Don’t Miss The Point

Apr 20, 2023

Romans 10 is a powerful passage.

As Paul writes to Rome, an audience with both Jews and Gentiles, he points out the fact that God still wants to see the Jewish people saved, even though they have largely dismissed Christ as Messiah:

Brother, my heart's desire and prayer to God for them is that they may be saved. For I bear them witness that they have a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge. For, being ignorant of the righteousness of God, and seeking to establish their own, they did not submit to God's righteousness. For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes… because, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved. For the Scripture says, “Everyone who believes in him will not be put to shame.” For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; for the same Lord is Lord of all, bestowing his riches on all who call on him. For “everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.”

- Romans 10:1-4, 9-13

Paul longs for the Jews that have been persecuting him to come to the knowledge of the truth. Even though they have been waiting for a Messiah for years and years, they are too focused on the righteousness found in the law to receive the freedom that is found in righteousness through faith in Christ.

It’s heartbreaking to imagine a people finally having their prayer answered, to only be too blinded to see Jesus for who he is. It’s as if Christ came to take off the shackles of the law, and they’re desperately trying to put them back on.

Many first century Jews missed the point. They liked the familiarity and control the law gave them. The freedom that Christ offered, that might seem like a no-brainer 2000 years later, was scary. So they missed it. They wrote Jesus off as crazy. They waited for someone different to come. They waited for God to arrive in the box they had made for him. And that box certainly wouldn’t be a cross.

Easter was only a few weeks ago and yet some of us are just like the Jewish people of the first century. We came to church and sang songs about the tomb being empty. We celebrated the power he has to break the chains of our sin. And now here we are, a few weeks later, desperately trying to put the shackles back on.

All too often we sing about freedom on a Sunday and then run right back to what the world has for us on Monday morning.

Maybe it’s not as obvious as the Jewish people, maybe we’re not denouncing Christ himself. But we wake up and choose the doubt, fear, pride, anger, lust, distraction, and laziness, over the freedom that Christ has for us. Their story is our story friend. We’re missing the point. We’re putting the shackles back on by running back to what God told us wasn’t for us.

But here’s the good news. Just as Paul says to the first century Romans, God wants us to be saved.

He wants us to sing with zeal on Sunday morning and then wake up Monday morning changed. And that doesn’t happen through legalism and shaming. It happens through the freedom of deeply believing that Jesus Christ can and will change you. Do you believe it? And not just on Sunday morning when the music swells and the temptation of sin is at bay. Do you believe He loves you and chooses you and will change you in the quiet of this boring weekday morning?

All you have to do is believe in the saving grace of Jesus. And seek Him each and every day. Know the person of Jesus more. And he’ll do the work of changing you.