousness. You do not develop your own righteousness for divine blessing, you already have the righteousness for divine blessing.
2. Imputed righteousness terminates self-righteousness by keeping the law. That is what this passage means.
1. The phrase is explained: “For not knowing the righteousness of God, and by seeking to establish their own righteousness they have not been obedient to the righteousness of God.”
2. Faith in Christ is obedience to the righteousness of God.
3. The Jews sought to establish their own righteousness by keeping the law, but Christ is the termination of self-righteousness. He is the termination of that myth of salvation through keeping the law.
4. As far as righteousness is concerned Christ is the termination of any system of human self-righteousness because faith in Christ results in the imputation of God’s perfect righteousness.
5. No system of human righteousness can compete with God’s righteousness. Cf. Matthew 6:33. Logistical grace provision will be added after you have His righteousness.
6. The Jews in the client nation of Israel failed when they substituted self-righteousness from keeping the law for God’s righteousness through faith in Christ.
7. In the conflict of human self-righteousness versus divine imputed righteousness there is no contest.
8. Only human arrogance erroneously concludes that righteousness from keeping the law could provide salvation.
9. But God’s plan and policy of grace not only excludes human self-righteousness but in place provides His own perfect righteousness.
10. Therefore the blindness of Israel was the blindness of arrogance -- that self-achievement can impress God. God is only impressed with His own integrity or holiness, not with man’s counterfeits.
1. Because the individual believer in Christ receives the imputation of divine righteousness, the same divine righteousness is instant justification and perpetual motivation for advancing to maturity through maximum doctrine resident in the soul.
2. The conflict, then, between law righteousness and faith righteousness, or better, the conflict between self-righteousness and imputed righteousness, is terminated at salvation when you believe in Christ.
3. The imputation of divine righteousness at the moment of faith in Christ once and for all replaces any system of self-righteousness or pseudo spirituality.
4. Christian legalism is arrogance of ignorance, failure to understand the implications of the imputed righteousness of God.
5. No man can establish two conflicting systems of righteousness. He must accept one or the other – either self-righteousness or imputed divine righteousness.
6. For the believer to establish self-righteousness is the arrogance of legalism.
7. For the believer t establish imputed righteousness is the humble grace orientation of inculcated doctrine.
8. The power of thought exceeds the power of deeds. The deed only has merit as it relates to the thought.
9. Bible doctrine resident in the soul is the thought which motivates compliance with the plan of God and a general grace orientation to life.
10. Grace excludes any system of self-righteousness as a basis of merit or blessing from God.
11. You can only build on the foundation of imputed righteousness and the building must be perception of doctrine.
12. Therefore, the conflict of self-righteousness versus divine righteousness imputed existed in the previous dispensation of Israel as a definite stumbling block to the Jew.
Verse 5 – we begin with the word “Moses.” The second word is the first word in the English – “for,” the postpositive conjunctive particle gar, here the explanatory use, and it translated “you see” or “for you see.” Next is the present active indicative of the verb grafw which means to write, and here refers to the writing of Moses in the book of Leviticus, specifically 18:5. The present tense is a historical present viewing a past event, the writing of Leviticus, with the vividness of a present occurrence. The active voice: Moses in the human author of Leviticus under the ministry of God the Holy Spirit. The indicative mood is declarative for the reality of the formation of the canon of scripture, the Old Testament from which Paul quotes. The Greek word for Moses is Mwushj. “You see, Moses wrote.”
Next is the conjunction o(ti which introduces a direct discourse which in English is represented by quotation marks and is therefore not translated.
The accusative which follows is translated “about the righteousness” – “You see, Moses wrote about the righteousness,” the accusative singular direct object from dikaiosunh. With this are two definite articles on each side of dikaiosunh. We have the accusative feminine definite article, then dikaiosunh, and then the definite article again – thn. The first definite article denotes a previous reference in verses 3 & 4 to human self-righteousness from keeping the law, but the second definite article which follows dikaiosunh is used as a relative pronoun. It is correctly translated “about the righteousness which is.”
Then we have a prepositional phrase, e)k plus the ablative of means from nomoj – “by means to the law.” “You see, Moses wrote about the righteousness which is by means of the law.” This is the point at which the quotation begins.
Principle
1. Moses and Paul are talking about two different things. When Moses wrote Leviticus 18:5 he was talking about one thing, and as Paul quotes him here Paul is talking about another thing, so we have to understand that part of the interpretation is to remember that in Leviticus 18 Moses was talking about one thing whereas Paul in Romans 10:5 is talking about something else. Therefore when Paul quotes Moses we have to know what Moses was talking about originally, what Paul is talking about, and why Paul goes to Leviticus to make the point when they are talking about two different things. This means that we have two men of genius brought together.
2. Moses was talking about obedience to Codex #1 and Codex #3 of the Mosaic law. Paul is talking about self-righteousness from keeping the law. Moses is saying that it was their responsibility living in a client nation to obey Codex #1, the Ten Commandments, to obey Codex #3, the laws of divine establishment. Paul in Romans 10 says that the Jews who did this for salvation were wrong: you do it as a citizen of a client nation but you don’t do it for salvation and you don’t do it for blessing. They were talking about two different things but they were using the common ground. Paul is giving this information to Jews who have rejected Christ because they are trying to keep Codex #1 and Codex #3 for salvation and, you see, Codex #2 is the way of salvation. Yes, there is a place for Codex #1 which is the basis for human freedom. Yes, there is a place for Codex #3 because no nation can function without the laws of divine establishment. Because there are divine laws for freedom and establishment it does not imply that by keeping these laws you can have salvation; that is salvation by works.
So Moses was saying that we (the Jews) as members of a client nation (Israel) must observe Codex #1 and Codex #3. Paul then says, yes, that is correct, Moses is right, but you don’t keep them for salvation, you keep them as the function of a client nation.
Leviticus 18:1-6
Verse 1 – Then Jehovah spoke to Moses, saying,
Verse 2 – Speak to the people of Israel, and say to them, I am the Lord your God [Adonai Elohenu].
Verse 3 – You shall not do what you have done in the land of Egypt [practice idolatry], were you lived; nor are you to do what is done in the land of Canaan [the practice of idolatry], where I am bringing you; you shall not walk in their statutes [laws].
Verse 4 – You are to perform my judgments [Codex #3], and keep my statutes, to walk in them: I am the Lord [Adonai Elohenu] your God.
Verse 5 – So you shall keep my statutes, and my judgements, which the man who does them, also shall live by them [Codex #1 & Codex #3]: I am Jehovah.
Verse 6 – None of you shall approach any blood relative of his, to uncover his nakedness: I am the Lord. (From here it goes on to take up all the laws of incest and sexual degeneration, a part of Codex #3. Although the principle, “Thou shalt not fornicate,” is found in Codex #1 it is amplified in Codex #3 under the laws of divine establishment. These are the degenerate results of Satan worship and/or idolatry).
Both the way of salvation and spirituality after salvation is only described in Codex #2 or the ordinances which are not found in Leviticus 18. The spiritual heritage of Israel enucleated in Codex #2 includes the tabernacle, the holy days, the Levitical offerings, the modus operandi of the Levitical priesthood, and none of these things are mentioned in Leviticus 18 which is strictly Codex #3 information. This must be kept in mind in order to understand the interpretation when Paul quotes from it.
Morality: Morality is designed for the client nation’s unbeliever as well as the client nation’s born again believer. Morality is for the human race rather than for one category.
“the man who does them shall also live by them” – this is a reference to a lifestyle in a client nation, it does not refer to salvation. Lifestyle is not the basis for salvation. Only the work of Christ on the cross is the basis for salvation. The Jews set up a system (even though the work of Christ was presented to them in Codex #2) in which they took their own work/morality, based on their arrogance, and set up their self-righteousness versus the righteousness of God. This has always been the major blind spot of Israel. No lifestyle, including semi-perfection, can open the gates of heaven. They have been opened by the works of Christ on the cross. Arrogance distorts lifestyle into a way of salvation by works. Doing is a lifestyle, but believing in Christ is salvation.
Principle
1. The Jews avoided incest and sexual abuses (Leviticus 18) and concluded from this establishment morality that their self-righteousness was worthy of salvation.
2. Such a blasphemous conclusion violates the entire purpose of the passage.
3. Morality is designed for the client nation unbeliever and believer alike.
4. Leviticus 18 refers to lifestyle, not salvation. Lifestyle is not the basis for salvation.
5. No lifestyle, including semi-perfection, can open the gates of heaven; they have been opened by the work of the Lord Jesus Christ in being judged for our sins on the cross.
6. Arrogance distorts lifestyle into a way of salvation and sets up the principle of competition: human righteousness versus God’s righteousness.
7. Doing is a lifestyle; believing in Christ is salvation.
8. It is imperative in understanding this passage to rightly divide the Word of truth. Do not confuse lifestyle with salvation.
9. Doing is simply living by the laws of establishment in a client nation – Romans 13:1-7.
10. Morality is never salvation; it is the lifestyle of citizens of a client nation.
“That the man” – the definite article o(. This is an articular aorist active participle. Poihsaj is the aorist active participle from the verb poiew. It is the exact equivalent of the Hebrew asah in Leviticus 18:5. The definite article is used as a relative pronoun and translated “who.” The aorist tense of the verb poiew is a constative aorist for a fact or an action extended over a period of time. The constative aorist contemplates the action of the verb in its entirety. The active voice: the believer or the unbeliever in the client nation of Israel produces the action of the verb in compliance of the laws of divine establishment which are summarised in Codex #1 and Codex #3. Leviticus 18 is a part of Codex #3. The participle is circumstantial.
Next is the nominative singular subject from the noun a)nqrwpoj which includes believer and unbeliever. The noun is generic for homo sapien – “mankind who does it” is the best translation.
Then we have the future middle indicative of the verb zaw – “shall live by it.” Everything here is about morality, establishment, and client nation function. The future tense of zaw is a gnomic future for a fact or performance which may be expected under the conditions of keeping the law, keeping establishment in a client nation. The middle voice is the indirect middle emphasising the agent as producing the action rather than participating in its results. The indicative mood indicates the main verb. The action of the aorist participle precedes the action of the main verb and therefore we have a very specific manner in which this particular quotation follows exactly what was given in the Hebrew, bringing it into the equivalent Greek. With it is the preposition e)n plus the instrumental of the intensive pronoun autoj, used for a second person singular personal pronoun and translated “it.”
Translation: “You see, Moses wrote [Lev. 18:5] about the righteousness which is by means of the law: The man who does it shall live by it.”
Principle
1. Morality is a lifestyle, not a way of salvation. Furthermore, lifestyle is for believer and unbeliever.
2. To distort morality into a way of salvation is both blasphemous and disastrous.
3. Codex #3 requires morality as a lifestyle but it never requires morality as a way of salvation.
4. Furthermore, it is a lifestyle for both believer and unbeliever in the client nation.
5. Lifestyle has nothing whatever to do with salvation. Salvation was started and completed at the cross. Salvation is the work of Jesus Christ, not the work of mankind in a client nation.
6. This means that the appropriation of salvation does not depend upon morality, it depends upon faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.
7. Man has a lifestyle of morality by keeping the law but not a way of salvation in that morality.
8. This does not imply that we should be immoral. The lifestyle of morality is desirable but it must not be distorted by arrogance nor applied by stupidity.
9. The distortion is the substitute of self-righteousness of mankind for the imputed righteousness of God.
10. Faith in the Lord Jesus Christ is the end of self-righteousness or any system of works righteousness.
11. There is no way that the righteousness of man can improve on the righteousness of God.
12. Therefore is the end of any system of self or works righteousness. The believer in the Lord Jesus Christ receives divine righteousness. The Christian way of life does not exclude morality but is infinitely superior to human morality.
Principle
1. Codex #1, the Ten Commandments, and Codex #3 define morality in terms of the law of divine establishment.
2. For example, our context – Leviticus 18:6ff – defines morality in terms of avoiding incest, which not only includes families but even in-laws.
3. Inasmuch as sin is an attack on establishment morality, defined in Codex #1 and #3, obviously Codex #1 and #3 is not the antidote for the unbeliever and believer as far as salvation or relationship with God is concerned. That comes from faith in Christ.
4. Morality belongs to the entire human race; it is not the monopoly of the believer.
5. Therefore morality cannot be either the way of salvation or the way of spirituality. Salvation is instant relationship with God; spirituality is the ministry of the Holy Spirit.
6. This does not imply that Christianity is immoral or antinomian but simply anything the unbeliever can do is not the Christian way of life.
7. Christianity includes morality but at the same time exceeds morality, both in the way of salvation and in the dynamics of the filling of the Spirit after salvation.
8. Morality is conformity to the laws of divine establishment but it is not salvation.
9. Salvation is faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, therefore the total exclusion of self or works-righteousness.
10. Morality is keeping the laws of divine establishment but not the Christian way of life which is the ministry of God the Holy Spirit in fulfilling the royal family honour code.
11. Obviously the Christian way of life is not in conflict with morality. Just because the Christian way of life is far greater in its scope and in its requirement it does not imply that it is in conflict with morality.
Principle
1. While morality sponsors human freedom to the believer in Christ, morality in itself is neither salvation nor spirituality.
2. Hell will be filled with very moral people whose satisfaction with their own self or works-righteousness motivated, then, in arrogance to reject the offer of the righteousness of God through faith in Christ.
3. Morality provides freedom, and freedom is the environment for evangelism. It is the environment for decision, and non-meritorious decision is the basis for salvation.
4. The object of the decision is the Lord Jesus Christ, not keeping the law.
5. Faith in Christ results in the imputation of divine righteousness while keeping the law results in the development of self-righteousness.
6. God accepts His own righteousness for justification but He rejects self-righteousness. As a matter of fact God condemns self-righteousness in the unbeliever.
Principle
1. The failure of Israel is the failure of all self-righteous and legalistic people. It is the failure of choosing the wrong righteousness, i.e. self.
2. The wrong righteousness is any form of self or works-righteousness.
3. The right righteousness is the righteousness of God.
4. This righteousness is imputed at the moment anyone believes in Christ.
5. This is Paul’s Old Testament documentation regarding self-righteousness.
6. Coming up in the next few verses, one of the most critical principles in the Word of God, Paul’s Old Testament documentation regarding the imputed righteousness of God.
Morality
By definition morality is right conduct and excellence in the practice of establishment. It pertains to the character, the conduct, the ethics, the motivation and integrity related to the laws of divine establishment. Morality is the doctrine of duty and responsibility of all adult members of the human race regarding establishment principles. This means, of course, that morality is a part of Christianity but morality is also a part of being an unbeliever. Christianity is not a morality, it is a relationship with God – 2 Corinthians 5:17. The believer is a new creature because he is “in Christ.” The relationship of Christianity is described, then, in terms of positional sanctification and that means that morality is not Christianity, it is a by-product of any adult person under establishment, believer or unbeliever. The plan of God does not give the believer licence to sin, nor does the Bible condone antinomianism, nevertheless morality has no spiritual dynamics as far as the Christian way of life is concerned. Any thing the unbeliever can do is not the Christian way of life. Under the laws of divine establishment, then, morality is for believer and unbeliever. Since the unbeliever can be, and often is, moral, so should the Christian be moral. However, in the Christian way of life morality is the result, not the means, of living the Christian life. So the true dynamics of Christianity is in the mechanics of experiential sanctification which is the filling of the Spirit plus perception of doctrine. But Christian dynamics include morality and at the same time, then, exceed morality. Morality cannot provide salvation, cannot produce the filling of the Spirit, cannot advance the believer in the Christian way of life, and therefore morality cannot provide supergrace or ultra-supergrace, areas that glorify the Lord Jesus Christ. Morality is designed by God for the survival of the human race as well as its perpetuation in the angelic conflict. Morality is designed by God the for the function of human freedom in relationship to issues of the angelic conflict, such as salvation or spiritual growth or the function of spirituality in the life of the believer, as well as divine blessing imputed. This is where morality comes in as a stabiliser in the field of freedom and privacy. Morality fulfils the divine institutions of volition, marriage, family and nationalism. And morality demands that the believer be a law-abiding citizen and a participant in any fight against tyranny.
Verses 6-8, the Old Testament documentation regarding the imputed righteousness of God.
Verse 6 – a quotation from Deuteronomy 30:12. The verse begins with the adversative use of the conjunctive particle de, “but.”
Principle
1. The emphasis in the previous verse is doing the law, therefore works righteousness; but the emphasis here is on faith righteousness or God’s righteousness imputed at the moment of faith in Christ.
2. Under faith righteousness the Word or doctrine is near you, in your mouth, and in your right lobe – Romans 10:8.
3. Therefore the conjunction de sets up a contrast between the self-righteousness of mankind and the perfect righteousness of God.
4. A contrast between works righteousness and faith righteousness is the subject of Moses’ last words in Deuteronomy 30 and Paul’s remarks in Romans 10.
5. In the previous verse, verses 5, we have a righteousness resulting from keeping the law – self-righteousness/works righteousness.
6. But now in contrast, verse 6, we have a righteousness [God’s righteousness] imputed to the one who believes in Christ – imputed at the moment of faith in Christ.
7. There is no contradiction between Moses in Leviticus and Deuteronomy and Paul in Romans.
8. The contradiction is between the distortion of Moses by arrogant self-righteousness and Jews negative toward the gospel and the true principle of salvation by grace through faith.
9. Codex #1 & Codex #3 is a way of life for a client nation while faith in Christ is the only way of salvation.
10. You cannot distort a way of life under establishment into a way of salvation.
11. This creates human righteousness competing with God’s righteousness.
12. Human righteousness competing with God’s righteousness is not only blasphemy but also the quintessence of human arrogance.
Next we have a nominative singular subject from the noun dikaiosunh which refers to the perfect righteousness of God. The generic use of the definite article categorises or classifies the righteousness of God as absolutely unique, the only righteousness that can justify man. Man has no righteousness by which he can be justified; the only righteousness that can justify man is the righteousness of God imputed from the justice of God at the moment of faith in Christ.
This is followed by a prepositional phrase e)k plus the ablative of means from pistij – “by means of faith.” The ablative is not the ordinary was of expressing means but when the expression of means is accompanied by the implication of origin or source then it is used instead of the instrumental case.
Next is the present active indicative of the verb legw. Righteousness from faith or God’s righteousness is personified. God’s righteousness is going to speak. To give expression is the meaning of legw here. The present tense is a retroactive progressive present, it denotes what has begun in the past (Deuteronomy 30:11-14) and continues into the present. The final commentary on Deuteronomy 30 is Paul’s commentary in this section. The active voice: the imputed righteousness of God is actually doing the speaking, producing the action. This is the personification of the righteousness of God to communicate thought. The indicative mood is declarative for the reality of the existence of the righteousness of God and the reality of its communication of a principle. With this is the adverb of manner o(utoj which means “in this manner.”
Translation so far: “But the righteousness which is by means of faith communicates in this manner.”
Approaching the
Hebrew of Deuteronomy 30
1. The passage now quoted, after the word “manner,” is a quotation from Deuteronomy 30:11-14. Rom. 10:6 will quote Deut. 30:12. Verse 7 does not quote from the Hebrew of Deuteronomy 30:13 but starts out paraphrasing it and comparing it with Amos 9:2. Verse 8 quotes Deut. 30:14, which is the key to understanding Romans 10:9,10.
2. Verses 6,7 of Romans 10 have in mind the impossibilities of Psalm 139:8.
3. To interpret this passage and come to its correct application the first step involves understanding the context from which Paul quotes.
4. The thrust of both Moses in Deuteronomy and Paul in Romans 10 is not the inability of the Jews to be good but the inability of the Jews to believe in Lord Jesus Christ.
5. The Jews had a penchant for self-righteousness by keeping the law, but they lacked the volition of faith. Therefore, they did not fulfil Codex #2 which demands faith in Christ for salvation rather than works righteousness.
6. The failure of the Jews was the inability of will or volition rather than inability of self-righteousness. Self-righteousness was merely the cover for their inadequacy.
7. In living on this earth there is a place for establishment righteousness, but establishment righteousness is never the way of salvation.
8. Furthermore, what makes it easy is that salvation by faith in Christ is closer to the Jews than the Mosaic law.
Deuteronomy 30:11-14
Verse
11 – “commandment,” mitzwah is a command or a precept. With
it is the cognate, the piel participle of tsawah,
plus the second masculine singular suffix used for Israel. The first word is mitzwah—commandment with hazoth: this commandment. With that is an equivalent to gar, ki—For this commandment.
