Christ the sure and steady anchor in a sea of unbelief.
”Unbelief is all around you and is demonstrated in so many ways. The simple attitude of placing yourself first in your thoughts and actions demonstrates a certain level of unbelief. But through all this I am working to bring you more and more face-to-face with the real Me so that level of unbelief fades. Gaze at Me in My word, hear Me speak to you as I apply it to you, hear My voice in so many other ways in nature and other interactions, and the delight of pure faith will burn brighter every day.”
Please read Romans 9:30-10:4. So in Paul’s argument God has only chosen a remnant of the people whom He originally had labelled His chosen priesthood (Exodus 19:5) when He made a covenant with them on Mt Sinai. Of course that promise was coupled with their need to keep the covenant requirement ie the law to continue to be part of that promise.
So now he faces the accusation of unfairness that only a remnant would be saved whereas salvation is now open to all gentiles. So his argument goes on to show that many Jews had sought to find a righteousness by simply obeying the law. He speaks in 10:2 of their zeal, so it was not a lack of effort. The problem was that they had missed the original intention of the law which was to lead them to Christ who is the end (telos) of the law. 10:4
So Christ had become a stumbling block to them, preventing them from receiving God’s righteousness which is only by faith. They were so focussed on their own efforts to obey the requirements of the law that they missed it’s original intention, which was always to lead people to meet Christ and believe in Him and His mission.
10:4 is an important statement repeating what Christ had said on the “sermon on the mount” Matt 5:19. Where he clearly stated that He had come to fulfil the law not abolish it. So where does that leave us? Simply put Christ, interpreted the law as it is summed up in Mark 12:30 Love the Lord your God with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength and Love your neighbour as yourself. The law becomes a guideline to how to do this. But it always starts with believing in Jesus and loving Him and flows from there.
On top of that we can remember that while God originally chose His people as the direct descendants of Abraham in the OT, but from the beginning the promise to Abraham was that through his offspring blessing would come to the whole world. So today every believer is one of His chosen people. Being part of that was always dependent on man’s response to God’s loving outreach to him. God offers and woos and we have the joy to respond or reject.
May God bless you all till next week.