The Goal of the Law Part 2 - Romans 10:3-4

Introduction

Last week we considered verses 1 and 2 of chapter 10, in which Paul states his prayer-desire for Israel, and then supports such a prayer-desire by proving that they are in fact in need of salvation. He demonstrates this first by appealing to an ignorant zeal for God, an eager desire that is devoid of true saving knowledge. This week, Paul will lean in to that true saving knowledge in verses 3 and 4 as we continue our study.

Verse 3 - Israel’s self-righteous self-establishment

In verse 3 Paul further cements his proposition of the plight of Israel. He expands the idea of zeal apart from knowledge by specifying that they specifically did not have knowledge of God’s righteousness and sought to establish their own.

For Paul, zeal without knowledge is comprised of two things, a positive and a negative.

Let’s start with the negative.

First, they did not know about God’s righteousness. This is an interesting statement, and many people have offered many different interpretations. It is challenging because we would affirm with Paul that God’s righteousness is expressly and clearly revealed both in nature to all men and in the Law and the Prophets specifically to Israel. So what is meant here? If we consider some different translations, we may find our answer. In my study of the passage, I found that the Lexham English Bible was the most faithful to the original Greek. They translate this simply “ignoring.” For, ignoring God’s righteousness, and seeking to establish their own. I think this best captures Paul’s sense as well as abides within the larger theology of the book of Romans. This issue for Israel was less a lack of knowledge of the truth, or passive ignorance, but rather rejecting the knowledge of the truth, or what we would call active ignorance. They had the truth and chose actively to reject it. This speaks further to the truth of the parable of the vineyard and vinegrower that we looked at over the last few weeks. The blessing of the vine and vineyard had been given to them and time and time again they rejected, abused, and otherwise opposed the blessing, as well as those who were sent to warn them, culminating in their crucifixion of the Son of the vinegrower Himself.

For us today, there is a great amount of willful ignorance of the things of God and particularly of His righteousness. There is less excuse today than ever before to be ignorant of the truth of the gospel. The Bible exists today, in whole or in part, in at least 3,300 languages. Almost anyone can access the Bible in a language they at least understand, if not in their native tongue, through the power of the internet. In the US alone, if you can access the internet or walk to your local library, you can access the Bible. This ought to, on the one hand, make the rank ignorance of the righteousness of God in our nation both surprising and appalling. But on the other hand, we should expect such a thing, for if even the ancient people of God would be so willfully ignorant of His righteousness, how much more should we expect our modern world to be just as ignorant?

We need not look far to see that willful ignorance of God’s righteousness is rampant. Our culture seeks desperately, on a daily basis, to find righteousness anywhere else other than in Jesus Christ and His gospel. According to our culture we are made right by being true to our authentic selves, by adhering to whatever the social justice flavor of the day is, by making reparations, or repenting of white guilt, or by being productive or by feeding the poor and helping the homeless, or by gaining as many assets and as much capital as possible. The deception of the human heart is profound: it will willfully ignore God’s true righteousness forever, to it’s own hurt.

But there can be no true vacuum of righteousness. If God’s righteousness is to be ignored, that void must be filled by the establishment of another righteousness, a weak and anemic alternative. Such an alternative was the righteousness established by Israel as we move into the second clause of verse 3. Listen to the words of John Owen as he describes it:

Works of John Owen: Volume 5 Chapter 2: The Nature of Justifying Faith

Again: some there were at first, and such still continue to be, who rejected not this way absolutely, and in the notion of it, but comparatively, as reduced to practice; and so perished in their unbelief. They judged the way of their own righteousness to be better, as that which might be more safely trusted unto,—as more according unto the mind of God and unto his glory. So did the Jews generally, the frame of whose minds the apostle represents, Rom. 10:3, 4. And many of them assented unto the doctrine of the gospel in general as true, howbeit they liked it not in their hearts as the best way of justification and salvation, but sought for them by the works of the law.

How might we qualify and quantify this self-established righteousness? John Calvin provides us with three observations by which we may categorize these opposing righteousnesses:

Commentary on the Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Romans Chapter 10

Notice the contrast between the righteousness of God and that of men. We first see, that they are opposed to one another, as things wholly contrary, and cannot stand together. It hence follows, that God’s righteousness is subverted, as soon as men set up their own. And again, as there is a correspondence between the things contrasted, the righteousness of God is no doubt his gift; and in like manner, the righteousness of men is that which they derive from themselves, or believe that they bring before God.