“which” – asher; “I command you [Israel];” ha jom, “today.” “For this commandment which I command you today.” This is where we start understanding Romans 10:6-8.
1. The commandment refers to all categories of the Mosaic law—Codex #1, #2, #3.
2. Moses has commanded the function of freedom in Codex #1. The Ten Commandments are designed to protect human freedom for everyone.
3. This freedom is to be used to make a decision for believing in the Lord Jesus Christ—the God of Israel, the only saviour, Codex #2.
4. Therefore the command here is to Codex #2 which presents Christ as saviour.
5. The command also refers to Codex #3 which is the modus vivendi of the laws of divine establishment for a client nation. Israel coming out of the exodus was the first client nation in history.
6. Moses therefore, when he said in Deuteronomy 30:11, This commandment which I command you today, had in mind all three sections of the Mosaic law. Paul in quoting this passage only has one section in mind—Codex #2 or the attainment of divine righteousness through faith in Christ.
7. This information was not concealed by Moses from the people. But Codex #2 was designed to reveal Christ as saviour and encourage faith in Christ for salvation.
8. Therefore, the gospel in the Mosaic law was not withheld from the people as something they would have to go to heaven to hear. It was not something they would have to cross the sea to learn. It was revealed, not concealed.
9. Therefore Moses is saying, salvation is neither unattainable [in heaven] or difficult to find [across the ocean]. Moses is facing a new generation. They have not been evangelised. They act as though salvation was something mysterious, and you had to go to heaven to get it or you had to cross the ocean to learn it.
10. So Moses is saying to the new generation just before he died, “Salvation is near, it is in your right lobe and in your mouth.” Since you were little children you have been going to prep school; you have learned the meaning of the tabernacle; you have learned the meaning of various articles in the tabernacle; you have related them to the person and the work of Jesus Christ; you have learned the Levitical offerings and related them to the function of Christ on the cross, redemption, reconciliation, propitiation; you have observed since you were little children all of the various holy days—the Passover, unleavened bread, firstfruits. You have understood atonement, you have followed through on these things. You learned them all in prep school, therefore salvation is in your right lobe and in your mouth. It is much nearer to you than heaven or across the sea. Moses, in other words, was commanding the new generation to believe in Christ.
“it is not hidden from thee, neither is it far off” – the third person singular pronoun
hiwa refers to salvation through faith in Christ, at which time we receive God’s righteousness. It refers here to Codex 2. It is the subject of both phrases. Next is the niphal participle from pala, which means to hide, plus the negative lo. In the niphal it means to be difficult; with the negative it means not to be difficult. So we translate: “it is not difficult.” That is, it is not unattainable. This explains verse 12 in terns that salvation is not in heaven and therefore unattainable; salvation is on earth, therefore attainable.
Next we have an adjective, rechochah, which means far off. But here it is used as a
predicate adjective and should be translated, nor is it too far away. It means you don’t have to travel some great distance to find it. Rechochah explains verse 13.
Translation: “This commandment [to be saved through faith in Christ] which I command you today, is not too difficult for you [not unattainable for you], nor is it too far away [not unavailable].”
Principle
1. Salvation is not unattainable so that you have to depend on your own righteousness for it.
2. Salvation is not too far away so that you have to cross the ocean. Or as Paul changes it, go to the bottom of the ocean to receive it.
3. Actually, you do nothing for salvation. You cannot use your own self or works righteousness by keeping the law.
4. Salvation demands the imputation of divine righteousness for justification.
5. Such imputation can only occur through faith in Jesus Christ.
6. If salvation were unattainable then there would be some excuse for substituting human righteousness by keeping the law for divine righteousness.
7. But salvation is attainable, not unattainable. Salvation is available, not unavailable.
8. If salvation were in heaven and not revealed, then it would be unattainable.
9. If salvation were across the ocean, or as Paul puts it, at the bottom of the sea, then it would be unattainable.
10. But salvation is near—in the right lobe, through the perception of the gospel, and in the mouth, the function of non-meritorious volition called faith in Christ.
11. How close is your right lobe? It is in your soul. Or, in your mouth? It is a part of your human anatomy. In other words, it couldn’t be much closer.
12. Therefore there is no excuse for the Jew substituting his own righteousness by keeping the law, substituting it for the righteousness of God through faith in Christ. The Jew is without excuse.
13. But Jewish arrogance rejects the gospel and substitutes his own righteousness from the law. Out of this comes a principle: You cannot ignore Jesus Christ and get away with it.
Verse 12 – salvation is not unattainable; verse 13 – salvation is not unavailable. Those are the key words.
Verse 12 – “It,” 3rd person pronoun hiw, the subject, and again the subject is
salvation. With it is a prepositional phrase, be shemajim—“in heaven.” The trouble is the Jews do not understand Deuteronomy 30:11-14. Paul knew that it was the key to the ministry of Moses to every generation of Jews, and so he picks up on it and explains it again in terms of the Church Age … and they still don’t get it.
Then we have a prefix le and the noun amar. The prefix to the qal infinitive is so that, and then you say it is not in heaven. They are confused and so he gives them the interrogative of confusion, mi—“who.” The next word is the qal imperfect from the verb alah, meaning to go up or to ascend.
In other words, ‘Go up to heaven and get it for us.’ And why? Qal imperfect of the verb laqach, “that he might bring it [salvation] to us.”
This verse emphasises salvation as unattainable, something in heaven that we cannot get.
“that we may hear it and do it” – the hiphil imperfect from the verb shama. The hiphil stem is causative active voice. In other words, if someone like Moses in our generation will go up into heaven and get this straight scoop then that will cause us to hear. A smart Alec comment. This is what happens when you get a whole race of people with a very high IQ. Next we have the qal imperfect of asah, we’ll keep on doing it, whatever it is. Arrogance and self-righteousness.
Corrected translation: “It is not in heaven, so that you say, Who shall go up to heaven for us, that he might bring it to us and cause us to hear it, so that we might do it.”
1. Salvation is not in heaven, therefore unattainable. It is on earth, therefore attainable.
2. Paul will expand on this verse in Romans 10:6 by indicating that Christ is salvation, and such a concept brings Christ back to earth, which is unnecessary since He already came once and He died for our sins. Paul is going to update Moses.
3. But this verse emphasises the fact that salvation is attainable.
Verse 13 – Literally, “Neither is it [salvation] over or beyond the sea, so that you must say.” This verse will emphasise the fact that salvation is not unavailable. There are two keys words: unattainable and unavailable. Unattainable related to heaven; unavailable related to across the sea.
Next is the interrogative pronoun “Who” – mi, in the Hebrew; “will pass over with us to the other side of the sea,” or “Who will cross the sea for us.”
“that he might bring it” – the qal imperfect from the verb laqach. The verb means to seize it [salvation] and bring it to us.” This verse emphasises geographical isolation.
“that we may hear it and do it” – the hiphil imperfect from the verb shama. This takes us back to Moses. Moses came down from the mountain and they heard the law, and they were commanded to do the law—not for salvation, except Codex #2 which refers to faith in Christ. The third person plural suffix refers to the Jews. The hiphil stem of shama means just as Moses caused them to hear it, so they will be caused to hear it. Remember that the passage refers to the entire Mosaic law, Codex #1, #2, and #3. However, Paul in quoting this passage is dealing with salvation only in Codex #2. Finally, we have the qal imperfect of asah indicating that they were going to do the law for salvation—keep the ten commandments, and so on.
Translation: Neither is it [salvation] over the sea [or beyond the sea], so that you must say, Who will cross the sea for us in order that he might bring it [salvation] to us, and cause us to hear it, that we might do it?”
Across the sea indicates that salvation is not available, and such is not the case. However, salvation is not across the sea but it is as close to them as their mouth and their heart. So the conclusion of verse 14: Salvation is attainable, not in heaven; salvation is available, not across the sea, not in geographical isolation.
Verse 14 – we have the adversative use of the conjunction ki setting up a contrast. Instead of finding it in heaven and therefore not attainable, or across the sea, which means not available. It is on the earth; it is as close to them as their soul [heart] and their body [mouth]. Therefore it is available; geographical isolation has nothing to do with it. If you have volition it is available. “But the word [salvation] is very near you” is the corrected translation. By the word word–dabar—here is meant salvation. Sometimes this means doctrine.
“in your mouth, and in your heart” – in your mouth has to do with the fact that this is the means of expressing thought. Expressing thought is to God Himself; in your heart is the area where faith exists.
“that we may do it” – asah, simply means doing it hear means to believe in Christ.
Translation: “But the word [salvation] is very near to you, in your mouth, and in your heart [right lobe], that you may do it.”
Principle
1. Salvation through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ is attainable and available. Therefore, not in heaven and not across the sea.
2. In the structure of this passage (Deut. 30:11-14) we first of all have a premise in verse 11.
3. After the premise (verse 12) salvation is not hidden from the Jews, i.e. not in heaven where it would be unattainable.
4. In verse 13, salvation is not too far away, i.e. over the sea where it would be unavailable.
5. But salvation is as close to the Jew as his mouth—a part of his body—and his heart, i.e. a part of his soul.
6. In the context of Deuteronomy 30:11-14 Paul quotes directly from Deuteronomy 30:12 in Romans 10:6. But he adds the implication of the first advent from the historical viewpoint. Notice that Moses says nothing about the first advent, but Paul will add, “that is to bring Christ down from heaven.”
7. Next, Paul will quote Deuteronomy 30:13 in Romans 10:7. He will quote it in principle but will not use the same illustration. He will change the illustration from Moses—across the sea; he will say, at the bottom of the sea.
8. Finally, Paul quotes Deuteronomy 30:14 in Romans 10:8.
9. The result is Old Testament documentation regarding not only faith in Christ for salvation but faith in Christ resulting in the imputation of divine righteousness.
10. Once the person understands the imputation of divine righteousness it eliminates any form of self or works righteousness used for divine approbation. What can we learn from this? Never to make the fatal mistake of trying to present your own works for any system of blessing from God. We never seek divine approbation by self-righteousness or works righteousness.
11. God accepts only His own righteousness. He never accepts self-righteousness or works righteousness from mankind.
12. The Jews in arrogance had adopted their own self or works righteousness—they tried to keep the law.
13. Such arrogance is blasphemous and disastrous. The Jews by accepting their own righteousness from keeping the law had rejected the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ.
14. Therefore they had blotted out the first advent.
Paul quotes verse 12 in Romans 10:6, starting with the phrase, “But the righteousness which is by means of faith communicates in this manner.” Paul makes a direct quotation using heaven as the same illustration as Moses, but in quoting verse 13 in Romans 10:7 Paul will change the illustration from over the sea to Sheol. In doing so Paul retains the Mosaic principle of salvation being available but he changes the illustration of Moses from across the sea to a more pertinent illustration—Sheol, which is regarded as either the bottom of the sea or the actual Sheol, hell. Why does Paul change it? Because Amos made some reference to this in Amos 9:2—“Though they dig into Sheol, from there shall my hand take them; and though they ascend into heaven, from there I will bring them down.” So by going to Amos to change up the illustration he replaces the sea of Moses to the Sheol of Amos. The concept of the Deuteronomy passage is maintained, but Paul can amplify the passage in Deuteronomy from the viewpoint of the first advent of Christ. The Lord Jesus Christ went into Sheol [His body went into Sheol] after His physical death. Sheol, as used by Paul refers to Hades. Heaven and Hades are in contrast in Paul’s use of the Mosaic passage. So by going to Amos to get better illustrative material related to the first advent Paul maintains the integrity of what Moses says but changes the illustration slightly. In other words, the Sheol of Amos 9:2 is combined with the heaven of Deuteronomy 30:12 so that the emphasis in Deuteronomy is not changed but amplified by Romans. The heaven of Moses is combined with the Sheol of Amos so that the concept hangs together—the unattainable in heaven; the unavailable in Sheol, rather than across the sea.
The question arises: Why does Paul change from the Mosaic analogy—across the sea—to the Amos analogy—in Sheol? We have already established the fact that he maintains the Mosaic principle. He keeps haven intact so that he quotes exactly Deuteronomy 30:12, but he changes across the sea to Sheol. He still maintains the principle of unattainable and unavailable but why does he change the analogy? Answer: Because the contemporary Jews, the Jews of Paul’s day, had blotted out of their minds the first advent of Christ and its total salvation message, i.e. the fulfilment of everything in Codex #2 of the Mosaic law.
Why did Paul make a change from the Mosaic analogy of the sea to the Amos analogy of Sheol?
1. To make direct reference to the first advent of the Lord Jesus Christ. The whole problem today with Israel is that they ignore the first advent and its Codex #2 implications.
2. The first advent terminated with the ascension of the Lord Jesus Christ.
3. Paul will add to Moses’ in heaven analogy by showing its implication. It brings Christ down from heaven.
4. Every time a Jew seeks to be saved by keeping the law he is ignoring the first advent, the cross, and in effect tries to say Messiah has not yet come. Therefore he brings Christ down from heaven, and to bring Christ down from heaven is to say that the work of Christ was not efficacious. To say that the work of Christ is not efficacious is blasphemous and therefore the unbelieving Jews remain in a perpetual state of blasphemy.
5. But Paul must change the sea analogy of Moses to the Sheol analogy of Amos.
6. Why? After the death of our Lord Jesus Christ the three parts of His humanity went in three separate directions. The body of our Lord went into the grave—Luke 23:53. The spirit of our Lord went into the presence of God the Father—Luke 23:46. The soul of our Lord went to Sheol or Hades, into the compartment called Paradise—Psalm 16:10; Luke 23:43; Acts 2:27; Ephesians 4:9.
7. In the resurrection the soul and spirit of our Lord Jesus Christ rejoined the body in the grave, therefore the soul to rejoin the body had to come up from Sheol.
8. In Paul’s time the first advent of Christ with its death, burial and resurrection, was history. Christ was now seated at the right hand of the Father in hypostatic union. That means after resurrection and ascension.
9. Moses talked about salvation not being in heaven, and Paul could quote that and refer to the fact that Jesus Christ does not have to come back to the earth to save anyone. His work on the cross is efficacious.
10. Moses talked about salvation not being over the sea, but Paul cannot use that analogy in relationship to the first advent because Christ in resurrection did not come out of the sea. In resurrection Christ came out of Sheol. The Jews, therefore, had blotted out the first advent but Paul is saying, “You cannot ignore Christ and get away with it.”
11. Therefore Paul had to switch to Amos and Sheol since the soul of Christ came from Sheol in resurrection.
12. The failure of the Jews to be saved by faith in Christ means that they have accepted substitutes. They keep then law for salvation. The failure of the Jews has been to ignore the first advent of Christ and its implications—the fulfilment of Codex #2 of the Mosaic law.
13. Paul not only quotes Moses in Deuteronomy but adds the implications of the 1st advent, being even stronger than Moses on how close and how salvation is near to every Jew.
14. Salvation is as close as the Jewish mouth and mind—body and soul—but even more so since the first advent. Because the fist advent is historical Paul is stronger than Moses, and Moses was as strong as you could be. Reason: the first advent is now historical.
15. Moses and Paul say the same thing: salvation is not in heaven, therefore it is attainable. Salvation is not over the sea or in Sheol, therefore it is available.
16. Salvation is even more attainable and available since the first advent. Paul therefore says the Jews, since the first advent is history, have even less excuse than they had between Moses and Christ—and they had no excuse then. The Mosaic law, Codex #2, was absolutely lucid with regard to salvation; but now even more so.
17. Salvation is as close to the Jew as his mouth and his mind.
18. But salvation is as far away as heaven or Sheol to the person who is negative in volition and therefore in arrogance. Negative volition creates arrogance; arrogance creates a system of salvation by works.
19. The Jews have blotted out the first advent of Christ and civilisation, therefore, cannot save them. Being civilised will not save a person any more than being pristine.
20. Therefore their attempt to be saved by keeping the law is like trying to bring Christ down from heaven or to bring Him up from Sheol—we must have a repeat of the resurrection. But Christ has already come down from heaven in the first advent and up from Sheol in resurrection. By ignoring the first advent the Jews offer the God of all Israel the greatest of all insults.
Why does Paul change from the sea analogy of Moses to the Sheol analogy of Amos?
1. In the time of Moses the 1st advent and the incarnation of Christ was prophetical, i.e. eschatological.
2. In the time of Paul the 1st advent and the incarnation was historical.
3. In the time of Moses Jewish blindness to the first advent was neither a problem nor a failure, it was still prophetical.
4. In the time of Paul and until now Jewish rejection and blotting out of the first advent is their greatest failure and their greatest problem, though they are not aware of it in many cases.
5. Just as the Jews have distorted the Mosaic law into a system of salvation by works, so the Jews have blotted out the first advent which is the basis of salvation by faith.
6. By ignoring the 1st advent of Christ the Jews have substituted their own works-righteousness by keeping the law for God’s imputed righteousness through faith in Christ.
7. All of this anticipates Romans 10:6-8.
Romans 6b – “Say not in thine heart.”
1. Israel’s blind rejection of the first advent is tantamount to rejection of the righteousness of God and replacing it with their own self-righteousness—by keeping the law.
2. This blasphemy is now attacked by the apostle Paul who is the Hebrew of the Hebrews and the greatest Jew of them all.
3. The blind arrogance of ignoring the first advent is the Pauline application of the Mosaic statement in Deuteronomy 30:12-14.
“Say not” is the aorist active subjunctive of the verb legw plus the negative mh. The
verb legw means to speak and to say, but that means to form words. The words that are formed are thought, so instead of giving it the usual translation, Say not, we will give it exactly what it means—think not. Sometimes legw is an idiom, not meaning to speak but to think. This is a constative aorist, it contemplates the action of the verb in its entirety, but forbids it with the negative mh. Active voice: the Jew is forbidden to produce the action of the verb. The subjunctive mood plus the negative mh is called the subjunctive of prohibition.
“in thine heart” – e)n plus the locative of kardia [right lobe], with the possessive genitive singular from the personal pronoun su, meaning your heart. You have to do your own thinking. “Do not think in your right lobe.”
“Who” is the interrogative pronoun tij, which asks the question. The verb is the future middle indicative of a)nabainw, which means to ascend. The future tense is called a deliberative future, it simply states a question of uncertainty—which one will do it. When it is uncertain of which one will do it then it is stated in the future tense because it hasn’t happened yet, we don’t really know who is going to do it. The middle voice is the indirect middle, emphasising the agent as producing the action of the verb rather than participating in the results.
Then the prepositional phrase, e)ij plus the accusative of o)uranoj—into heaven. In the original quotation of Deuteronomy 30:12 Moses is saying that salvation is not unattainable (in heaven).
Principle
1. Salvation is not in heaven; salvation is where people live on earth. Salvation is s close to us as the right lobe and the mouth.
2. Imputed righteousness through faith in Christ does not say, Who shall go up to heaven for us?
3. God’s perfect righteousness which is in heaven is imputed to any person who will believe in Christ. You believe in Christ in your right lobe.
4. Only the person who attempts to be saved by keeping the law says, Who shall go up to heaven?
5. Therefore the issue is human self-righteousness versus divine righteousness, or human arrogance versus the plan of God.
6. The heart or the right lobe which is the source of faith is also the source of rationalisation. Who will go up to heaven? is a rationalisation. Who will go across the sea? is a rationalisation. Rationalisation comes from arrogance. It says, ‘My thoughts are better than divine revelation.’ Therefore arrogance rejects faith and rationalises. Arrogance and grace are mutually exclusive.
7. This is the rationalisation of unattainability. The rationalisation that salvation is in heaven implies unattainability. The truth of the matter is that salvation is in the heart, which implies attainability. Where is faith? In your right lobe. Where is the rationalisation? In the right lobe. The reason people are not saved is because in their arrogance they choose rationalisation instead of faith.
1. Such a rationalisation—Who shall ascend into heaven?—rejects Romans 10:4, “For Christ is the termination of the law … to each one because he believes.”
2. Just as the unbelieving Jew of the Old Testament rejected the prophetical message of Codex #2 of the law, so the unbelieving Jew of today [Church Age] rejects and blots out the first advent of Christ which was the fulfilment of Codex #2. Christ is the termination of the law; Christ fulfilled Codex #2.
