Or, The Work of the Word of Christ
Scripture: Romans 10:14-17
Date: April 2, 2023
Speaker: Sean Higgins
While explaining how it came to be that so many in Israel had rejected the good news about Jesus, Paul couldn’t help but uncover his beautiful feet. The prophet Isaiah said preachers of good news had beautiful feet, and Paul was showing his feet, so to speak, which is exactly what they needed.
We don’t stop saying what needs to be said because the person doesn’t want to hear it. We don’t need to start saying a bunch of other things that they do want to hear. It’s counterproductive to say things that don’t have the power to give hearing hoping that those things will give hearing. We say what needs to be said because, especially with the gospel, it is the power of God to give hearing.
Romans 10:14-17 is the second paragraph in a row that, while still giving an account for Israel’s unbelieving, is pointing them to the way of believing. Jesus is Lord, true for the Jew, true for all. “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved” (verse 13). So many were not confessing the Lordship of Jesus, but that is the confession, that is the only hope.
The majority of this paragraph outlines the process of how men come to faith. It starts with them not knowing who to call on and ends with them calling. But verse 16 seems out of place in this evangelism encouragement, and verse 18 picks back up the thread of disbelief through the end of the chapter. Here are glories of the gospel and mercies of God to send us the gospel and the reminder that not all will receive the gospel.
Four questions launch this consideration. They are rhetorical questions in that they all have an obvious answer, but the form (subjunctive mood verbs) presses not just toward the answers but to the necessary sequence of action. Every question starts with “how can” and every answer comes back “they can’t.” Collectively the questions get to inescapable quotation at the end of verse 15.
How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching? And how are they to preach unless they are sent? (Romans 10:14–15a ESV)
Here’s a temporal illustration. If you didn’t trust that someone on the other end would always answer and then be able to send help you wouldn’t ever call 911. In a critical moment you wouldn’t depend on a hit or miss system. There’s an entire network of communication and resources and readiness that make calling on 911 a credible action. And of course it doesn’t matter how available or able the system is, if you had never even heard of 911 you’d not make the call. Someone has to tell you about it, share the number, assure you with stories or stats that 911 works.
The Lord is believable. Why call on anyone who isn’t listening, or who isn’t powerful or faithful? This is why in the previous verses “call on” and “believes” are basically interchangeable; perhaps one is the motivation and the other is the expression, but the two go together.
And logically before someone believes they have to hear. Hear/heard/hearing appear five times in this paragraph. And before the hearing there has to be telling. Verses 14 and 15 use forms of the Greek word κηρύσσω which the ESV (following Tyndale, KJV, NASB) translates as “preaching.” That’s fine, though we’ve got plenty of ideas about preaching and preachers that may not be all beneficial. It’s a public announcement, an official proclamation. It could be used of political heralds, but just as often for prophetic oracles. These are preachers, proclaimers, speech-ers.
In what is arguably my favorite chapter in the Bible, Paul connects for the Corinthians the ideas of gospel, proclaiming/preachung, and Jesus as Lord.
And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing. In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. For what we proclaim (κηρύσσομεν) is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, with ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake. (2 Corinthians 4:3–5 ESV)
Paul publicized “Jesus is Lord.” He was a bearer of tidings, a messenger of these glad tidings.
They need to hear, they need to see. Seeing (the glory) comes by hearing (the gospel).
And such a message isn’t self-originating to the messenger. A messenger is sent (ἀποσταλῶσιν). This is the final question. There is a sender of the preachers. The title “apostle” refers to a sent one.
Paul could have gone off on the nature of the commissioning, which he doesn’t, because it’s not his main concern here. It is worth a minute to say that while every believer has a testimony and while every disciple has disciple-making responsibilities, Romans 10:15 isn’t adding the burden of an evangelistic vocation to every Christian. Pastors “do the work of an evangelist” (2 Timothy 4:5), but even they can be distinguished from apostles, prophets, and evangelists (in Ephesians 4:11). Equipping the saints for the work of ministry is crucial, and even a witness, but it’s not precisely what Paul is referring to in Romans 10.
As it is written, “How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news!” (Romans 10:15b)
This is from Isaiah 52:7. The entire verse associates with Jesus is Lord.
How beautiful upon the mountains
are the feet of him who brings good news,
who publishes peace, who brings good news of happiness,
who publishes salvation,
who says to Zion, “Your God reigns.”
(Isaiah 52:7 ESV)
Isaiah 52 is a good word from the Lord, a word of news that Israel would be delivered from captivity in Babylon and restored to their homeland.
The beautiful … feet are ironic, because the feet of one who traveled—and this image suggests it was a long distance—would be physically beat up, dirty, smelly, unpleasant, anti-beautiful. Hermes was the messenger of the gods, son of Zeus, known for the speed of his winged sandals. But these messengers are men, with all ten toes, and their message is such life that their travel sacrifices belong with a poetic beauty.
How different would your life be had you not heard the good news! In the Isaiah passage, τῶν εὐαγγελιζομένων [τὰ] ἀγαθά, “the ones good-newsing the good (things).” In the next verse it is the actual noun εὐαγγέλιον, from which the Latin * ēvangĕlĭum*, into English as: evangel.
By way of application, how beautiful are the feet of William Tyndale who translated the Word into English words for us to read. How beautiful are the feet of those who lay fiber-optic cable and put up cell towers to get us digital audio copies to play/hear whenever we want. But especially in Romans 10 these preachers/evangelists are sent in person with the GOODS, the treasure.
While the preceding sequence is about those who have not heard, verse 16 is about those who have heard but have not believed.
But they have not all obeyed the gospel. For Isaiah says, “Lord, who has believed what he has heard from us?” (Romans 10:16 ESV)
As seems to be more and more the case, pronouns matter. Who are the they? “They” are always getting blamed for things. In some ways, the obvious answer seems to be the Gentiles. The non-Israel-nations didn’t know the message. But 14-17 are aiming us toward 18-21 which include four verses of OT quotes about how Israel did know and they didn’t listen.
Not all is part of the reason for these chapters.
The quote from Isaiah is from Isaiah 53:1. It brings all the Suffering Servant ideas with it, the one who was “despised and rejected by men” (verse 3), the one esteemed “stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted” (verse 4). “They made his grave with the wicked” (verse 9), he “was numbered with the transgressors” (verse 12). This is a dreadful word, a word of suffering. It was a word that was extremely disagreeable to the Jews even though it was the only word of salvation.
The word obeyed may surprise us; we think of the gospel as something to be believed. But the Greek word is a play on words. Here it is ὑπακούω - “I obey” compared to ακούω - “I hear.” Obeyed actually includes the idea of submitting oneself to what has been delivered. And in fact, the gospel message demands surrender.
Here is the conclusion on the power of the Word.
So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ. (Romans 10:17 ESV)
The word of Christ is of course the word about Christ, but in another way it is from Him. Christ Himself is in the Word of the gospel.
A dehydrated man who keeps pushing the water bottle away doesn’t need an explanation about the hydrological cycle, he needs to drink the water. Paul argued with philosophical idolators (Acts 17); he had answers for doubters. But the power was not in eloquence or evidences per se (see also 1 Corinthians 2:1-5), other than the announcement of the authority of the Lord Jesus.
A good-newsing one is needed. Natural revelation makes accountable but doesn’t bring faith (see Romans 1:18ff). The word causes hearing. So power, directly. Comes through a messenger, but does not require a Council of men, not from the Pope’s chair.
Church, you know God. You have the truth. You have heard what is good, you have heard the GOODS. It is evangel, it is gift, it is treasure. “Of His own will He brought us forth by the word of truth, that w should be a kind of firstfruits of His creatures” (James 1:18).
The word of Christ is beautiful such that we consider the feet of the messengers beautiful who bring it. The word of Christ is dreadful, in that it ruins our own esteem of self-righteousness. Yet the word of Christ is powerful to save.
you have been born again, not of perishable seed but of imperishable, through the living and abiding word of God;
for
“All flesh is like grass
and all its glory like the flower of grass.
The grass withers,
and the flower falls,
but the word of the Lord remains forever.”And this word is the good news that was preached to you. (1 Peter 1:23–25 ESV)
May the Word of Christ do its work!
I was reading Joshua 1 yesterday, and three times there is the call: “be strong and courageous.” This starts as the Lord’s command to Joshua, and becomes the reply of the people to Joshua’s instructions. Christians, you have heard the Word of Christ, the Word is doing its work to birth and build up your faith. The Word reveals His power, the Word works powerfully in you. Meditate on His Word, and be strong and courageous.
May the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, give you a spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him, having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe according to the working of his great might that he worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places. (Ephesians 1:17-20, ESV)