3. In both dispensations the unbelieving Jew rejects the imputed righteousness of God which is available through faith in Christ, and instead accepts his own righteousness through keeping the law.
4. The issue, then, is self or works-righteousness versus the imputed righteousness of God [faith-righteousness].
5. The conflict is found in the right lobe of the soul. Negative volition is represented by rationalisation and positive volition is represented by faith.
6. Paul uses the warning of Moses, first given to the Jews in Deut. 30:11-14.
7. Moses saw the real problem regarding the law: Jewish arrogance and negative volition would be quick to distort Codex #1 an #3 into a system of works righteousness which God would never accept. (Christians do the same thing. Sabbath-keeping = part of Codex #1)
8. Furthermore, just as the negative Jew blots out of his mind the true function of Codex #2 in the time of Moses, so the negative Jew would blot out the first advent of Christ in the time of Paul.
9. The unbelieving Jew from Moses to Christ would blot out Codex #2—soteriology—by emphasising the ritual of the animal sacrifices to the exclusion of reality. This is ritual without reality. Arrogance always emphasises the ritual; grace always emphasises the reality. Ritual without reality is meaningless.
The reality anticipated the 1st advent of Christ, which was then and is now the #1 Jewish stumbling block.
11. In the time of Moses the unbelieving Jew rejected the first advent of Christ and this is why Isaiah said, “Who has believed our report, and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed” – the arm of the Lord being Jesus Christ, Isaiah 53:1.
12. Unbelieving Jews not only wanted ritual without reality but they wanted the Millennium without salvation; they wanted the crown without the cross.
13. Ritual without reality was animal sacrifice practiced without faith in Christ. To offer animal sacrifices without believing in what they represented was ritual without reality.
14. The Millennium without salvation was blotting out the first advent of Christ, and therefore the cross. The Jews wanted the Second Advent and the fulfilment of the unconditional covenants apart from faith in Christ or apart from the cross.
15. The crown without the cross is analogous to blotting out the first advent in the right lobe of the Jewish unbeliever.
16. Therefore the wild rationalisation noted by Moses in Deuteronomy 30:12 is now amplified by Paul in Romans 10:6.
17. The first advent was prophetical to Moses but the historical fulfilment was a reality to Paul. Therefore Paul now adds something that Moses did not give.
The KJV puts the additional phrase in a parenthesis, perhaps to show that this was not part of the quotation from Deuteronomy 12: “that is, to bring Christ down from above [heaven].” Paul now looks back to the cross and gives the implication. The Jew who is an unbeliever rejects the first advent and the cross. Moses accepted the cross prophetically; Paul accepted the historical cross, but the Jewish unbelievers are negative toward the entire first advent.
“that is” is a nominative neuter singular from the demonstrative pronoun o(utoj. The demonstrative emphasises a conclusion here. With it is the present active indicative of the verb e)imi, and it is literally and correctly translated, “that is.” However this is an idiom, something the literal translation does not convey. The idiom means “this means” or “this implies.” This is a near rather than a distant demonstrative, therefore “this” is used rather than “that.”
Next comes the aorist active infinitive of katagw, which means to bring down, to lead down. The constative aorist contemplates the action of the verb in its entirety. In other words, the Jew of today still is looking for the coming of Messiah even though Messiah came 2000 years ago. He is looking for something that has already become historical. Therefore in his soul he has blotted out the reality of the fulfilment of all of the principles found in Codex #2. The active voice: the rationalising Jewish unbeliever produces the action of the verb. Principle: The Jew is a photograph of the individual soul in the time in which we live. For just as the Jew has blotted out the cross, the first advent, so the unbeliever in his arrogance rejects the cross and in his arrogance he sets up a system of human works. Arrogance + works = pseudo-salvation. In other words, it is rejecting the perfect righteousness of God and accepting one’s own righteousness as a substitute. The infinitive is conceived result which is assumed as a consequence of such rationalisation or follows the nature of the case. Then we have the accusative singular direct object from Xristoj, referring to Christ: “this implies to bring Christ down from heaven.”
1. To bring Christ down from heaven is to ignore, reject, and blot out the historical first advent of Christ with all of its implications regarding eternal salvation.
2. Faith must have an object in salvation—the Lord Jesus Christ. “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved” is accomplished in the soul.
3. The problem with the Jews in Paul’s time and right up to this moment is there rejection, ignoring, and blotting out of the first advent of Christ.
4. This is tantamount, then, to rejection of Christ as saviour.
5. The rationalisation first mentioned by Moses and now quoted by Paul rejects Christ as saviour by blotting out of the mind the first advent—blotting it out as a prophecy, as in Isaiah 53, or, Codex #2, blotting it out historically in the days of Paul and thereafter.
6. Christ is both the beginning of the law as the God of Israel and the end of the law as the saviour of Israel.
7. The same Christ who was judged on the cross for our sins is the God on Mount Sinai who gave the law to Moses.
Translation: “But the righteousness which is by means of faith communicates in this
manner, Do not think in your right lobe, Who shall ascend into heaven. The implication is to bring Christ down from heaven.”
1. This is the first illustration of Paul’s basic premise in verse 3.
2. Obedience to the righteousness of God is personal faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, and it results in the imputation of God’s righteousness.
3. Righteousness by means of faith in Christ does not fall into the trap of rationalisation.
4. Paul quotes the Mosaic warning against such rationalisation and adds the blasphemous implication. To bring Christ down from heaven is to say that the cross is not efficacious; it is to blot out the first advent and all of its concepts.
5. Jewish arrogance in setting up self or works righteousness through keeping the law has previously rejected divine righteousness imputed by faith in Christ.
6. But the Jews have not simply rejected Christ as saviour; they do not even acknowledge His existence, or the first advent, or the fulfilment of Codex #2 of the Mosaic law at the cross.
7. Therefore the Jewish problem in the time of Moses was to ignore the first advent of Christ as a prophetic or eschatological doctrine. They ignored it by accepting the ritual which taught it but they rejected the reality of it. The animal sacrifices were ritual which taught it. The modus operandi of the Levitical priest was a ritual which taught it. The observation of the day of Atonement or the day of the Passover was a ritual which taught it. They went through the ritual but they rejected the reality.
8. The Jewish problem in the time of Paul, and still is, is to ignore the first advent of Christ through blotting out that point of history and substituting their own righteousness.
9. There are other implications as well. Historical disaster has come to the Jews because of a principle: You cannot ignore Jesus Christ and get away with it.
1. This verse implies also that self-righteousness has the right to ascend into heaven. This is what the rich young ruler said to Jesus. He implied that he was going to heaven because he kept the law.
2. The Jew in blind arrogance and rejection of Christ suggests that righteousness through keeping the law is acceptable in heaven.
3. The only righteousness permitted in heaven is God’s righteousness.
4. All believers in Christ enter heaven because they possess the righteousness of God.
5. For the Jew to be saved by keeping the law is to blasphemously conclude that Christ must return to the earth because His work was not sufficient, or because He wasn’t even Messiah.
6. This ignores our Lord’s words—John 19:30. Tetelestai, the perfect tense of the verb telew. It means it has been finished in the past with the result that it stands forever. Salvation was completed while Jesus Christ was still alive on the cross and breathing—before His physical death.
7. Christ does not have to return to the earth to provide salvation. He accomplished it once and for all on the cross. He will return to the earth to regather Israel and to terminate the times of the Gentiles.
8. Salvation by works implies inadequacy of the blood atonement while salvation by faith in Christ concludes the efficacy of the blood of atonement—Ephesians 2:8,9.
9. The interpretation, then, of this verse emphasises the fact that salvation is attainable, not unattainable.
10. However, if you blot out the first advent, the incarnation, the hypostatic union,
redemption, reconciliation, propitiation of the cross, then there is no salvation.
The Jew in the time of Moses, the time of Paul, and even today, circumvents the first advent with works righteousness from keeping the law.
Verse 7 begins with the disjunctive particle h(, It is used as an interrogative particle here to introduce a question which is parallel to the preceding one and is correctly translated “Or.” Then comes the interrogative pronoun tij, translated “who.” The verb katabainw means to go down or to descend. The deliberative future is for a question of uncertainty. The middle voice is the indirect middle emphasising the agent as producing the action. The indicative mood is the interrogative indicative. “Or who shall descend.”
Next is the prepositional phrase e)ij plus a)bussoj, which is a part of Sheol or Hades and denotes the realm of the dead. While it is related to demons and fallen angels in Revelation it is used here for descent into the underworld in contrast to the previous verse where we have ascension into heaven. In Amos 9:2 this abyss is called Sheol in contrast to across the sea by Moses. Note that Paul does not quote exactly from Deuteronomy 30:13 but gives the principle of the passage, of unavailability. Paul must also change the words of Moses, across the sea, into something which is more in keeping with the conclusions which he draws from the first advent. Paul must change the illustration because now the fist advent is historical. In the days of Moses it was prophetic.
The nominative singular neuter of the demonstrative pronoun o(utoj plus the present active indicative of e)imi is literally translated, “that is” or “this is,” but it means “this implies,” or even better, “this is the implication.” The aorist active infinitive of a)nagw means to bring up. The aorist tense is a constative aorist, it contemplates the action of the verb in its entirety. Active voice: the rationalising unbelieving Jew produces the action of the verb. The infinitive is the conceived result which is assumed as a consequence of such a rationalisation. It follows the nature of the case. If the Messiah has not come, as the unbelieving Jew alleges, then obviously this would bring Christ up again from the dead.
Translation: “Or, Who shall descend into the abyss [Sheol or Hades]? This is the implication, to bring Christ up from the dead.”
Principle
1. To reject the resurrection of Christ is to reject, ignore, or blot out the historicity of the first advent with its doctrinal implications regarding salvation through faith in Christ.
2. Faith must have an object in salvation, and that object is the Lord Jesus Christ who is, of course, the God of Israel who has come to the earth as the God-Man and has provided eternal salvation on the cross.
3. The problem with the Jews is the failure to accept the first advent of Christ.
4. They have blotted out of their minds the first advent, which is tantamount to rejecting Christ as saviour.
5. The rationalisation of unavailability first mentioned by Moses [Deut. 30:13] and now cited by Paul completely ignores the first advent, the incarnation, the salvation ministry of the cross, and the resurrection from the dead.
1. The rationalisation of the previous verse [6] is the unattainability of salvation, while the rationalisation of this verse [7] is the unavailability of salvation. Both concepts are blasphemous.
2. These rationalisations result in Jewish distortion of the law into a system of salvation by works.
3. The conclusion is obvious. The Jews are depending on works or self-righteousness for salvation instead of the imputed righteousness of God provided at salvation.
4. Rationalisation leads to distortion. Codex #2 of the law teaches clearly the first advent of Christ but the Jews rejected the first advent, therefore they would cling to Codex #1 and #3 as a system of works righteousness.
5. Works righteousness is no substitute for divine righteousness.
6. Works righteousness is the function of the energy of the flesh, while divine righteousness is imputed only to the one who believes in Christ.
7. To believe in Christ one must accept the veracity and historicity of the first advent.
8. The Jews have blotted out the first advent with disastrous results throughout their history.
9. The incarnation and resurrection are facts of history. Between these two points of time Christ provided eternal salvation on the cross. Therefore the big blot-out is the quintessence of blasphemy. The Jews who had the greatest spiritual heritage have also entered into the greatest rationalisation and have distorted their very own spiritual heritage – from salvation by grace through faith they have distorted into a system of salvation by works.
1. It is blasphemous to imply that Christ must come back to the earth to provide salvation. The Jews are always looking for the coming of Messiah.
2. It is blasphemous to imply that Christ must die and be raised again from the dead.
3. These blasphemies deny the efficacy of the blood atonement, the work of Christ on the cross in bearing our sins and being judged for them.
4. The unbelieving Jew denies the efficacy of the redemption of the cross by blotting out the first advent—arrogance plus rationalism in his right lobe.
5. The Jews in the time of Moses ignored the eschatological doctrine of the first advent. They ignored it again in the time of Isaiah—Is. 53:1. When Christ actually came they ignored Him during His earthly ministry.
6. They ignored it in the time of Paul; they have continued to ignore it right up to the present moment.
7. The perpetuation of this Jewish unbelief is the most blasphemous function in history because the Jews have such a marvellous spiritual heritage. They had the scriptures which so clearly portrayed the 1st advent with its eschatological implications.
8. Paul adds to the Mosaic sermon by indicating the implications historically—as a past event.
9. The Jews have rejected everything from the incarnation to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ, the God of Israel and the only saviour.
10. Salvation is not unattainable, or unavailable in Sheol/Hades or the abyss, but salvation is attainable and available by faith in Christ. Only negative volition makes unattainable or unavailable. The theological implications of salvation, resurrection, ascension and session at the right hand of God the Father, the strategic victory of the angelic conflict, are all merely a part of Jewish heritage which every unbelieving Jew rejects.
11. Christ is the beginning of then law on Mount Sinai and the end of the law at Calvary’s cross. The God on Mount Sinai who gave the law to Moses is the same God who was hanging on the cross in the form of man, bearing our sins, taking our place, becoming our substitute; and therefore the only saviour.
Verse 8 – Deuteronomy 30:14 is quoted. “But” is the adversative conjunction a)lla
which sets up the contrast between unattainability and unavailability and
availability and unavailability; the nominative neuter singular interrogative pronoun tij plus the present active indicative from legw—“But what does it say.” The present tense is a historical present viewing the past event, the message of Moses in Deuteronomy 30, with the vividness of a present occurrence. Active voice: it, or faith-righteousness, the imputed righteousness of God at salvation, produces the action. The indicative mood is declarative for the unqualified and dogmatic statement of doctrine. The quotation from Deut. 30:14 follows: “But the word [imputed righteousness through faith in Christ] is very near you, in your mouth and in your right lobe, that you may do it [believe in Christ].”
Now for the Greek equivalent. What does faith-righteousness say? It says:
The nominative singular from r(hma is the subject, it connotes that which is said. It means message, the message of salvation—imputed righteousness from God through faith in Christ.
Next is the adverb of space, e)gguj, which means near in the sense of close to you; plus the enclitic dative singular from the pronoun su which means you as an individual. This is the same as the objective genitive and therefore is translated near you. There is no verb. Then the present active indicative of e)imi.
“in thy mouth” – the prepositional phrase, e)n plus the locative of stoma; also the personal pronoun su which is a possessive genitive. This is translated, “in your mouth.” If the mouth is closer then salvation is closer than trying to keep the law.
1. The mouth is the expression of faith since words are generally enunciated by the mouth.
2. While the mouth is the expression of faith it is not the origin of faith. The origin of faith is the right lobe or the heart.
3. The mouth is the means of expressing words and thoughts but the heart or right lobe is the origin of those words and thoughts.
4. When the individual believes in Christ he expresses in words and sentences to God his faith.
5. Therefore the mouth is the expression of faith—and much closer to the Jew than the Torah.
“and” – the connective use of kai; the second prepositional phrase, e)n plus the
locative of kardia, the word for heart and always used for the right lobe.
1. The heart or the right lobe is the source of faith; the mouth is the expression of faith.
2. In both cases the object of faith is the Lord Jesus Christ, the only saviour.
3. With the heart mankind believes in Christ; with the mouth he confesses to God the Father his faith in Christ—in words and sentences faith is expressed.
4. Then God the Father imputes His own righteousness to that person.
5. Salvation is as close as faith and the expression of faith to God the Father. Therefore, salvation is not unattainable.
6. Salvation is not unavailable, therefore neither across the sea nor in the abyss.
7. Salvation is as near as your mouth and your mind, for salvation is not by keeping the law but by believing in the Lord Jesus Christ.
8. Add to the doctrine the fact that the origin of faith is in the mind or the right lobe of the soul, plus the fact that the expression of that faith is in the mouth—confession to God, not to the general public.
Principle
1. Both Moses and Paul agreed that salvation is by faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, therefore always available before or after the first advent of Christ.
2. However, the Jew who has the greatest spiritual heritage in history failed in Old Testament times, with the exception of a remnant in every generation. His
failure from Moses to Paul, and from Paul to the present day, is called by us the big blot-out, which is the blotting out of the mind the first advent of Christ.
3. In the time of Moses the first advent was prophetical; in the time of Paul the first advent was historical.
4. In the time of Moses the first advent was rejected and blotted out of the Jewish mind through ritual without reality.
5. The unbelieving Jew, then, observed the animal sacrifices and the shedding of sacrificial blood, but rejected the reality of the work of Christ on the cross—redemption.
6. The unbelieving Jew who rejected the first advent of Christ and its implications rationalised and distorted salvation by grace through faith as something unattainable, i.e. in heaven, or something unavailable, i.e. across the sea.
7. In every generation of Israel’s history there have been and will continue to be unbelieving Jews. These unbelieving Jews have rejected the blood atonement of Christ as the God of Israel. They will blot out of their minds and their hearts the incarnation, the hypostatic union, the cross, the resurrection, the ascension and the session of the Lord Jesus at the right hand of the Father. They have in effect rejected the omega glory of the God of Israel.
8. When the Jewish unbeliever rejects Christ as his saviour he rejects the entire principle of faith-righteousness and therefore accepts in arrogance his own self-righteousness or works righteousness by keeping the law.
9. Not only does it apply to the Jews with their magnificent spiritual heritage but it applies to us as well. You cannot ignore Christ and get away with it.
“that is” – the nominative neuter singular from the demonstrative pronoun o(utoj,
followed by the present active indicative of e)imi. It is correctly translated “that is” but it is the idiom of implication, and what it really means is “this implies.”
“the word” – the nominative singular subject r(hma, which means the message: that is the message, plus the descriptive genitive singular from the noun pistij. Pistij means faith, or what is believed, i.e. doctrine. Here is means faith, salvation by faith in Christ rather than by keeping the Mosaic law. Translation: “that is the message of faith.”
Next is the nominative neuter singular from the relative pronoun o(j, which; and finally the present active indicative from the verb khrussw. It is taken from the noun khruc which was a herald. It doesn’t mean to preach so much as the proclamation of a herald and it connotes public speaking to the masses, therefore it is translated, “that is the message of faith we proclaim.” The static present represents a condition which perpetually exists. The message is proclaimed in every generation. Active voice: Paul and all the true communicators of the gospel produce the action of the verb. The indicative mood is declarative representing the verbal idea from the viewpoint of its reality.
Translation: “But what does it [faith-righteousness in contrast to works-righteousness] say? The message [salvation through faith in Christ] is near you [closer than the law], in your mouth and in your right lobe: that is, the message of faith, which we proclaim.”
Principle
1. The mind of heart, instead of receiving the message of faith, in arrogance receives instead the false doctrine of works-righteousness—salvation through keeping the law.
2. Arrogance plus works-righteousness completely blots out the 1st advent of Christ.
3. With false doctrine in the mind or heart it is impossible for the mouth to express in words and sentences faith in Christ to God the Father.
4. Instead the mouth expresses the arrogance and self-righteousness of salvation by works, salvation by keeping the law.
5. If the mouth is not talking about the imputed righteousness of God it will be talking about the self-righteousness of keeping the law.
6. Salvation by faith in Christ is obedience to the righteousness of God.
7. To disobey the righteousness of God is to reject Christ as saviour and to accept one’s own rationalised substitute.
8. This is the issue stated in Romans 10:3.
9. No one can ever say that salvation is beyond his reach. Salvation is as close as one’s own soul.
10. Therefore salvation is neither unattainable or unavailable. Instead, salvation is as near as your mind and mouth.
11. The Mosaic law was close enough to the Jew to be distorted into a system of salvation by works. Therefore keeping the law produced works/self-righteousness.
12. The gospel is closer than the law, as close as the mouth and the soul.
13. Faith is a non-meritorious system of perception originating in the soul and expressed with the words of the mouth which are the thoughts of the soul.
14. In other words, the mouth enunciates what the mind thinks. The mind thinks faith in Christ; the mouth enunciates that faith to God, with the result that the person who does it is saved.
15. This is going to be amplified in the next two verses, but remember that the unbelieving Jew ignores the first advent and you cannot ignore the first advent and get away with it.
Why does Paul say “we [proclaim]”? He is referring to Moses whom he quotes,
along with himself. And he is referring to all of the prophets who quoted this message of salvation[1] by faith.[2]
Verse 9 – this is the conclusion from the previous verse. The conjunction o(ti is used after a verb of communication or preaching to indicate the content of what is communicated in the message of salvation. Here it is not only the mechanics of salvation, it is also the nearness of salvation. Mechanically this passage is for the Jew; it is Jewish salvation in the Old Testament. It is dealing with how people were saved in the time of Deuteronomy. The Jew was to understand that salvation was something closer to him than the law. The correct translation of o(ti here is not that but namely.
Next comes the conditional conjunction e)an. Used with the subjunctive introduces a 3rd class condition, known as the more probable future condition. It is translated “if.” The introduction of the word if means that every person in the human race who possesses free will—whether free will in the jungle or in some distant mountain, or in the midst of a large and sophisticated modern society—makes up his own mind about salvation. That free will is never hindered or coerced in making a decision, yes or no. The condition in the protasis is a probability based on the function of free will to express faith in Christ. Behind faith in Christ which is positive or rejection of Christ, which is negative, is free will. Even people in slavery have free souls and they are free to make a positive or a negative decision. Every human being who has reached the age of accountability has actually made his own decision.
The verb is the aorist active subjunctive of the verb o(mologew. It means to agree, to admit, to acknowledge, to concede, and to make a legal statement. It was also used in a philosophical sense to agree with someone, to agree with a system of philosophy; but that is not the meaning here. It connotes understanding and candid declaration. So we have, “Namely, if you will acknowledge.” It means to make a statement to God, not confessing to a congregation of people. The constative aorist refers to a momentary action which occurs at the point of salvation. Active voice: the person believing in Christ produces the action of the verb in the direction of God, not people. The subjunctive mood is the potential subjunctive used with e)an to introduce the protasis of a 3rd class condition, indicating the function of free will in salvation.
The prepositional phrase, e)n plus the instrumental singular of stoma which means mouth. The mouth forms the words, the thoughts of the soul. There is no way to know what is going on in someone else’s soul until they form the words with the mouth. Plus the genitive of the personal pronoun su—your mouth.
Next we have what is incorrectly translated in the KJV. It is not “the Lord Jesus,” this is a double accusative. A double accusative requires more than one object to complete its meaning. Here is the accusative of subject and predicate. Both are in the accusative case but one acts as a subject—I)hsouj is Jesus, the subject; kurioj is the predicate of a double accusative. This is correctly translated, “Jesus as Lord.”
1. Note that the admission is made about Jesus to God, not to mankind. In other words, this is an expression of faith in words and sentences. In effect it is an instant result of believing in Christ.
2.
The expression occurs in the soul.
Words are enunciated with the mouth but they are formed in the soul. The
failure of the unbelieving Jew in blotting out of his mind the 1st
advent is the issue that Paul presents when he said, “Jesus as Lord.” The
principle that Paul is making when he mentions the mouth first is that the Jew
cannot ignore the 1st advent of Christ and escape the consequences
of condemnation forever.
“Lord” – kurioj denotes deity. Here it denotes Jesus Christ, not just as deity but also, as the God of Israel.
1. This passage is for Jews in the Old Testament. The Jew must acknowledge to God the Father that Jesus Christ is the God of Israel, for the God of Israel is the only saviour. That is why He has the title of Alpha and Omega.
2. It was Jesus Christ as the God of Israel who gave Moses the law on Mount Sinai. He did not give Moses the law to keep as a way of salvation. Codex #1 was given to promote freedom of decision, for salvation was as close as every Jew’s mouth [body] and his soul.
3. The same Jesus Christ who gave the law to Moses on Mount Sinai is the Jesus Christ who is the God of Israel. The same Jesus Christ who is the God of Israel is the one who went to the cross as the God-Man. There the imputation of all of the sins of history resulted in the judgment of all of the personal sins of history. Jesus Christ as the God of Israel is also the only saviour.
4. No Jew can acknowledge Jesus as Lord unless he believes in Him. So the mouth forming the words to God is the result of salvation; faith becomes before admitting it to God.
5. In this sense confession is more than an expression of faith in Christ, it is a direct result of believing in Christ. The decision which provides salvation comes first, the admission comes second as a result.
6. The distinction is necessary because of the next phrase in which the heart or the right lobe is the origin of faith.
7. The mouth expresses what is on the mind.
8. The source of faith is the right lobe or the mind while the expression of that faith in words is the silent or verbal enunciation of the mouth.
9. Remember again, the expression of faith in Christ is made to God, not man.
10. But the unbelieving Jews failed because they blotted out of their minds the first advent. The rejected Christ and then they blotted it out.
11. You cannot ignore the first advent of Christ and get away with it.
12. To acknowledge or to admit that Christ is God is to recognise that Christ is the Messiah, the God of Israel. It is a recognition of what is in Codex #2, what is in Isaiah 53, 9, 7. To acknowledge Jesus Christ as Lord is not to bring Him back from heaven but to keep Him on His throne at the right hand of the Father, waiting for the Second Advent and the restoration of Israel.
1. Acknowledging Christ as Lord in this context and in the light of the sermon of Moses in Deut. 30:11-14 is to recognise the first advent of Christ and its true significance related to eternal salvation. It is to further recognise salvation in the Old Testament.
2. Such admission or statement to God is the basis for receiving the imputed righteousness of God. No Jew could receive +R until he believed in his heart or right lobe. Then with his mouth he acknowledged to God he had believed in Christ.
3. Such an admission or statement to God is the basis for receiving the imputed righteousness of God. The righteousness is there because the admission is the result of faith.
4. Such admission or statement to God eliminates the use of any system of self or works righteousness, like keeping the law, morality, or any other system of works for salvation. In other words, once you acknowledge to God that you have believed in Him you have acknowledged you are already saved. And being already saved means you do not keep the law for salvation.
5. Salvation by works includes all of the distortions of this phrase, which includes walking an aisle, rasing hands, being baptised, joining the church, weeping tears of repentance at the altar, and the other distortions which are practised by present day “fundamentalists.” They are not really fundamentalists; they have departed from the fundamentalists of the faith.
6. The mouth expresses what is on the mind in terms of words and sentences, hence and expression of inner faith.
7. The mouth is used to represent nearness.
8. The person does not have to form the words out aloud, he can enunciate the words in the thoughts of his soul—God reads thought!
9. The mouth is used because to the Jew the mouth is closer than the Mosaic law. Therefore faith-righteousness is closer to the Jew than works righteousness. Obviously then, salvation is neither unattainable nor unavailable.
1. Faith righteousness is closer to the Jew than works righteousness.
2. Salvation is neither unattainable nor unavailable. It is as close to the individual Jew as his mouth and his heart or soul.
3. This is the nearness of salvation which Moses describes in Deuteronomy 30:14 and Paul describes in Romans 10:8
4. Remember this confession is done privately in the same manner as confession in the rebound technique.
Now the resurrection is brought in because you cannot have Messiah’s first advent
without His resurrection since it was clearly declared by Codex #2 that Messiah must die. Resurrection is an issue related to the first advent. If you blot out the first advent you must blot out resurrection.
We have a connective use of kai which continues the protasis of a 3rd class condition; plus the aorist active subjunctive of the verb pisteuw. There is no subjunctive in salvation, remember we are still dealing with the protasis. The aorist tense is a constative aorist, it refers to a momentary action which occurs in the soul the moment anyone believes in Christ. The constative aorist contemplates the action of the verb in its entirety; it is instantaneous. Active voice: the Jewish person of the Old Testament produces the action of the verb. The subjunctive mood is potential depending on the free will of the individual Jew. Therefore this is not yet a statement of salvation. The subjunctive mood indicates we are still in the protasis of a 3rd class condition and the protasis does not state the conclusion. The conclusion about salvation is stated in the apodosis—verse 10.
Notice the prepositional phrase, e)n plus the instrumental of the noun kardia, referring to the right lobe of the soul. Also there is the second person pronoun in the possessive genitive—your right lobe. You cannot believe with someone else’s right lobe, you believe in your own right lobe—says the personal pronoun su in the genitive case. Faith is a non-meritorious system of perception which originates in the mentality of the right lobe of the soul.
Next is the conjunction o(ti—that. It introduces the content of faith related to Paul’s addendum to the message of Moses. Plus the subject, o( qeoj in the nominative case. The generic use of the definite article indicates God the Father and God the Holy Spirit, both of whom are involved in the resurrection of Christ. This is a specific citation of the resurrection of Jesus Christ as a part of the first advent.
“hath raised” – aorist active indicative from the verb e)geirw. The constative aorist contemplates the action of the verb in its entirety—the resurrection. Active voice: God the Father and God the Holy Spirit had a part in the resurrection of Christ. The Father is said to have raised Him from the dead in Colossians 2:12; 1 Thessalonians 1:10; 1 Peter 1:21. The Holy Spirit is also said to have had a part in the resurrection—Acts 2:24; Romans 1:4; 8:11; 1 Peter 3:18. The indicative mood is declarative for the reality of the resurrection of Messiah. In the mechanics of resurrection it should be noted that the three categories of our Lord’s humanity separated in physical death were rejoined in resurrection. The accusative singular direct object from the intensive pronoun a)utoj is used for the third person singular personal pronoun, and it refers here to Christ—him.
“from the dead” – e)k plus the ablative of nekroj.
“thou shalt be saved” – future passive indicative of swzw. The subjunctive is used with the third class condition, but this is an indicative indicating that the great way to evangelise the Jew is through the resurrection of Jesus Christ. This is what puts it on the line for the Jew. Either he must accept Jesus as Messiah or reject Him. The historicity of the resurrection says He is the Messiah. Therefore they reject knowing exactly what they are rejecting. This is a gnomic future tense for a fact which can be expected when you believe in the Lord Jesus Christ—salvation. Passive voice: the Jew who believes in Christ receives salvation at the moment he believes. Eternal salvation is based on faith in Christ and is expressed in words and sentences to God the Father.
Translation: “Namely if you will make a statement [to God] with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and if you will believe in your right lobe that God has raised him from the dead, you will be saved.”
Principle
1. Here are two sides of the same coin rather than two independent concepts.
2. Faith originates in the soul’s right lobe or heart.
3. Faith must be expressed to God, so the mouth is used to represent that expression.
4. The mouth expresses the formation of thought; it refers to the enunciation of words. The words can be thoughts in the mind or they can be thoughts vocalised, but whichever it is it is a private matter between the individual and God.
5. This excludes that form of evangelism which demands public pronouncement and overt declaration for salvation.
6. Such a concept not only distorts the context but becomes a blasphemous thing with regard to salvation by works.
7. This does not mean a public confession at baptism or standing in front of the church and so declaring it; nor does it imply an altar call.
8. Salvation is a private matter between each individual and God. It is the soul that is saved; it is the soul that must make the declaration.
9.
The mouth represents the formation of
words into sentences which declare to God the Father personal faith in the Lord
Jesus Christ.
Romans 10:9,10 is Jewish salvation for the dispensation of Israel, it is
a commentary on Old Testament salvation refuting salvation by keeping the law.
In Romans 10:6 Paul is quoting Deuteronomy 30:12, “Say not in thine heart who
shall ascend into heaven? Conclusion: “that is to bring Christ down from
heaven.” Verse 7 — “Or who shall descend into the abyss?” Implication: “that is
to bring Christ up from the dead.” Verse 8 — “But what does it [faith
righteousness in contrast to works righteousness] say? (Quoting from
Deuteronomy 30:14) The message [salvation through faith in Christ] is near you,
in your mouth and in your right lobe [end quote]: that is the message of faith
which we proclaim.” Verse 9 — “Namely if you confess [make a statement to God,
acknowledge, admit, concede] with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and if you will
believe in your right lobe that God has raised him from the dead [the
principle: the resurrection is the basis of evangelising the Jew, it is the
greatest approach to the Jew. The resurrection is historical, it demonstrates
from Old Testament eschatology the actual fact, the reality, that Messiah would
die and that Messiah would be resurrected], you will be saved.”
Verse 10 — the reversing of the
situation in order to show that salvation is not the use of the mouth. The
mouth is used to form words as the result of salvation already existing in the
soul.
“For” is the explanatory use of the
post positive conjunctive particle gar, correctly translated “For you
see.”
“with the heart” is the instrumental
of means from the noun kardia — “For by means of the right lobe.”
Salvation is as close as your right lobe. Not that the order is reversed to
give the sequence of cause and effect. Salvation is accomplished in the soul.
The soul is saved, the soul makes the decision, the soul does the thinking. The
result of faith in Christ is the expression, confession, acknowledgment of that
faith to God.
“believeth” is the present passive
indicative from the verb pisteuw. This is called this is called the
impersonal construction of pisteuw, it means this is a principle. This
is not giving a salvation appeal, this is dealing with salvation, Old Testament
salvation, as a principle and it is literally translated, “For you see by means
of the right lobe it is believed,” impersonal construction. There is no word
“man” in the Greek. The present tense is an aoristic present for punctiliar
action in present time. The passive voice: this is the impersonal passive voice
in which the subject is conceived as a category or classification of the human
race. It is used to present principle, only principle, it is not a salvation
appeal. Acts 16:31 is a salvation appeal, it says “believe on the Lord Jesus
Christ and thou shalt be saved.”
“For you see by means of the right lobe it is believed.” The
impersonal form has only a predicate, the subject is absent in the impersonal
form in the Greek. The subject is absent to that the verb implies a subject as
a category, therefore a subject drawn out of the verb categorically. This means
that everyone who was ever saved in the history of Israel down to the end of
the dispensation of Israel he was saved by believing in the Lord Jesus Christ,
Adonai Elohim, the God of Israel. This categorical idiom places great emphasis
on the fact that the verb has no merit. Only the object of the verb has merit.
The verb is in the passive voice so that the subject is involved with the verb
without merit, important as far as the concept is concerned. The indicative
mood is declarative representing the verbal idea from the viewpoint of reality.
“unto righteousness” — prepositional
phrase e)ij plus the accusative singular of dikaiosunh which means righteousness. And this is God’s
righteousness. Having God’s righteousness gives us blessing from God. Without
God’s righteousness there is no blessing from God, there is no salvation, the
re is no logistical blessing, there is no special blessing. Special blessing
and logistical blessings are only imputed to God’s righteousness in us. God’s
righteousness cannot be in us unless we believe in Christ. E)ij plus the accusative here means “resulting in righteousness.”
1. The function of the right lobe is
thought. If thought is going through your mind the circulation of that thought
is the function of the right lobe called the heart. The heart is the right
lobe, it circulates thought throughout the soul just as the heart in the body
circulates blood throughout the body. Faith is thinking, it is not blind. But
faith is non-meritorious thinking.
2. It is the object which has the
merit in the perceptive system of faith. The subject of faith has no merit,
only the object of faith gives merit to this system of perception.
3. Believing is a method of
thinking. Believing is not feeling, it is not sincerity, it is not emotion.
Emotion is not found in the heart or the right lobe. When you insert emotion
into thought you destroy thought. So believing is a method of thinking, not
feeling, not emoting.
4. The Greek idiom of impersonal
construction can be rendered into English as follows. “For by means of the
right lobe function faith results in righteousness.” The object of faith is the
Lord Jesus Christ.
5. Righteousness is a reference to
the imputed righteousness of God in contrast to self or works righteousness by
keeping the law or any other system of works.
6. There are always several ways of
translating impersonal concepts of Greek into English. Changing the verb to its
noun is another. “For by means of the right lobe mankind believes resulting in
imputed righteousness” is the use of the verb. The other way is to change the
verb from the passive voice to the active voice in translation and provide an
impersonal subject which would be mankind, and that is the way that they tried
to do it in the King James version. But that has been rejected by modern
grammarians as being completely and totally out of line. It is better to retain
the verb in the impersonal construction.
Imputation of God’s righteousness
occurs as a result of believing in Christ. That is what is meant whether you
translate the impersonal literally, “it is believed resulting in righteousness,”
or whether you change it to “mankind believes resulting in imputed
righteousness.” Without imputed divine righteousness there can be no
justification and there can be no logistical blessing, and there can be no
special blessing in six categories. No Jew could be justified apart from faith
in Christ and the unbelieving Jew ignores Christ, thrusts out of his mind the
first advent and salvation connotation.
Translation: “For by means of the
right lobe mankind believes resulting in imputed righteousness of God.”
“and with the mouth” — the
connective or transitional use of the post positive particle de, indicating
that this is a continuation with the result connotation. Again, we have the
instrumental singular from the noun stoma, the “mouth” — “and by means of the
mouth.”
“confession is made” — present
passive indicative of o(mologew. The meaning of a word is
determined by its usage. This word was set up to be used in a courtroom. It
means to name, it means to cite. It has no emotional connotation. It means a
candid, honest, honourable declaration . It means to acknowledge, to concede,
to admit, to agree that this is true in a courtroom situation. “By means of the
mouth it is confessed.” Again, we have the impersonal concept. The aoristic
present for punctiliar action on present time. The passive voice is the
impersonal passive in which the subject is conceived as a category or
classification of the human race. The impersonal form is an idiom and therefore
we only have a predicate, we have no subject. The subject is absent so that the
verb implies a categorical principle rather than an actual situation. This
categorical idiom places great emphasis on the fact that the verb is
non-meritorious in its function or action, and only the object has merit. The
verb is passive impersonal so that the subject involved is involved in the verb
without merit. This is declarative indicative representing the verbal idea from
the viewpoint of reality.
“unto salvation” — a prepositional
phrase, e)ij plus the accusative of swthria. This means “resulting in salvation” or “for salvation.” The literal
translation is: “And by means of the mouth it is confessed [acknowledged] for
salvation.” Again, the impersonal construction can be rendered into English by
changing a verb into a noun, “and by means of the mouth a statement can be made
[to God] about salvation.” This is a legitimate translation of the idiom.
Translation: “For by means of the
right lobe mankind believes resulting in imputed righteousness; and by means of
the mouth mankind makes a statement to God about salvation.” In other words,
the statement to God is the result, it is not the means. This is not salvation
before men, that is salvation by works. This means to make a statement to God.
The words are formed in the mind, they can be uttered overtly if you’re alone,
they can be uttered in the mind if you are in a group, as in a church.
Principle
1. It becomes obvious that salvation
is a transaction between an individual making his own decision and God. It does
not involve other people. Other people can witness or provide information, and
that is all. It must be one person and God and, of course, the ministry of the
Holy Spirit — common and efficacious grace.
2. The individual must believe for
himself in the Lord Jesus Christ, no one can do it for him.
3. Faith in Christ includes the
statement made to God, the confession, acknowledgment, and admission to God
that one has believed. He believes and then tells God about it. The mouth is a
result of what is in the right lobe.
4. Therefore mouth and mind [right
lobe, heart] are two sides of the same coin. Why mind and mouth? Your mouth is
closer than the Mosaic law, your mind is closer than the Mosaic law. Soul and
body are closer to you than the Mosaic law. The point is you cannot be saved by
keeping the law, salvation is much closer to you than that.
5. The mind or the heart is the
source of faith while the mouth is the expression of faith.
6. The mind is the source of the
words, the mouth is merely the enunciator of the words. The mouth enunciates
what is in the right lobe. Thought must be enunciated.
7. Public announcement to people is
not necessary for salvation. Tell people if you want to, or you can keep it to
yourself, that is a matter of personal business and personal environment.
8. Some form of witness or testimony
often results from believing in Christ but this is a result and not the means.
9. Confession with the mouth is
forming of the sentences directed toward God in which the individual involved
admits to the Father that he has believed in Christ. Paul’s careful attention
to detail is not to be construed with raising hands, walking of aisles, weeping
tears, standing at the altar, etc. These are man-made devices that have nothing
to do with salvation. The pattern of salvation — Ephesians 2:8,9.
Principle
1. The detailed reference to mouth
and mind is taken from Deuteronomy 30:14. “ … that you may do it,” i.e. believe
in Christ.
2. Salvation is as near as your mind
and your mouth, i.e. your soul and your body.
3. Salvation, therefore, is not in
heaven and consequently salvation is not unattainable.
4. Salvation is not across the sea
or in Hades, therefore it is not unavailable.
5. Salvation is an accomplished fact
at the cross, the very purpose of the first advent of Christ.
6. The unbelieving Jews have blotted
out of their minds the first advent with its finished work of eternal
salvation. This is their problem, this is the cause of the holocaust.
7. Salvation is closer to the Jew
than the Mosaic law. It is in the thought of the mind, it is in the sentence of
the mouth.
8. The mouth does not have to
enunciate the sentence out loud as a vociferous demonstration but can just as
easily be an inaudible whisper or form the words mutely. Simply acknowledge to
God that you have believed in Christ. It is a result. And it is between the
person believing and God.
9. Obviously, then, the mouth and
mind are much closer to the individual Jew than the Mosaic law.
10. Such faith in Christ is the end of self or works righteousness from the law. There is no way that human righteousness can improve upon perfect divine righteousness. That is why it says in Romans 10:4 that Christ is the end of any system of self-righteousness, Christ is the end of the law for those because they believe in Him.
Verse 11 starts with the inferential use of the postpositive conjunctive particle gar which means here “Therefore.” The inference is from the preceding verse which says that salvation is by faith in Christ—salvation is closer to you than the law. Confession or acknowledge is merely a part of that faith, the expression of it. It is the faith that saves, not the expression of it. The subject in this particular sentence is the nominative singular grafh plus the generic use of the definite article. Grafh refers to the scriptures and the generic use of the definite article indicates that the scriptures are unique, and that this is a specific part of the unique scriptures—the Old Testament canon.
Next is the present active indicative of the verb legw. It is a static present indicating that the verse which is now being quoted is in the canon of scripture which lives and abides forever. Active voice: the scripture produces the action of the verb, namely Isaiah 28:16. The indicative mood is declarative for the reality of the existence of the Old Testament canon as a part of God’s Word and preserved forever on principle. So we translate: “Therefore the scripture says.” Isaiah 28:16 – “a foundation stone, a tested stone, a precious corner stone, a sure foundation.” All of these are prophetical references to the first advent of Jesus Christ. Isaiah picks up where Moses left off. Moses looked down in his day ands saw that the people were already rejecting the cross in the first advent as presented in Codex #2 of the Mosaic law. They were rejecting it and blotting out the cross, and instead, picking up Codex #1 and keeping it. Therefore they followed the principle of the great blot-out, in which every day in the time of Moses (just once a week now) they would utter from Deuteronomy, “Adonai Elohenu, Adonai echad.” They would utter it with total rejection. Adonai means Jesus Christ; Elohenu—Jesus Christ is out God. That is the Alpha glory of Jesus Christ as the God of Israel. Then they would add, Adonai echad—Jesus Christ is unique. That is the Omega glory of Jesus Christ. They would accept His alpha glory, they would reject His omega glory; they were rejecting the first advent and its significance and in their arrogance accepting a substitute which was their own works righteousness. Jesus Christ offered them the righteousness of God.
“Behold I am he who has laid a foundation in Zion” or “set up a decree in Zion.” The decree in Zion is David’s son. Zion was the palace of David, therefore the whole Davidic line is related to the word “Zion.” David refers to David first, and then to the son of David, the Lord Jesus Christ. The stone or the rock is the Lord Jesus Christ who was tested at the first advent and passed the test by bearing our sins and being judged for them, and as a sign that He passed the test He was resurrected. He was tested on the cross in bearing our sins and therefore became the foundation for eternal salvation. Therefore to reject Christ and accept the Mosaic law is the greatest of all blasphemies, which is exactly what happens in the big blot-out. The words, “a precious cornerstone” means a battlement and is metaphorically used for a prince. So it is either a prince or a battlement. We have a prince, then, who is a cornerstone. One wall of the battlement is Israel; the other wall is the church. These are the two elections to privilege. The prince who is the ruler of both is Christ.
The precious cornerstone
1. It is a reference to Jesus Christ as the God of Israel and the prince ruler of the Church. It is the concept of Jesus Christ as the firstborn having the double portion. Double portion: a) The ruler of Israel; b) Prince ruler of the Church.
2. Both Israel and the Church had to be purchased at the cross. Therefore this is an emphasis on the first advent of Christ.
3. The righteousness of God is imputed by faith in Christ, and the Jews who have rejected the first advent build up layers of scar tissue. Consequently they prefer their own works righteousness. Arrogance always prefers self-righteousness to God’s righteousness.
4. The word foundation connotes the entrance into the plan of God which can only occur through faith in Christ.
5. As the God of Israel Jesus Christ guarantees the foundation of Israel. As the Son of God Jesus Christ is the foundation of Israel.
6. As the prince ruler of the Church Jesus Christ is responsible for the eternal and temporal security of the royal family of God, and as saviour every believer is in union with Christ the rock.
7. To the Jew who blots out the first advent of Christ through unbelief, rejection of Christ, Christ is a stone of stumbling now and a rock which will crush in eternity—Romans 9:33; 1 Peter 2:8.
8. The honour of Israel is the Lord Jesus Christ who is the God of Israel.
9. The Jew who rejects Christ has no honour. By blotting out the first advent he has rejected the honour of Israel.
10. God the Father laid Jesus Christ as the foundation stone at the cross in the first advent. But the Jews ignored that stone. They walk over and pick up their own stone—self-righteousness through keeping the law.
“he that believeth on him shall not make haste” – correctly translated, the one having believed. It has the idea behind it: you are caused to believe because you
have gospel information; the hiphil stem does not mean so much to make haste as it does not be disturbed. It means in the hiphil to accelerate to panic or to be disturbed. Therefore this is translated, the one believing will not be disturbed.
Translation [Isaiah 28:16]—“Therefore so communicates Adonai Jehovah, Behold, I am he who has laid a stone in Zion, a tested stone [1st advent of Christ, the
cross], a cornerstone of honour [the resurrection], for a foundation, a secure foundation; the one believing will not be disturbed.”
So Isaiah recognised what had already been recognised by Moses: that is every
generation of Jewish history there is this phenomenon, the big blot-out. The rock, then, becomes to them a rock of offence. The rock of salvation is to the Jew who is negative to the gospel the rock of offence. Just as Paul linked up with Moses, so Peter linked up with Isaiah in 1 Peter 2:6-8. This blotting out of the first advent is a major failure in any generation, it explains the holocaust and many other problems in addition to the Satanic desire to destroy the Jew. The Jews destroy themselves in certain generations by the big blot-out.
Romans 10:11 – Whosoever,” the masculine singular from paj, and adjective often used as a substantive. It is the subject; it means all or anyone. Here is means whoever, or anyone. The articular present active participle of pisteuw follows. It means to believe. The definite article is used with the adjective paj making it a substantive, and therefore the translation is anyone. The aoristic present tense denotes punctiliar action in present time. It only takes a second to believe in Christ. Active voice: the Jewish believer produces the action. This is a temporal participle translated correctly, when anyone believes.
Next comes the presposition phrase e)pi plus the locative from the intensive pronoun a)utoj, used for the third person personal pronoun. There is no third person personal pronoun in Koine Greek. A)utoj is therefore used and it is simply translated on him—when anyone believes on him.
Then comes the future passive indicative of kataisxunw, and this is Paul’s interpretation of Isaiah. With it is the negative: they shall not be disappointed. The future tense is predictive, referring to the last judgment—no disappointment at the last judgment. The passive voice plus the negative o)u indicates that the Jew who believes in Christ will never receive the action of the verb, he will not receive disappointment. Indicative mood: declarative for the reality of no disappointment in heaven.
Translation: “Therefore the scripture says [Isaiah 28:16], When anyone believes on him [Christ], they shall not be disappointed.”
Principle
1. There is no disappointment in heaven.
2. The person who believes in Christ will never be disappointed about that decision for it is the means of the imputation of God’s perfect righteousness. It also means eternal life.
But for the Jew who blots out the first advent, which is tantamount to rejection of Christ, there is personal and historical disappointment. Historical disappointment is the holocaust.
Verses 12 & 13 begin the first increment of the paragraph which is the universal character of salvation. Salvation being as close as the right lobe or the mouth indicates the fact that anyone in the world at any time in history can be saved.
Verse 12 – “For” is the explanatory use of the postpositive conjunctive particle gar. Then the present active indicative of the verb e)imi plus the negative o)u. With it is a predicate nominative singular meaning distinction or difference, the word diastolh. The present tense of the verb is a static present for a principle taken for granted as a fact. Active voice: the human race produces the action of the verb. Indicative mood: a dogmatic unqualified statement of doctrine. There is no distinction between a Jew and a Gentile. In the plan of God race is not an issue. It is personal volition and attitude toward doctrine that counts, plus the time logged in the filling of the Spirit.
The explanation of this issue now starts with the postpositive conjunctive particle gar. What chance do you have in the plan of God? Everyone has the same chance. The nominative singular subject a)utoj is the intensive pronoun used for the third person personal pronoun. However, it is occasionally used in the attributive sense and this is one of those rare cases and so we translated it “For the same.” Then we do not have the word Lord immediately, but we know that it is the Lord Jesus: For the same Jesus is Lord of all—an appositional nominative of kurioj to tell us that we are talking about the Lord Jesus Christ. There is also the descriptive genitive plural of paj and this is all translated: “For the same Jesus, Lord of all.” Lord of all means of all races. When you believe in Christ, regardless of your racial background, this same one is Lord of all races.
Next comes the verb, the present active participle of ploutew. It means here to keep on being generous. The word means to be rich or to be generous. Logistical grace is for all believers. Logistical grace is the meaning of the verb is generous. God will provide your needs. If you are positive He will provide doctrine. He will provide food, shelter and clothing. He will provide transportation, time, environment—whatever it takes to have you advance. He will protect you and sustain you in the most awful historical disasters; you will live through them to grown in grace, and when you get to the end of the line there will be blessing in disaster for you. God’s plan goes on regardless of historical environment. Active voice: Jesus Christ as God produces the action of the verb in providing logistical grace for all. The participle is circumstantial. The ascriptive participle describes a fact, quality or character through the noun kurioj. Since this is nominative singular, present active participle of the verb ploutew it becomes a predicate nominative, and that is why we translate it “is rich” or “is generous.”
“unto all that call upon him” is a little misleading. First of all is the prepositional phrase e)ij plus the accusative plural of the adjective paj, correctly translated to all [those]. The problem comes with the articular present middle participle from e)pikalew. This word is often construed simply as prayer. This is very difficult because the middle voice here determines the meaning of e)pikalew. It means to call on someone for help or for aid, and that is where you get the idea of prayer. But the participle is used here in the sense of believing in the Lord Jesus Christ. It really picks up on that part of Romans 10:9,10 where with the mouth you acknowledge to God that you have believed in Christ. That is the meaning here. The participle is used in the sense of with the mouth man acknowledges to God for salvation. The meaning of the word is determined by its usage and the next verse uses this verb as a synonym for faith in Christ. So this is not prayer, it is faith in Christ. The definite article in the accusative plural is used as a demonstrative pronoun to emphasises a special object in context, and the special object in context is the Jew and the Gentile. Therefore it is translated “to all of those who call upon him.” The aoristic present tense is for punctiliar action in present time, the momentary action of believing in the Lord Jesus Christ. The middle voice is a permissive middle representing the agent, whether Jew or Gentile, voluntarily yielding himself to the results of the action, i.e. salvation. With this is the accusative singular of the intensive pronoun a)utoj, used here as the personal pronoun and referring to the Lord Jesus Christ.
Translation: “For there is no distinction made between Jew and Gentile: for the same Jesus, Lord of all, is generous to all those who call upon him [in the sense of believing in Christ].”
The five synonyms
for faith
1. The verb receive, e.g. John 1:12.
2. The words eat and drink. The reason that these are used for faith is because they
portray the non-meritorious connotation.
3. The verb to come, found in Matthew 11:28, a reference to salvation.
4. Call upon, Romans 10:12,13. Again, it emphasises the non-meritorious aspect of
faith.
5. The word to obey the gospel in Romans 16 simply means to believe in Christ.
1. Salvation is not restricted to any race or any special group of people. Salvation has no restrictions except your own personal volition.
2. The sins of the entire human race were imputed to Christ and judged—doctrine of unlimited atonement.
3. Therefore salvation is for all people in the human race without partiality.
4. There is no such thing, therefore, as a handicap regarding salvation.
5. The entire human race receives a fair shake—“Whosoever believeth.” Anyone can believe in Christ.
6. Consequently the only restriction is individual negative volition and the choice of another way of salvation—like the Jewish blasphemy of keeping the law for salvation.
Verse 13 – this is a quotation from Joel 2:32. The context is dealing with the second advent of Christ and the Jews who are going to be delivered at that time. The background for this context is a prophecy about the end of the Jewish age. The Jewish Age was moving along until the death, burial, resurrection and ascension of Christ. When Christ was seated at the right hand of the Father he needed a royal family, so the age of Israel was halted, discontinued temporarily, and the Church Age or the dispensation of the royal family of God was begun. It continues until its termination with resurrection. Then the Tribulation begins and this is the period of the conclusion of the Jewish Age, and then the Second Advent. This particular context in Joel chapter two is dealing with the second advent of Christ and the restoration of Israel. The deliverance of the Jews is based on the fact that they were not guilty of the big blot-out.
In the first verse of Joel chapter three we have the restoration of Israel, which is documented by other passages. We should know that the Bible teaches that Israel is going to be restored in the future. Isaiah 5:26, 30; 10:19-23; 11:11-16; 14:1-3; 60:4-6; Zechariah 10:6-12; Joel 3:1; Ezekiel 39:27,28.
Joel 3:2 describes the baptism of fire in which the Jewish unbelievers are thrown off the earth and the Jewish believers go into the Millennium to receive the fulfilment of the unconditional covenants.
Joel 2:32 is quoted exactly by Paul in Romans 10:13. It begins with the postpositive conjunctive particle gar, used in the explanatory use for documentation. Next is the nominative masculine singular from the adjective substantive paj, which means anyone or whoever. It means that there is no such thing as a reprobate who can’t be saved. The nominative singular from the relative pronoun o(j introduces a relative clause. It’s antecedent is paj, so we translate this, “For anyone who.”
Then we have the conditional particle a)n, which is a little tricky in the Greek. It is very important fore interpretive reasons. It denotes that the action of the verb is dependent on some circumstance or condition. With the aorist subjunctive which follows the relative pronoun forms the protasis of a conditional sentence. This is equivalent to the protasis of a 3rd class condition. But is used here with the relative and it means ever. Hence, the relative pronoun o(j plus a)n means whoever. It also indicates some will and some will not.
The verb is the aorist middle subjunctive of e)pikalew which is a synonym for faith. Anyone can call out, and that is all it takes—“I believe.” The aorist tense is a constative aorist for a moment of time when anyone believes in the Lord Jesus Christ. The reason that Paul uses e)pikalew is because in the past history of the Jews, as well as the future history in the Tribulation, and probably during the last holocaust, a lot of Jews were saved in the last few moments of their life by simply believing. The middle voice of the verb: the subject acts with a view toward anticipating in the outcome. In other words, the participation in the outcome is eternal salvation. Therefore the subject in the middle voice is called the agent. The dynamic middle is used here emphasising the part taken by the subject in the action of the verb. The subjunctive mood indicates that this is potential. It implies a future reference and is qualified by the element of contingency: maybe you will and maybe you will not but at least you have the opportunity.
Next is the accusative singular of the noun o)noma. It does mean name but it often means a name in the sense that you don’t know much about them, you just know their name. It also refers to a person about whom you know very little. Therefore it indicates that you don’t have to know a great deal about the Lord to be saved. There are two places where o)noma is used as a synonym for the word Jesus—Acts 5:41; 3 John 7.
“shall be saved” – future passive indicative of swzw. The indicative mood instead of the subjunctive is very important. If you do call upon the name of the Lord you are going to be saved. From the subjunctive to the indicative is from the potential to the reality. The gnomic future is for a statement of fact which can be anticipated at the moment of faith. The passive voice: the individual receives the action of the verb by believing in Christ. The indicative mood is declarative for a dogmatic statement of fact.
Translation: “For whoever will call on the name of the Lord will be saved.”
1. Peter quotes these words on the day of Pentecost in Acts 2:21. There is no doubt that Peter applied them to the Lord Jesus Christ.
2. In Acts 2:24 there is a description of the big blot-out that keeps people from calling on the name of the Lord. The one thing the Jews knew about the first advent was that resurrection was one of the great prophecies that would occur.
3. Peter relates this to Joel 2:32 and explains that in Joel 2:32 the Hebrew word is Jehovah, but Jehovah is Jesus Christ. He explains that the Lord is Jesus Christ. Paul is even more specific in 1 Corinthians 1:2, “their [the Jews] God and ours.” He uses the same words, “whoever calls on the name of the Lord Jesus Christ.” So he specifies that Joel was talking about the Lord Jesus Christ, he is talking about Christ, Peter is talking about Christ in Acts 2:21. It is obvious, then, that the Lord Jesus Christ is the object of faith in salvation. However, the Jews who rejected Christ as saviour under the concept of the big blot-out refused to relate Christ on the cross to the God of Israel. They accepted His alpha glory but they reject His omega glory.
1. The only hope for Israel is the Lord Jesus Christ. He is the God of Israel; He is the saviour of Israel.
2. Yet this context indicates that the Jew is not only equivalent but greater in his negative volition toward Christ than the Pharaoh of the exodus.
3. Amenhotep II who was the Pharaoh of the exodus was negative toward the Lord in his confrontation with Moses.
4. God even extended his life so that he could increase his record of negative volition.
5. Pharaoh then, a Gentile, held the record for scar tissue of the soul, negative volition or hardness of heart, until Moses recognised the new record-holder in Deuteronomy 30:11-14.
6. The record-holder in every generation of history is always a Jew guilty of the big blot-out.
7. When the first advent was prophetical in the Old Testament there were Jews in every generation who blotted out the first advent and its salvation results.
8. Therefore, great historical disaster came to any generation of Jews who formed the large pivot of the big blot-out.
9. When Christ actually came, that generation actually exceeded all others even though they were face to face with fulfilment of details of prophecy.
10. In the next 40 years the big blot-out continued until the 5th cycle of discipline.
11. Periodically historical disaster overtakes the Jews because of this phenomenon, the big blot-out.
12. Therefore there is only one hope for the Jew as well as for the Gentile and that is to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, as per Joel 2:32 or Acts 2:21; Romans 10:13.
In the general context of verses 14 & 15 we have Jewish responsibility as a client nation. Two doctrines must be understood clearly. Firstly, the client nation. When the Jews were called a client nation to God they were called by the title “Priest nation to God.” They had a specialised priesthood in the nation but when the nation was referred to in its client nation status it was called a priest nation. Exodus 19:6 is not talking about the Levitical priesthood which was specialised and limited to the tribe of Levi and the family of Aaron but it is talking about the entire nation. That was something new in history. When the Jews were brought out of Egypt in the exodus they were brought out as a client nation to God. They were brought out to fulfil something in history that had never been fulfilled before. It now became necessary in history because of two factors: a) Internationalism which is Satanic and evil. The first UN building was personally destroyed by God—the tower of Babel in Genesis 11. b) The concept that nations become degenerate very rapidly, so rapidly that in order to revitalise and re-evangelise them it must be done from the outside. Therefore the principle of missionary activity from a client nation. Wherever missionaries have to go today it means that these nations have fallen apart. And God can do one of two things. He can completely destroy them as a people or He can revitalise them, beginning with missionary activity. Missionaries go to evangelise and then to train believers and form their own local church under the indigenous missionary concept. But these people must have a base, a place from which they start, and the only place that can sponsor missionary activity is a free nation, a client nation to God. So the responsibility throughout all of Old Testament times for missionary activity was one of the Jewish nations.
The second thing that a client nation does after evangelism is therefore missions. But neither evangelism nor missions are any good without the third factor—spiritual growth, operation local church or its equivalent, someone who communicates doctrine. The fourth factor: none of these things could exist, even the local church, without the laws of divine establishment.
In verses 14 & 15 there are four rhetorical questions designed to present vital information about all clients, not just Israel in the past. The first question deals with the problem of no gospel hearing among certain nations.
Verse 14 – the question begins with the interrogative particle Pwj, used for a direct question, to determine how something comes to be. With it is an inferential particle. Paul in Romans is following logical procedures and therefore he uses many different categories of inferential particles. This inferential denotes what it introduces is the result from what precedes. It is translated either “how then” or “consequently how.”
Next is the aorist middle subjunctive of the verb e)pikalew, which means to call upon or call on. This is a synonym for faith. The constative aorist refers to a momentary action—believing in Christ. This looks at the situation from the standpoint that Israel is the client nation. In all directions there are Gentile nations and Gentile people. The culminative aorist recognises that the people living in these foreign lands (foreign to Israel), living under varying conditions, cannot possibly call upon the name of the Lord, and/or believe in Him, unless they have a message. Someone has to bring the message to them in their own language. This is the problem and the difficulty. The intensive middle voice gives the verb an individualistic or special application. The subjunctive mood is potential, it implies future reference and is qualified by the element of contingency. “Consequently, how shall they call on.”
Next is the preposition e)ij plus the accusative of the relative pronoun o(j—“in whom.” “Consequently, how shall they call on Christ in whom.” Christ is implied from the previous verse, “… call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.” Plus the aorist active indicative of the verb pisteuw, plus the negative o)uk, “they have not believed.” The culminative aorist tense views faith in Christ in its entirety but regards it from the viewpoint of its existing results. The idiom is best translated in the English by the perfect tense. The active voice plus the negative indicates the Gentiles are not producing the action of the verb because of spiritual malfunction in a client nation—the failure of believers. The indicative mood is an interrogative indicative assuming that there is an actual answer to the question.
The first question introduces two problems. The more obvious problem relates to the fact that no one, Jew or Gentile, can call on the Lord—i.e. to confess to God faith in Christ—unless he has believed in his right lobe. The next question will answer the obvious question with logical progression in the form of a rhetorical question. In other words, a question answers a question so that another question answers that question, and so on, through four of them. The less obvious problem (less obvious than the first problem) is the problem of heathenism which deals with positive or negative volition at the point of God-consciousness. This question introduces the fact that many times there is no missionary, no evangelism to that nation because there is no positive volition.
In the first chapter of Romans Paul covered the doctrine of heathenism, and so he continues with the logical progression regarding Jewish responsibility as a client nation to God.[3] Heathenism is the reversion of the unbeliever. A perfect description is found in 2 Peter chapter two where we have the passage which ends up with the dog returning to his vomit. That is heathenism. The vomit is heathenism. Heathenism is satisfied with heathenism.
Principle of the issue of God-consciousness: If any member of the human race, regardless of geographical isolation or linguistic barrier desires relationship with God (has +V) after reaching God-consciousness then God will provide the necessary information through which that person can be saved. This is taught in Jeremiah 29:13; John 7:17; Acts 17:27.
No one, Jew or Gentile, can call on the Lord or confess to God faith in Christ unless he has first of all believed in Christ. Pattern: Romans 10:9,10.
The second question here deals with the subject of communication. The subject is the client nation. The client nation is the source of communication. Without the client nation there could be no missionary base, no evangelism in any generation.
“and how shall they believe” – the interrogative particle pwj used for a direct question in a logical procession is correctly translated “how.” Then follows the postpositive conjunctive particle de, used here as a transitional particle without any contrast intended and simply translated “now” – now how or furthermore how. The word furthermore is a better translation because it indicates a logical and rational progression in these rhetorical questions. These are not questions that people are asking Paul for information, these are questions that Paul is using as a part of debater’s technique. Next is the aorist active subjunctive of the verb pisteuw. Each question picks up something from the previous question. The principle is a very simple one. If you are going to pick up from one to another then you must have a logical progression. The word believe is picked up again for the logical progression. “Furthermore how shall they [the Gentiles] believe [in Christ].” The constative aorist gathers up into one entirety the action of the verb—believing in Christ. Active voice: the Gentiles produce the action of the verb under the principle of efficacious grace. The subjunctive mood is a part of the logical progression, used as a part of a rhetorical device; it is called the deliberative subjunctive—a series of subjunctives in questions are used to set up logical progression; a series of rhetorical questions are used to prove a point.
The objective genitive singular from the relative pronoun o(j is correctly translated “about whom.” Then the aorist active indicative of the verb a)kouw with the negative o)uk—“they have not heard.” The culminative aorist tense views common grace, hearing the gospel, evangelism in other countries through missionaries, but it regards it from the viewpoint of existing results. The existing results: efficacious grace. People are saved in countries other than the client nation type. The active voice plus the negative indicates that the Gentiles are not producing the action of the verb because no missionary has come to give them the Word. Remember the background is Old Testament history. Gentiles did not hear the Word unless Jews who were mature believers went out as missionaries. The indicative mood is the interrogative indicative, it assumes that there is an actual fact which may be stated in answer to the question.
Principle
1. The Gentiles cannot believe in Christ, though positive at God-consciousness, unless someone communicates to them the gospel. The point is that a missionary must come to them from another country, from a client nation.
2. It is the responsibility, then, of a client nation to God to become the communicators through missionary activity.
3. Then client nation is essentially a missionary nation. It is a nation of spiritual impact.
4. Only God Himself in omniscience knows where there is positive volition at God-consciousness. Therefore certain qualified believers in the client nation have the missionary responsibility.
1. The Gentiles have a heart/right lobe. This is the source of faith. Gentiles have a mouth to confess to God the Father faith in Christ or to call on His name.
2. But Gentiles cannot believe or call on the name of the Lord unless they hear the gospel.
3. Hearing the gospel (common grace) precedes believing in Christ (efficacious grace).
4. The message cannot be heard unless there are missionaries from the client nation to the heathen nation.
5. In Paul’s time the client nation was Israel. But two years after his death the client nation would be Rome.
The logical sequence continues with a third question. It should be noted that Paul himself as the apostle to the gentiles was the last great missionary from client nation Israel. When he dies the nation died within two years. The nation followed him in death through the fifth cycle and a new client nation was established—the Roman Empire.
The third question deals with the communicator, the missionary from the client nation—the importance of missions, the importance of the client nation: “and how shall they hear without a preacher?”
“how” – the interrogative particle pwj used for logical progression. With it is the postpositive conjunctive particle de. Translation: “Furthermore, how.”
“shall they hear” – aorist active subjunctive of the verb a)kouw, which means to hear. “Furthermore, how shall they [the Gentiles] hear.” The constative aorist gathers into one entirety the action of the verb, the missionary presentation of the gospel. Interpreting is not witnessing. This is not a witnessing passage. This is not a minister teaching a doctrinal passage where the gospel exists to his congregation. This is not an evangelist speaking to his own kind. This is a missionary who has gone from a client nation to a foreign country and is making a presentation of the gospel. “How shall they hear without a missionary.” Active voice: the Gentiles produce the action of the verb through the principle of common grace. The subjunctive mood is the deliberative subjunctive; it is a part of the rhetorical debater’s technique. With this we have an adverb used as an improper preposition to introduce a proper function—xwrij, meaning apart from or without. It takes the genitive case. In this case it takes the articular present active participle from the verb khrussw. Here it is used as a noun. When the participle is used as a noun it must be translated that way, and the correct translation is messenger or missionary.
Translation: “Consequently, how shall they [the Gentiles] call on him [the Lord Jesus Christ] in whom they have not believed? Furthermore, how shall they [the Gentiles] believe in him [Christ] about whom they have not heard? Furthermore, how shall they [the Gentiles] hear without a missionary.”
Principle
1. The first question develops a negative regarding efficacious grace. The negative is that the mission field is made up of those who have not believed in Christ—no efficacious grace.
2. The second question develops a negative regarding common grace.
3. The third question develops a negative regarding missionary function of the client nation. The heathen [Gentiles] may have been positive at God-consciousness but they had not heard the gospel—minus common grace. Because they have not heard the gospel they have not exhaled faith in Christ—minus missionaries. This means the client nation has had a malfunction resulting in the malfunction of missionary function, resulting in failure to use the normal divinely-ordained system for reaching the foreigner.
4. However, the adverb xwrij implies that where a Gentile nation contains some positive volition there is a probability that some missionary will be sent. A missionary will go and evangelise. But for that missionary to go you have to have alertness among believers. What this third question is saying is: Believers have not taken in doctrine, have not advanced and are not missionary minded, and therefore no missionary has been sent.
5. However, in the fourth question are two words e)an mh, the word if introducing a 3rd class condition plus the negative adverb. This implies that no matter how many in the heathen country fail to hear and believe God will provide a messenger, even if it has to be a supernatural function. But to the extent that God enters into supernatural function to save those with positive volition in other countries, to that extent the client nation is faulted, and if it is faulted often enough it is removed—5th cycle of discipline.
6. Common grace must precede efficacious grace. People cannot believe in Christ or exhale faith in Christ until they understand the gospel. To understand the gospel they have to hear the gospel.
7. There can be no common grace in a heathen nation apart from missionary evangelism.
Missionary evangelism gives the opportunity for the function of free will and the possibility of efficacious grace—the exhale of faith in Christ. Therefore missionary evangelism is one of the most important functions of a nation.
Verse 15 – it must be remembered that this passage is not dealing with the Church Age per sē but is an explanation of the problems which have accumulated to Israel over the many centuries since they have suffered from the administration of the fifth cycle of discipline. The missionary function of the client nation now becomes the issue.
First in this verse we have the postpositive conjunctive particle de, used for the final question in the logical progression and is translated “Finally.” Then we have the interrogative particle pwj—“Finally how.” Next is the aorist active subjunctive of the verb khrussw, taken from the old Greek word khruc which means a herald. Khruc denotes aristocracy and it means a representative of royalty, someone who is making an announcement that the king is coming. The herald went first and made preparation. It also means the announcement of good news for the city was always honoured when the king came. So he represented aristocracy and he was the bearer of good news. The herald had the authority of the king. “Finally how shall they proclaim [the gospel].” This is the primary function of missionaries in a foreign country. The aorist tense is a constative aorist for an action which extends over a long period of time and is gathered up into one entirety. The active voice: missionaries produce the action of the verb in evangelising in a foreign country. The subjunctive mood is potential. It depends on the function of the client nation of Israel in sending out missionaries.
With this we have a conditional conjunction e)an plus the negative mh. E)an introduces a third class condition [maybe yes, maybe no], plus the aorist passive subjunctive in a protasis of the verb a)postellw which means to send out—“unless they [referring to missionaries] are sent out.” The third class condition means maybe the client nation will send them out and maybe the client nation will not. It depends upon stability in the client nation—laws of divine establishment for believer and unbeliever alike. Secondly, it depends upon the spiritual heritage function and that depends on how believers are going—are they advancing to maturity, cracking the maturity barrier, or are they going into reversionism? It all depends upon their attitude toward doctrine, whether it is positive or negative. The aorist tense of the verb is a culminative aorist, viewing the sending out of missionaries from the client nation in its entirety but emphasising the existing results, evangelising in a foreign country. Passive voice: the missionaries receive the action of the verb, being sent out by the client nation to God. Subjunctive mood: the missionary activity from the client nation is potential depending on spiritual conditioning of the believers in that client nation.
Principle
1. All of the subjunctive moods indicate that the big blot-out destroys all client nation function, but especially missionary activity.
2. Many time Gentiles who were positive at God-consciousness had to be evangelised by other means than missionaries from a client nation—which means malfunction of that client nation.
3. The big blot-out hindered missionary activity. Israel’s failure under the big blot-out resulted in a change of policy in the times of the Gentiles.
4. So that today only Gentile nations can act as client nations to God. Israel will be eternally a client nation to God but not during the times of the Gentiles. Only Gentile nations can act as a client nation to God until the second advent of the Lord Jesus Christ.
“as” – kaqaper, which means “just as.” It introduces the concept of documentation –now that he has rhetorically proved his point and indicated that the Jews have lost out. In the next chapter he will become very elliptical in pointing out the fact of how sad it is that the Jews lost out as a client nation and God had to transfer the spiritual heritage of Israel to the royal family of God or the Church which is the body of Christ. So as goes the believer in a national entity so goes the national entity, and it is the function of the laws of establishment, the function of evangelism and Bible teaching, the providing of a haven for Israel during the time of their dispersion, plus the sending out of missionaries, that determines a client nation.
Then we have the perfect passive indicative of the verb grafw, indicating that this is documentation from the Old Testament scriptures. The perfect tense is the dramatic perfect emphasising the results of the action and portraying the prominence of the Old Testament canon and are minder to us that the Old Testament is a part of our spiritual heritage, for the spiritual heritage of Israel was transferred in A.D. 70 at the time of the fall of Jerusalem. At the time the spiritual heritage of client nation Israel became the heritage of the Church. This is why the Church is sometimes called a nation, though the Church is not really a nation, it is simply a community in a nation that determines client nation status. We have the New Testament scriptures, we have the spiritual heritage of Israel; it has been handed down to us, and with that heritage comes responsibility. Heritage demands responsibility. The passive voice of this verb tells us that Isaiah 52:7 is being quoted, therefore receives the action of the verb—which is the quotation for documentation. The indicative mood is declarative for the reality of the passage quoted, the reality also of verbal plenary inspiration of scripture. Corrected translation: “just as it stands written.”
The quotation starts out with o(j, used as a relative adverb or relative pronoun. It is correctly translated “How” but the meaning, its purpose in grammar, it to introduce the characteristic quality of a person in an interrogative sentence, the characteristic quality of a category. In this case it is the characteristic of a category. We already know the category—missionaries. The nominative plural for the adjective w(raioj follows, which means beautiful in the sense of timely or seasonable. It does not mean beautiful in the sense of symmetry of pulchritude.
Next is the predicate nominative plural from the noun pouj, referring to the feet at a means of travel, therefore again, missionary emphasis. Note that the first function of a missionary is evangelism in a foreign country. After that, indigenous function, but not before. The function of the missionary is to satisfy positive volition. The reason the Lord leads the missionary to an area is positive volition in that area. The feet are a means of travel. Missionaries are involved.
Then we have the articular middle present participle from the verb e)uaggelizw which means to evangelise, to announce the good news, to proclaim the good news. In Classical Greek it was to proclaim the good news of victory in battel, but in Koine Greek of the New Testament it was to announce the good news of the work of Christ on the cross. The present tense is a perfective present, it denotes the continuation of existing results, hence it refers to a fact which has come to be in the past but is emphasised as a present reality. The middle voice is the dynamic middle, it emphasises the part taken by missionaries in the action of the verb. The participle is circumstantial. Translation: “those who proclaim the good news [the gospel].”
“of peace, and bring glad tidings of” – not found in the original. (Too bad to the liberals!!) It refers not to the gospel and salvation doctrine, it refers to the entire plan of God because with the gospel or good news we also have “and also about intrinsic good things.” We have to translate it this way to distinguish it from the good news of the gospel. So we have” “How beautiful are the feet of those who proclaim the gospel [good news] about intrinsic good things,” or “about the good.” The good is the plan of God—X + Y + Z.
Translation: “Finally, how shall they proclaim the gospel, unless they [the missionaries] are sent out? Just as it stands written, How beautiful are the feet of those who proclaim good news about intrinsic good things.”
1. If the pastor is a mouth or a voice the missionary is a foot. He goes to the foreign nations from the client nation to God. (He must be spiritually prepared)
2. The beauty of the messenger’s feet is in the divine guidance and function of a missionary, as well as the content of his message.
3. The missionary messenger must be sent out from a client nation. This means he is supported by local churches to sustain him on the mission field, and the policy of his government is to protect missionaries.
4. The client nation to God is motivated to encourage and support missionaries through spiritual advance to maturity on the part of believers.
5. The big blot-out hinders missionary activity from a client nation to God. When there are too many people rejecting the gospel, too much negative volition in a client nation, a failure to form a pivot, and the client nation is going to malfunction in missionary activity.
6. The Jews failed in their client nation responsibility because of the big blot-out. They also failed because those who were believers did not advance to maturity and form a pivot.
7. Missionary function is the responsibility of believers only in a client nation.
8. Furthermore, it takes hundreds and sometimes thousands of believers to support one missionary on a foreign field.
9. Add to that the fact that only a mature believer is properly motivated to support missions—or one positive and approaching maturity—and we have a picture of how the big blot-out can hinder missionary activity. The big blot-out also discourages believers from doctrinal advance.
10. A decline of missionary activity indicates a decline in spiritual modus vivendi of a client nation.
11. such a decline includes the big blot-out [hardness of heart] toward evangelism plus apathy or indifference toward doctrine on the part of believers.
12. This results in a decline of establishment principles in the general population and a lack of missionary support for the believer.
Verse 16 – “But” is the adversative conjunction a)lla which sets up a contrast between the evangelistic communication of the gospel and the Jewish people rejecting the gospel, resulting in the big blot-out. Since the unbelieving Jews were guilty of the big blot-out they obviously would not take the gospel to the Gentiles. They cannot take to the Gentiles what they have not understood or accepted themselves. They have actually understood the issue but have rejected it by their own personal self-determination. They could not evangelise because they were not saved. With this is the negative adverb o)u plus the nominative masculine plural subject from paj—“But not all.”
“obeyed” is the aorist active indicative of the verb u(pakouw [a)kouw = to hear or to listen; u(p = under]—under authority of, under subordination to. It is correctly translated by the word obeyed. It means to concentrate, to listen, to perceive when you are being taught information. It means here with the negative to hear accurate information and to reject it. The constative aorist is for a fact or action extended over a period of time. During the time of the entire dispensation of Israel, during the time that Israel became a client nation, down to A.D 70 when they lost their client nation status for the last time until the Millennium. It means, first of all, when they have heard the gospel. Not only have they heard it but they have heard the greatest presentations that anyone could ever have—every function of the Levitical priesthood in communication. It is the heritage of Israel from the beginning. Active voice: the Jews produce the action of the verb, the rejection of Jesus Christ as saviour. The indicative mood is declarative for the reality of the big blot-out in every generation—in some generations a lot of Jews, in some a few.
“the gospel” – dative singular indirect object from e)uaggelion. It means good news—gospel. The Jews had the best exposure to the gospel that anyone ever had but they used their volition to reject it. They understood it and rejected it. Disobedience to the gospel is expressed through unbelief or rejection of the Lord Jesus Christ. When you understand something and reject it you build a layer of scar tissue on the soul, and when you keep rejecting it you build more layers of scar tissue until you no longer understand what you previously understood. The principle is that the more you reject something the less you understand it. Disobedience to the gospel is expressed by rejection. Every act of rejection makes the thing rejected more obscure. By not obeying the gospel the Jews cannot send out missionaries to the Gentiles as a client nation function.
“For Esaias [Isaiah] saith” – the explanatory use of the conjunctive particle gar and the present active indicative of the verb legw which means here to communicate-- “For Isaiah communicates.” The perfective present tense refers to the fact of Isaiah’s ministry in the past but emphasises it as a present reality in that this is a part of the Word of God which lives and abides forever. This is a quotation from Isaiah 53:1. Active voice: Isaiah produces the action of the verb as the human author of both the first section of Isaiah and the last half—called Deutero-Isaiah by the liberals and allegedly written by someone else. The reason for that is typical liberal stupidity. All great scholars know that half of Isaiah is written in prose and half of it is written in poetry. The liberals say that Isaiah wrote the prose but he didn’t write the poetry because the style is different, not realising, the dummies that they are, that anyone who writes poetry and writes prose both has a different style for each. The indicative mood is declarative for the reality of Isaiah’s message as a part of the Old Testament canon.
Isaiah 53:1 begins with the interrogative pronoun mi [who] and it is referring to every individual Jew in the client nation during Isaiah’s generation, but it also refers to every individual Jew in the client nation from the Exodus to, prophetically, the end of the Jewish nation as a client nation in A.D. 70. Isaiah began his ministry in a time of apostasy and God punished the Jews for their apostasy by the Sennacherib invasion. So we can say that this is pre-Sennacherib. Isaiah apparently had been preaching for some time and was slightly discouraged because apparently no one was responding. So he says “Who [is responding].” This was one of those statement which was parlayed into a prophecy.
Next is the hiphil perfect from the verb amen, the verb used for salvation faith in the Hebrew. This verb in the hiphil stem was used for the salvation of Abraham. The hiphil stem is causative active voice. “Who has caused to believe?” Abraham was caused to believe in the Lord and it was credited to his account [imputed to him] for righteousness. He was caused to believe because he had information. The gospel that he heard was the information to which he responded. So Isaiah now says, “Who has been caused to believe,” the point being that now the people are negative at God-consciousness and negative at gospel-hearing. They heard the gospel at first but as they said no they continued to build up scar tissue. By the use of the hiphil stem he is pointing out that they understand it but reject it.
Then comes the indirect object, shemuah, which mans doctrine or message. The message and the doctrine is actually the entire first advent with emphasis on the cross. Isaiah is giving an illustration of what he has been preaching in the verses that follow.
“the arm of the Lord” – zeroa, a title of the Lord Jesus Christ in the first advent. It is an anthropomorphism: Christ is not an arm but an arm explains the thought. “Arm” means His humanity. Then we have the title of His deity, pronounced by the Jew Adonai, and we call it Jehovah. Arm of the Lord then becomes the title for the hypostatic union, therefore a reference to the first advent which the Jewish unbeliever blocks out of his soul.
The niphal perfect from the verb galah means to reveal. Translation: “The arm of the Lord, to whom has it been revealed?”
The first question: Who has believed our message?” The implication is that not only in Isaiah’s day but in every generation there are many Jews who reject Christ as saviour though the spiritual heritage of Israel is the presentation of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Back to Romans 10:16. The word “Lord” is a vocative singular from kurioj and is equivalent to the tetragammaton. It is a reference to God the Father, to whom Isaiah addresses this. The interrogative pronoun tij is correctly translated “who.” It means an individual; salvation is an individual matter.
“hath believed” is the aorist active indicative of the verb pisteuw. The constative aorist refers to the momentary action of believing in Christ or the momentary action of rejecting Christ. Constative aorist takes the constant rejection to the point where they said no so often they no longer understood what they were rejecting. Active voice: the Jews potentially produced the action of the verb. The indicative mood is the potential indicative of obligation in a client nation.
“our report” – dative singular indirect object of a)koh, based on the same root as a)kouw which means something you hear, therefore a report or a message; plus the possessive genitive plural from the first person plural pronoun, “our report.”
Verse 17 – begins with the illative particle a)ra which means “consequently.” It brings together an inference from what has been taught and an inference in anticipation of what the conclusion will be. The nominative singular subject is pistij and it refers not only to the basis for perception of doctrine but it also refers to the initial entrance into the plan of God, faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. Also, after faith in Christ, it refers to the function of the faith-rest technique in claiming promises to stabilise the mentality, and then using reverse concentration to start rational thought, and finally coming to conclusions. This is the dynamics for the Christian way of life under a pressure situation. With this is a definite article used as a demonstrative pronoun to set aside this faith as a special dynamic concept in the Christian way of life. “Consequently that faith.” This is a reference to faith in Christ which is the means of salvation. There is no verb.
Next comes the prepositional phrase e)k plus the ablative of a)koh which means a message, or the content of a message, or a report—“Consequently, that faith from a message.” In other words, people must hear the gospel to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. Common grace precedes efficacious grace. Common grace is a theological designation for the presentation of the gospel to an unbeliever. The presentation of the gospel to the unbeliever finds the unbeliever unable to understand because while he has a human soul he is minus the human spirit. All spiritual phenomena is understood by means to the human spirit, and since the unbeliever does not have one the Holy Spirit acts as a human spirit so that the gospel information can be understood. Once it is understood then the individual unbeliever can respond, positive or negative. Positive volition is the exhale of faith in Christ; negative volition is rejection of Christ. So we call this inhale gospel presentation and perception; exhale is faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. The inhale is called common grace; the exhale is called efficacious grace—believing in the Lord Jesus Christ, receiving Him as personal saviour. The great issue is the fact that the unbeliever must have absolute correct information. He doesn’t need a persuasive personality, salesmanship, or some form of apologetical persuasion. All he needs in the information. This is because whatever the form of evangelism—whether it is the function of an evangelist outside of a church speaking to great crowds or a pastor communicating gospel information in a pertinent passage, or the individual believer witnessing for Christ—accurate information is necessary because of the principle that God the Holy Spirit is the agent of personal witnessing; He takes the information and utilises it for the understanding of the gospel. So the unbeliever must have correct information regarding the person and the work of the Lord Jesus Christ before he can believe. One thing we must be very wary of is making an issue out of sin. Sin is not the issue in the gospel. Sin is a true fact, that should be understood, but the good news is the fact that Christ was judged for every sin ever committed in the human race. The unbeliever can have eternal life, not by renouncing sin but by believing in Christ. Christ is the issue, not giving up sins. The gospel is correct information.
Then we have a transitional or continuative use of the particle de—“moreover.” This is followed by a nominative feminine singular from the definite article used as a demonstrative pronoun, plus a)koh again—“moreover that message.” Finally there is a preposition phrase, and still no verbs; we are still in the field of ellipsis: dia plus the ablative of means from r(hma. It means literally, through the agency of a word or a doctrinal discourse. Then the objective genitive of Xristoj. It is correctly translated, “a doctrinal discourse about Christ.”
Translation: “Consequently, that faith comes from a message; moreover, that message comes through the agency of a doctrinal discourse about Christ.”
In other words, there must be an evangelist to communicate the gospel.
Principle
1. There must be an evangelist, a pastor, an individual believer, a missionary to communicate the gospel to those who have positive volition at God-consciousness.
2. Therefore to reach people in foreign countries with the gospel there must be a missionary. To have a missionary he must have a base, and the base is the client nation.
3. The client nation must possess establishment function, including freedom. The client nation cannot function apart from the laws of divine establishment.
4. Under the function of establishment there must be evangelism within a client nation, and for evangelism to occur there must be freedom.
5. As a result of such evangelism there must exist a body of believers within that client nation who from the standpoint of this context fall into two categories.
6. Category #1: those who remain behind in a client nation to grow in grace and support missionaries.
7. Category #2: those who grow in grace and are sent out from the client nation to other peoples as missionaries.
8. Israel failed as a client nation because they lost their establishment function, they lost their freedom, they failed to evangelise, they had two categories of reversionism—believer and unbeliever, and eventually went out under the fifth cycle of discipline. They finally came to the place of ritual without reality.
9. They did not believe in Christ but used their negative volition to develop the stages of the big blot-out.
10. Therefore there were no Jewish missionaries to the Gentile nations during Old Testament times—except on rare occasions, like Jonah and Daniel as remarkable exceptions, and Jeremiah after the fall of Jerusalem.
11. From the standpoint of mechanics no one can be evangelised unless he hears the gospel. That means emphasis on the first advent of Christ, especially underlining the cross.
12. There can only be one subject for evangelism—not sin, not social action, not giving money, not being baptised or joining the church, but the saving work of Jesus Christ on the cross.
Verse 18 – divine provision for positive volition, which means the world has been evangelised in every generation in spite of the big blot-out. The failure of
people to accept Christ does not imply non-evangelisation. Learn to distinguish between two concepts: evangelisation of the world and the conversion of the entire world. Evangelisation of the world is a legitimate biblical doctrine; the conversion of the entire world is a heresy, the heresy of post-millennialism.
“But” is the adversative conjunction a)lla which sets up a contrast between Israel’s failure as a client nation, as well as individuals, and at the same time the fact that God’s plan moves on. With it is the present active indicative of the verb legw, to communicate, to say, to speak. The present tense is aoristic present for punctiliar action in present time, indicating a slight change of subject in order to add great rational emphasis to what has already been taught. Active voice: Paul produces the action of the verb as the continuation of a debater’s technique. The indicative mood is declarative, indicating the fact that we have an independence of qualification or condition.
We have a double negative here, mh o)uk. Mh is the negative adverb used with the subjunctive; o)uk is the negative adverb used with the indicative mood. The two of them are combined to have a slightly different implication. A double negative in the English means a positive, but a double negative in the Greek is the strongest negative. In questions with mh a negative answer is expected; in questions with o)u or o)uk a positive answer is expected. But in questions with mh o)uk, mh is the negative with the verb and therefore a strong affirmative is expected. The verb is the aorist active indicative of a)kouw, which means to hear. “But I say, Have they not heard?” The aorist tense is a constative aorist, it gathers the action of the verb into one entirety and spread over a period of time when Israel acted as a client nation to God, until the time that Paul wrote this passage in Romans. Active voice: Paul notices and presents the Gentiles as producing the action of the verb, in spite of the failure of Israel to function as a client nation. This is also the interrogative indicative which assumes that there is an actual fact which may be stated in answer to the question. Again, in questions with mh the verb is negated, meaning that the answer to the question is based on o)u, and therefore thew question expects an affirmative answer.
Because of the double negative we now have the answer. It comes out in combining three particles into one word with one accent between them—menoun ge, and it is translated as an emphatic positive—“Indeed they have, certainly they have, emphatically yes.” Jewish failure is the principle here. Jewish failure as a client nation does not hinder God’s plan in evangelising every generation. He evangelises every generation with or without the client nation. Principle: There is no such thing as God making His plan depend on you or me, or any other person.
1. Jewish failure in the big blot-out did not hinder the Gentiles from hearing the Word of God.
2. It has been stated that you must hear the gospel to respond by faith in Jesus Christ.
3. In view of the fact that Paul has previously stated that the Gentiles were saved by faith in Christ (Romans 9:30-33) it is obvious that Paul will answer this debater’s technique with an emphatic yes.
The Old Testament documentation is taken from Psalm 19:4. We need to be careful
about something here. It is very simply while we are dealing with the principles that teach the interpretation to ignore the fact that God’s plan of eternity past—depending upon God’s perfect character and integrity--is not only going to go right on, but to fail to understand that nothing depends on you and that you depend on God will involve yourself in a great deal of arrogance.
Psalm 19:1-4.
Verse 1 – “The heavens are telling the glory of God.” Why? So that people can reach God-consciousness.
“and the firmament [the earth] is declaring the work of his hands.” In other words, you can study the earth in many ways and come to the conclusion that the order that is found must have someone who started it. So this verse is dealing with the subject of God-consciousness.
Verse 2 – “Day to day pours forth speech.” Speech comes from words. Words are formed in the mind to make thought and out comes speech. Each day when you learn a little more about life you come closer to realising that all of this could not just have happened. You come to the conclusion that behind it all is a God, there is someone greater than what we have in this world.
“night unto night showeth knowledge” – back up the fact that by studying the stars and the universe brings us to the same conclusion.
Verse 3 – “There is no speech, nor are there words, their voice is not heard.” The universe which teaches the reality of the Creator, the reality of God, does not actually speak to you and say there is a God; you have come to this conclusion through your own function of reason.
Verse 4 – “But their sound has gone out through all the earth, and their utterance to the ends of the world.” Once a person has reached God-consciousness and has thrown up positive signals, while no one spoke out of heaven and said, I am God, he had to come to the conclusion of the existence of God through his own thought pattern in his own way. Once he did, positive volition went up and the sound went out through all the earth—the sound of the gospel.
1. This much of verse 4 has been quoted by Paul (Romans 10:18) to document complete evangelisation of the world in every generation of human history.
2. This means that Gentiles, as well as Jews, have been evangelised. This means especially Gentiles during the dispensation of Israel.
3. While the Jews as a client nation to God failed to evangelise the Gentiles their positive volition at God-consciousness demanded that they receive the gospel message through some other means.
4. Therefore God by-passed the Jews under the big blot-out and used other means to reveal Jesus Christ as the only saviour.
5. God recognised +V at God-consciousness and provided gospel information so that anyone could believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. This principle has always been true.
In verse four we have two lines. The first line deals with God-consciousness and the
second line, in reality, deals with gospel hearing. It relates God-consciousness to gospel hearing.
Romans 10:18—The word fqoggoj is in the nominative singular subject and is at the end of the phrase. It means sound or voice: their sound or their voice. This is the sound or voice of nature. The word “their” is the possessive genitive plural from the intensive pronoun a)utoj, used as a third person plural personal pronoun. It means their. So we have their sound or their voice.
Next we have an aorist active indicative of e)cerxomai, and it means to go out. The aorist tense is a culminative aorist, it views the God-consciousness of the human race in its entirety hut regards it from the viewpoint of existing results, i.e. the world is evangelised in every generation. It emphasises the result. All +V in history has been evangelised. The aorist tense gathers all generations of history into one entirety and says in effect, there never was a person who was positive at God-consciousness who did not have an opportunity to hear the gospel. There are a lot of places where the gospel is not even so much as uttered. That is solid negative volition at God-consciousness which is tantamount to rejection of Christ as saviour. Evangelisation means everyone who was positive, and often many others, are given the opportunity of hearing the gospel. The active voice: nature produces the action of the verb. The indicative mood is declarative for a dogmatic statement of doctrine, the reality of God-consciousness.
With this is a prepositional phrase, e)ij plus the accusative of the adjective paj and the noun gh—“to all the earth.” Again, this line deals with the subject of God-consciousness which always precedes gospel hearing.
“and their words unto the ends of the world” – we have a connective use of the conjunction kai which merely introduces the second line. It is not comparable to anything in the Hebrew. The subject is the nominative plural from r(hma, and with the genitive plural again it means “and their words [or, message].” It refers to the gospel. Then a prepositional phrase, e)ij plus the accusative of the adjective peraj which means ends in the sense of the earth being spherical, not in the sense of the earth being square. The descriptive genitive with peraj is o)ikoumenhj, which does not refer to the world as planet earth, it refers to that part of planet earth occupied by people, the world of the inhabited earth.
Translation: “But I say, They have no all heard, have they? Certainly they have, their voice [of nature] has gone out to the entire earth, and their words to the ends of the inhabited earth.”
Conclusion
1. This is a specific answer to the problem of the evangelisation of the Gentiles in Old Testament times, but it applies also to every generation of history.
2. There never has been a generation of history which has not been evangelised.
3. God knew in eternity past the soul of every person in history.
4. He knew every positive volition at God-consciousness and responded in grace.
5. It is the integrity of God which provides gospel hearing for every case of positive volition at God-consciousness.
6. Every human being in history is therefore without excuse at the great white throne judgement.
7. Every person of history, Jew or Gentile, has the same chance or opportunity through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.
8. When Christ was on the cross every sin in the human race was imputed to Him and judged.
9. Since all sins were judged at the cross there is no such thing as a person overlooked.
10. The first line of Psalm 19:4 deals with God-consciousness; the second line to gospel hearing. Positive volition at God-consciousness is a guaranteed opportunity to hear the gospel.
11. The big blot-out does not hinder the plan of God. The big blot-out in any client nation does not hinder the complete evangelisation of the world in every generation.
Verses 19-21, documentation of Old Testament scripture regarding the big blot-out. While this passage is addressed to us it is about the Jew, and therefore
documentation from the Old Testament scriptures is absolutely necessary.
Verse 19 – quotation from Deuteronomy 32:21. It begins with the adversative conjunction a)lla and the present active indicative of the verb legw. Tis is an aoroistic present, punctiliar action in present time. Active voice: Paul produces the action of the verb as the human writer under the ministry of the Spirit, and he continues his rhetorical debater’s technique. The indicative mood is declarative for the fact that he is now going to present fresh documentation.
The negative mh is used in an interrogative clause to express doubt. Furthermore, the negative mh also expects in a question an answer, no. The subject is I)srahl, and with it is the aorist active indicative of ginwskw, which means generally to know by experience. With it is another negative, o)uk—“Did Israel fail to know?” The negative o)u follows, meaning no. They knew. The constative aorist of ginwskw is for a fact or action extended over a period of time. In other words, there was never was a Jew in the Old Testament who didn’t know by the time he was five years old or have a clear picture of the gospel. They all knew. Ginwskw is used for a very simple reason: they knew by watching the ritual and hearing the explanation. They knew, and then they said yes or no.
Note that a)lla legw here is used twice. It begins this verse and the previous one. In each verse Paul uses the debater’s question to enter a plea on behalf of Israel. In each case the plea is refuted by the facts. God judges on the basis of facts—that is the principle. In the previous verse Paul enters a plea about hearing the gospel, and in this verse an understanding of what they heard. “But I say’ is merely to differentiate between the two rhetorical questions which have set up a debater’s technique. Each one is a different subject but he states a negative question that demands a positive answer. So, when they are saying no they are agreeing. In each case the plea is refuted by the evidence.
Verse 19 quotes from Deuteronomy 32:21. “But” us the adversative conjunction a)lla; “I say” is the present active indicative of the verb legw, which means to say, to think, or to communicate. Here it means to communicate. The aorist present tense is for punctiliar action in present time. Active voice: Paul produces the action of the verb as a continuation of the debater’s technique. This is a declarative indicative for the reality of the canon of scripture. The reality of the writing of Paul, the human author, has been divinely inspired under the principle of plenary, verbal inspiration of the scripture. Next is the negative mh which is used in a question. This negative adverb when found in a question means that the answer to the question is no. The nominative singular subject of I)srahl and the aorist active indicative of the verb ginwskw plus the negative o)u follows. The constative aorist is for a fact or action extended over a period of time, over the entire Old Testament history. Active voice: Israel did not produce the action--the negative o)u. In other words, they did not know. The indicative mood is an interrogative indicative which assumes that there is an actual fact which may be stated in answer to the question. “But I say, Did Israel fail to know?” and the answer is no. This is the basis for understanding scar tissue of the soul. Every Jew in every generation of Israel’s history, from the Exodus to A.D. 70, understood the gospel at a very early age. Not only did they understand it but they said no to what they understood, and the longer they said no the more scar tissue they put on their soul and finally there came a no where the gospel was abstruse. What started out to be clear became abstruse by the building of scar tissue on the soul. No toward the gospel or no toward any form of doctrine builds scar tissue on the soul, and finally truth can no longer be understood.
The Jews could not say they did not understand the gospel because they did understand it, it was very clear to them. So Israel is without excuse because they not only did hear the gospel but at the same time they understood clearly what they heard. Paul now goes on to the two greatest witnesses in Jewish history, Moses and Isaiah, and in effect Paul calls Moses and Isaiah to the witness stand to answer the debater’s question about Israel’s hearing of the gospel and Israel’s understanding of the gospel. Moses is called to the witness stand to give evidence of Jewish jealousy over Gentile salvation—Deuteronomy 32:21. Then in the next two verses Isaiah’s testimony is entered as evidence that Israel understood the gospel which they rejected under the function of the big blot-out.
Verse 20 will quote Isaiah 65:1 as evidence for Gentiles, that they understood the gospel without the law. Verse 21 quotes Isaiah 65:2 as evidence for the Jews that they understood and rejected the same gospel that the Gentiles understood and accepted.
“First Moses saith” – the nominative from the adjective numeral prwtoj means first in the order of studying. It means here, first of several witnesses—first to the witness stand. “First [witness] Moses speaks” – the present active indicative of legw in which we take the testimony of Moses. This is a static present tense for a perpetual state of Deuteronomy 32:21, a permanent witness against Israel throughout every generation of their history as a client nation. Active voice: Moses as the human author, Moses as the witness, speaks. The indicative mood is declarative for the veracity, for the correct evidence, that Moses gives. Now the quotation from Deuteronomy in corrected translation from the Hebrew text:
“They [the Jews in every generation] have made me [God] jealous [an anthropopathism] with a not God [something that is not God--idols]; they have provoked me [Jesus Christ, the God of Israel] to anger with their idols: so I will make them [the Jews] jealous with those who are not a people [the Gentiles]; I will provoke them to anger with a stupid nation [and Gentile nation in history that has been a client nation to God].”
This is the deposition of Moses regarding the trend of the Jews in every generation—they have clearly understood the gospel and they have clearly rejected it. Now let’s see what Paul does with the quotation from Deuteronomy in the Greek language. Notice that the first half of the verse is not quoted by Paul, but it is self-evident, obvious. The subject they refers to unbelieving Jews who have entered into the big blot-out.
“I” is e)gw, the personal pronoun. Starting out with this is most unusual, but Jesus Christ is speaking, the God of Israel. This is followed by the verb.
Principle
1. This is quoted from Deuteronomy 32:21 which begins with the first person singular personal pronoun, referring to the Lord Jesus Christ as the God of Israel.
2. The integrity of God judges the big blot-out, not only in time but also in eternity.
3. First in the sequence is divine judgment of the big blot-out.
4. Such divine judgement indicates that Israel not only heard but they understood what they heard and rejected it as the first stage in scar tissue of the soul.
5. Having rejected the gospel which they understood they came to believe the lie that there was no first advent. This was the big blot-out or maximum scar tissue of the soul.
6. The big blot-out is dramatised by the great inversion of the Old Testament in which a reversal of position between Jew and Gentile became the basis for punishing the Jews and blessing the Gentiles.
7. The inversion finds Gentiles without the Jewish spiritual heritage not only believing in Christ but advancing to maturity, while Jews with total divine revelation reject Christ as saviour and enter into scar tissue of the soul.
8. The inversion, then, is composed of saved Gentiles and unsaved Jews.
9. The inversion includes believing Gentiles possessing God’s righteousness and unbelieving Jews possessing only their own self-righteousness. So the inversion sets up a contrast between the imputed righteousness of God possessed by Gentile believers and the self-righteousness of the Jew, as God accepts His own righteousness and rejects the self-righteousness of the Jew.
10. The inversion includes the God of Israel blessing the Gentiles and punishing the Jew. Therefore, punishment by inversion includes Jewish arrogance turned into jealousy over the Gentiles. (Arrogance is prone to jealousy)
The first verb in the quotation the future active indicative of the verb parazhlow.
It means to provoke to jealousy, to arouse jealousy, to make jealous—“I will make you jealous.” The future tense is the predictive future which prophecies a divine judgment as a result of the great inversion. The inversion finds the Jews and the Gentiles changing roles. The Jews had the perfect spiritual heritage, a complete and total revelation. At an early age every Jew had received gospel information which he thoroughly understood but rejected. Every time he rejected it he built an additional layer of scar tissue on the soul. So what he started out understanding, i.e. the gospel, by the time he has said no a few times he no longer understands it, and therefore accepts the lie—false doctrine, false teaching. Therefore he has darkness or the blackout of the soul. The Gentile was minus that great spiritual heritage but had positive volition at God-consciousness. Therefore God was responsible to provide the gospel, sometimes through a Jewish missionary, like Daniel, but more frequently through other means. So that when the Gospel was presented to the Gentile he said yes and responded instantly. Because of his response he entered into the plan of God in which he received information. Such a person was Cyrus the Great of Persia. The Jew became jealous of the Gentile who fulfilled this principle. So the predictive future prophecies judgment expected to occur when the Jews fall into the pattern of the big blot-out. When the Jews rejected Christ and blotted out the first advent in their souls they were punished by an inversion—salvation and blessing to those they scorn from arrogance. They look down at the Gentile, he doesn’t have their heritage, their background. The active voice: the justice of God produces the action of the verb which is punishment by inversion. The indicative mood is declarative, viewing the action of the verb from the viewpoint of historical reality.
Next we have the accusative plural direct object from the second person singular pronoun su—“I will make you jealous.” This is the first part of the inversion. Then there is a preposition e)pi plus the locative singular from e)qnoj—“over a nation.” There is one other word with e)qnoj and that is the negative adverb o)uk, which to the Jews is not a nation, not a client nation. A Gentile nation, in other words—“I will make you jealous over a no nation.”
Principle
1. The no nation is a reference to the Gentiles of the Old Testament. They were not and could not be a client nation to God—one exception: Persia for 70 years, and part of that 70 years might even include the Chaldean empire.
2. Gentiles without client nation status believed in Christ, making the Jews with client nation status very jealous because they followed their faith in Christ with advance to maturity.
3. But they could not have been jealous unless they were first arrogant. No one is ever jealous without prior arrogance—pride.
4. Arrogance precedes jealousy.
5. No one is ever jealous apart from abnormal self-consciousness.
6. Jewish arrogance came from their own negative volition. First they said no to the gospel. Every time they said no they built a new layer of scar tissue of the soul and at the same time created darkness in the soul. The darkness set up the vacuum so that they believed the lie.
1. The big blot-out is jealous of theocratic inversion. Perhaps this explains the Jewish antagonism toward the first advent of Christ.
2. It does not mean that the blessing of the gospel has passed from Jew to Gentile in the Church Age, however.
3. Since A.D 70 there has not been, nor cannot be, a Jewish client nation to God. There will not be a Jewish client nation to God until the second advent of Christ in the Millennium.
4. Therefore the great inversion continues throughout the Church Age and the Tribulation.
5. Remember that an inversion is a reversal, position, or relation.
6. All three characteristics are found in the great inversion of the Church Age.
7. There is first of all an inversion of relationship, i.e. a reversal of relationship. Gentiles are believers in Christ and Jews are unbelievers rejecting Christ as saviour (there are always marvellous exceptions). We are talking about the general trend of the Church Age.
8. Secondly, there is a reversal of position. Gentiles possess the righteousness of God through faith in Christ, while Jewish unbelievers possess self-righteousness by means of keeping the law and following the ritual of Israel. The great spiritual heritage is not in the ritual, the ritual merely illustrates doctrine. The Jews have rejected the doctrine but accepted the ritual.
9. There is a third factor: the reversal of order. Saved Gentiles become royal family of God while unsaved Jews are excluded from the family of God.
“and by a foolish nation I will anger you” – by a foolish nation is the preposition e)pi
plus the locative singular from e)qnoj, plus an adjective, a)sunetoj, which means dull, stupid, without understanding. This verse implies that the Gentiles are dull or stupid in relationship to the Jews. Note that Paul converts the Hebrew nabal, without understanding. The Gentiles were without understanding, however, because they did not have doctrine.
With this is an Attic Greek future active indicative of parorgizw which follows; it means to make angry, plus the accusative plural direct object from su—“I will make you angry.”
Translation: “But I say, Did Israel fail to understand? No. First [witness] Moses speaks, I will make you jealous over a no nation, and I will make you angry over a nation without understanding.”
Principle
1. There is a near and distant fulfilment of this punishment. It is under the principle of the dual fulfilment of prophecy.
2. The near fulfilment includes case history Jonah.
3. The distant fulfilment in Isaiah’s day emphasises the Gentile client nations of the Church Age.
4. But fulfilments include the great inversion in which saved Gentiles are blessed by God while unsaved Jews are disciplined by God.
5. The Jews who are guilty of the big blot-out are punished by inversion. (Being smart is nothing until it is converted to wisdom; wisdom is being smart without arrogance).
6. When a reverse pivot of too large a blot-out occurs then added to punishment by inversion is a great historical disaster—like the holocaust that occurred in Hitler’s time, and the terrible things that happened in the Inquisition, etc.
7. To be replaced by a nation without the Word of God—by Persia, Chaldea, SPQR, the Franks, etc—has aroused the indignation of the smart people of Israel.
8. Therefore, inversion as a punishment for reversion is the subject for this quotation. Moses is talking about inversion being a system of punishment for reversionism.
9. But the inversion punishment could not occur unless the Jews had been a client nation, unless they understood the gospel, and unless they were a very smart and moral people.
10. Therefore Paul says the Mosaic prophecy and the divine fulfilment throughout the dispensation of the Israel and the Church Age proved that the Jews understood the gospel which they rejected.
11. Inversion discipline resulted from rejection after understanding the gospel, and behind that rejection is arrogance. Arrogance rejects the truth.
Verse 20 – “But” is the postpositive conjunctive particle de, used to introduce the next witness. We can translate this “next [witness] Isaiah.” Then we have a verb to describe that this witness is not only honest but also very courageous—present active indicative from a)potolmaw [a)po = emphasis, extreme; tolmaw = brave], which means maximum courage without loss of sanity. Some people appear to be courageous at times because they are not thinking. They do not anticipate the dangers and they have no imagination. But this word means to have maximum courage without being stupid, without being emotional. This is cold, clear moral courage.
This is a historical present tense which Isaiah’s moral courage in the past with the vividness of a present occurrence. The courage comes out in his writing, it is a part of the Word of God, and when it is remembered that his contemporaries were often ready to stone him and that finally one of his contemporaries sawed him in two, his courage can be understood. Active voice: Isaiah, the human writer of the book, produces the action of the verb under the ministry of the Holy Spirit, a demonstration of great moral courage under the filling of the Spirit. The indicative mood is declarative for the historical reality of Isaiah’s courage as a witness.
This is a part of an idiom—a)potolmaw plus de. The idiom is actually taken from the writings of Demosthenes. The rest of the idiom includes the conjunction kai plus the present active indicative of legw which is translated like an infinitive. We translate kai here, “as.” So this is correctly translated, “Next witness, Isaiah, is so bold as to say.” This is not the literal translation, it is the correct translation. The present tense of duration denotes what was begun in the past and continues into the present time. Active voice: Isaiah produces the action in making his statement in Isaiah 65:1. The indicative mood is declarative to fulfil the reality of the idiom.
“I was found” – aorist passive indicative of the verb e(uriskw which means to discover or to be found. In the passive voice it means “I was discovered” or “I was found.” The aorist tense is a constative aorist for a fact or an action extended over a period of time. The constative aorist contemplates the action of the verb in its entirety, and it refers to the inversion discipline in history wherever it occurs. The passive voice: Jesus Christ receives the action of the verb as the God of Israel. He was discovered by Gentiles when Jews rejected Him. This refers historically to A.D. 70, the administration of the fifth cycle of discipline. It also refers to other administrations of the fifth cycle of discipline in the past—721 B.C. when the northern kingdom went out in the 5th cycle by the hand of the Assyrians, and 586 B.C. when the southern kingdom went out through Nebuchadnezzar. Whenever that happened there was always a Gentile nation to fill in as client nation until the situation could be restored. The reality of the indicative mood is important because not only does it represent the verbal idea from the viewpoint of reality, but the reality is the fact that the Gentiles in the dispensation of Israel found Christ because they were positive at God-consciousness. Isaiah 65:1 indicates that Gentile conversion existed in every generation of the previous dispensation apart from the function of client nation Israel.
Isaiah 65:1 in corrected translation from the Hebrew: “I have permitted myself to be sought” – a tolerative niphal perfect from the verb darash—“by those [Gentiles] who did not ask for me”—i.e. they did not have the spiritual heritage and they did not know in whom to believe for salvation, but they were positive at God-consciousness. But the Jews didn’t send out missionaries because they were in a state of apostasy, operation big blot-out. Does God let the positive volition of the Gentiles die without having the opportunity of believing in Christ? Never! So He uses other means and other circumstances in order to reach these people. Therefore the Gentiles were being blessed of God because they were in the plan of God, whereas the Jews who had the spiritual heritage for the plan of God rejected it. So there is cursing for the Jew in apostasy and there is blessing for the Gentile in the momentum of the plan of God.
We have a second phrase, “I [Jesus Christ, the God of Israel] have permitted myself to be found.” This time we have the tolerative niphal perfect from the verb matsa. This means gospel hearing.
“by those who did not seek me,” i.e. under the name of Jesus Christ, because they were Gentiles. So the first line in the Hebrews deals with positive volition at God-consciousness and the second line in the Hebrew deals with positive volition at gospel hearing. Paul says that Isaiah as a witness is very courageous because Isaiah is a Jew and he is talking about Gentile salvation, which stirred up the unbelieving Jews.
The continuation of Isaiah 65:1 which Paul did not quote, says, “I [Jesus Christ] said, Here am I, here am I, to a nation which has not called on my name.” In other words, the Jews [client nation] have said no, whereas the Gentiles who are not the client nation and have no heritage have said yes. Therefore they have blessing and the Jews have cursing. So there is inversion. Furthermore, the Jews discover the prosperity of these Gentiles and are jealous. The prophetic part of this passage is the fact that the Gentiles are also saved in the Tribulation.
Next in Romans 10:20 the instrumental plural from the definite article toij used as a demonstrative pronoun. The demonstrative pronoun in its function calls special attention to the Gentiles as the objects of evangelism and salvation apart from any Jewish missionary. It is correctly translated “by those.”
The dative plural present active participle from the verb zetew is next. The present tense is a historical present, it views a past event with the vividness of a present occurrence. It refers to Gentiles who did not know how to call upon the name of the Lord Jesus Christ after God-consciousness because they didn’t know about Jesus Christ. They didn’t have the spiritual heritage of the Jews—the Levitical sacrifices, the sacred articles of furniture which taught Christology, the modus operandi of the Levitical priesthood which gave ritual demonstrations daily of who and what Christ is. They were positive at God-consciousness but they had not direction for their positive volition once they wanted a relationship with God. The active voice: the Gentiles with +V produced the action. The participle is circumstantial for Gentiles being positive at God-consciousness.
With this is the accusative singular direct object from the first person singular pronoun e)gw. It is translated, “I [Jesus Christ, the God of Israel] was found by those [Gentiles]”—the demonstrative pronoun always specifies the category—“who were not looking for me.” They wanted salvation but they didn’t know who the saviour was.
Translation: “Next witness, Isaiah, is so bold as to say, I [Jesus Christ] was found by those Gentiles who were not looking for me.”
“I was made manifest” – this is actually I became, because we have the aorist middle indicative of the verb ginomai, and it means here to become. It should be translated I became because the constative aorist refers to a fact or action extended over a period of time, the period of time being the dispensation of Israel from the Exodus to A.D. 70. The middle voice is the indirect middle in which Christ as the agent produces the action of the verb. The indicative mood is declarative for the reality of gospel hearing to those Gentiles who were positive at God-consciousness. Then we have a predicate nominative singular from the noun e)mfanhj—manifest or known, and it refers to being comprehended. “I [Jesus Christ] became manifest.”
The dative plural indirect object of the definite article toij is used here as a demonstrative pronoun, emphasising then Gentiles who had positive volition at God-consciousness—“to those.” With it is the dative of indirect object indicating that these Gentiles are the ones in whose interest Christ became manifest. They were positive at God-consciousness, they had no spiritual heritage, they did not know the Lord Jesus Christ, they lived in an area of darkness in their own circumstances, and therefore the Lord Jesus Christ had to reveal Himself to them some other way, apart from client nation Israel. The manifestation was not accomplished by the client nation Israel but through other means. There is also a dative plural present active participle from the verb e)perwtaw which means to ask or to request, and here with the accusative singular direct object of the personal pronoun e)gw it means simply to request. The historical present of the participle views the past event with the vividness of a present occurrence. While the Gentiles were positive at God-consciousness they did not know the object of faith for salvation, and therefore Christ had to be revealed to them. This ordinarily would have been the job of client nation Israel sending out missionaries but because of their failure under the big blot-out they did not send out missionaries. Nevertheless Christ was revealed by other means so that in every generation of the Old Testament Gentiles believed in Christ with or without the Jewish function and cooperation. Active voice: the Gentiles with positive volition at God-consciousness produce the action of the verb. The participle is circumstantial for Gentiles having the opportunity for common grace apart from the client nation Israel.
Translation: “Next [witness] Isaiah is so bold as to say, I [Jesus] was found by those Gentiles who were not looking for me; and I [Jesus] became manifest to those Gentiles who did not ask about me.”
Principle
1. In all of human history, in every generation from Adam to the present, and from the present to the last generation of the Millennium, God does not ignore positive volition at God-consciousness. He provides gospel information on which to be saved by faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.
2. The conventional method of providing such information is the function of client nation missionaries. Throughout all history, beginning with the Exodus, the conventional method of providing information to positive volition at God-consciousness is the function of client nation missionaries.
3. The backup system when a client nation fails includes many other forms of gospel information. There is always a backup system.
4. Obviously Paul has made his point. He is not developing the backup systems in detail to satisfy our curiosity but he is pointing out that Israel has failed. The failure of Israel as a client nation does not hinder the plan of God.
5. The client nation which fails, however, is disciplined. God not only uses other means to reveal Christ in salvation but because of the failure of the client nation that nation is under discipline. This is part of the inversion doctrine of saved Gentiles and unsaved Jews.[4]
Verse 21 – the third documentation, Isaiah 65:2. “But” is the postpositive conjunctive particle de, and it is used here in the adversative sense—to make a contrast between Jews rejecting Christ and Gentiles believing in Him. With it is the prepositional phrase, proj plus the accusative singular of the definite article. The definite article merely indicates the case involved in the noun which is the object of the preposition. “Israel” is not declined, it is an indeclinable noun. This should be translated “face to face to Israel.” Now the Lord Jesus Christ turns to Israel in a special appeal to them to believe in Himself in Isaiah 65:2. Isaiah’s witness, then, actually shows the Lord Jesus Christ evangelising in Israel. That tells us something. Just as the Lord Jesus Christ evangelised in Israel where the Jews said no, obviously then he would evangelise the Gentiles where they had said yes at God-consciousness. So this is the greatest witness of all, for since there are no Gentiles to go to the Jews in their status quo, the big blot-out, Jesus Christ Himself goes to them. This is the ultimate in using Isaiah as a witness, and Paul reminds his brethren according to the flesh, the Jews, that this as, as it were, the greatest insult of all—the God of Israel must personally appeal to the Jews who have the perfect heritage for this.
We have a present active indicative of legw to quote the Lord Jesus Christ. “Face to face with Israel he [Jesus Christ] says.” The present tense is a present of duration, it denotes what happens in the past and continues into the present time. In every generation there are always Jews who reject Jesus Christ as saviour. Jewish negative volition, then, is the issue. Active voice: the subject, the Lord Jesus Christ produces the action of the verb in the constant and persistent evangelisation of the Jews in every generation of history. The indicative mood is declarative for the reality of the evangelisation of the Jew.
Isaiah 65:2 – “I [Jesus Christ] have spread out my hands all day long to a rebellious people [Jew with negative volition toward the gospel and their resultant big blackout].” The key here is the piel perfect from the verb parash. It indicates continuous and intense evangelism to the Jews throughout the entire dispensation of Israel. Parash is a spreading of the hands, it is a desperate appeal to the Jews. The next phrase: “who walk in ways which are not good.” The word walk is the qal active participle of halak—linear acktionsart means they keep on walking in every generation. They are walking in ways which are said to be in the Hebrew, lo tob. Tob is equivalent to a)gaqoj, and a)gaqoj is the way of expressing the plan of God. They are walking in ways which are not the plan of God.
“after their own thoughts” – machashabah, which has the third masculine plural suffix with it, referring to Jews guilty of the big blot-out. The word thoughts here refers to thoughts and machinations.
Hebrew translation: “I [Jesus Christ] have spread out my hands all day long to a rebellious people [Jew with negative volition toward the gospel and their resultant big blackout], who walk in ways which are not good, after their own thoughts.” In other words, they said no to the Lord’s thoughts—to doctrine, the truth.
Romans 10:21 – “All” is the accusative singular from the adjective o(loj which means entire, it means more than that here, it means day in an day out. It means, “I am spending all of my time evangelising the Jews who have already rejected the gospel as presented in Codex #2, and eloquently by the prophets.
“the day” is the accusative singular from the noun h(mera, day in the sense that every generation is made up of X number of days, and it means every day in that generation.
The aorist active indicative follows, e)kpetannumi means to extend to stretch out, it is actually an imploring gesture of invitation. It is the invitation to believe in Christ. The dramatic present tense takes a present reality with the certitude of a past event. Active voice: the Lord Jesus Christ, the God of Israel, performs the action. The indicative mood is declarative for the reality of our Lord’s invitation to Israel for salvation. The “whole day” refers to the entire dispensation of Israel and to every generation in that dispensation.
“unto a disobedient and gainsaying people” – prepositional phrase, proj plus the accusative of laoj. This means “facing a nation.”
The accusative singular present active participle follows, the verb a)peiqew—disobedient. Then we have the accusative singular present active participle of the verb a)ntilegw, which means obstinate. It is used here for the accumulation of scar tissue.
Translation: “But face to face with Israel he [the Lord Jesus Christ] says, I have extended my hands the entire day [the dispensation of Israel] face to face with a disobedient and obstinate [Jews in the big blot-out] nation.”
Principle
1. In effect, the two witnesses, Moses and Isaiah, have testified to the fact that Israel failed as a client nation.
2. The Jews, instead of using their freedom and their spiritual heritage of the law and the prophets to be evangelised and therefore to receive Christ as saviour, they rejected Him and distorted the law and the prophets, the entire Old Testament Torah, especially in relationship to the first advent.
3. The function of a client nation to God demands evangelism prior to production. You cannot represent God in a client nation in any capacity until you have a relationship with God. In other words, you have to be born again before you can be an ambassador for Christ.
4. If the Jews are not born again they cannot serve God while the Jews were under client status.
5. Therefore in every generation of the Jewish Age there was evangelism, but in every generation there was rejection of Christ as saviour so that the minority in every generation were the believers—after the Exodus generation.
6. They accepted our Lord’s Alpha glory but they rejected His Omega glory.
7. Having rejected Christ as saviour under the last three stages of reversionism the Jews possessed hardness of heart.
8. There was no way that the Jews could fulfil their client nation responsibility as evangelists to the Gentiles when they completely blotted out of their souls the first advent of Christ and its salvation implications.