Let’s dig into this.

First, human righteousness is opposed to divine righteousness. According to Calvin they are wholly contrary to each other and cannot stand together. Therefore, only righteousness that is completely divine is completely acceptable to God. This is why righteousness that is acceptable to God must find it’s cause and origin in God Himself. This contrast therefore necessitates a Messiah who is truly divine, and therefore possesses divine righteousness, and more than that, is in fact it’s author.

So Israel, and all who set up their own righteousness before God rather than receiving His by faith, exclude themselves from truly right standing before God until they, to use the language of the old divines, divest themselves of whatever righteousness they may think that they bring to the heavenly courtroom and instead clothe themselves wholly in the righteousness of God, found only in Christ.

Calvin’s second observation pairs with and mirrors the first: as soon as men turn away from God as the source of their righteousness before Him, they subvert and otherwise wholly deny Him by trusting in another righteousness, whether of their own creation or someone else’s. To put it simply, there is not room at the table for multiple righteousness at the table of God’s judgment. As soon as you try to offer your own, you nullify God’s. And likewise, when God offers His righteousness, it nullifies all others, both by this principle of exclusivity, and perhaps more practically by virtue of it’s sheer glory. All other righteousness is dull and lifeless when compared to the vibrant and vital righteousness of God in Christ.

Israel, therefore, excluded God’s righteousness as they set up their own.

Finally, Calvin observes that the two righteousnesses, that of God and that of Israel, are, in essence and nature, of their source. God’s righteousness is thoroughly of God. Human righteousness is thoroughly of humans. Therefore each righteousness bears the marks of it’s source. God’s righteousness is perfect, holy, full of grace and mercy, given in an infinite abundance. Man’s righteousness is flawed at best, impure, full of itself and only useful for the one who produces, or attempts to produce it.

No wonder Israel’s plight is so grim. For centuries, they sought to build a system of righteous deeds and law fulfillment that would bring them close to God. They did so with zeal and fervor! But the tragedy is that all their zeal caused them to stumble over the One Man who carried divine righteousness in His very being, the one who exuded that bright and glorious righteousness that can save because it is God’s righteousness, and because God is perfect and perfectly accepting of all his perfections, he cannot help but accept his own righteousness to himself. If, therefore, in Christ, men are clothed not with their own righteousness but with that of God, God cannot but accept them and receive them to himself, as he would receive his own son.

Charles Hodge summarizes the teaching this way by providing an amplified paraphrase of the verse:

A Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans Commentary

Being ignorant of that righteousness which God has provided, and which he bestows, and endeavouring to establish their own, they refused to accept of his

What Paul is saying then is that from the outset, Israel had God’s righteousness readily available to them by faith. They needed only look to the example of their first father Abraham to understand what God expected of them: believe Him, and it will be counted to them as righteousness. Yet they always sought righteousness on their own terms rather than on God’s terms. Whether a golden calf or Ashteroth poles or high places or pagan altars in the temple of God or the teachings of the scribes and the Pharisees, the history of the nation is rife with examples of Israel looking, quite literally, everywhere else for righteousness other than the one place it can be found: in the life, death, and resurrection of the Promised Messiah.

The culmination of these two realities is expressed by Paul in his third clause in verse 3: they did not subject themselves to the righteousness of God. In their active and willful ignorance, they did not subject or submit themselves to God’s righteousness. Implicit in this statement is this: true righteousness can only be received by humble submission to God. This humble submission is the essence of faith. It is the acknowledgement that nothing you have done, are doing, will do or can do can obtain the righteousness that God requires. The righteousness must be given by God and received in faith, through humble submission to His will for salvation, namely that it come through Christ alone.

So much of what Paul says in Romans 9 and 10 has profound implications for our evangelism. It is our responsibility as we seek to proclaim the gospel to a lost and dying world that only the righteousness given by God in the person and benefits of Jesus Christ the Son can save. Only God’s righteousness is acceptable in His sight, and therefore, to be acceptable in His sight, you must only receive that righteousness by the faith of Abraham. This makes receiving the gospel simultaneously the easiest and hardest thing a person can do. It’s easy because it requires absolutely no effort. You simply believe. But it’s hard because it requires us to lay down our own work, our own obedience, all the “good” things we do and bring, and leave them at the foot of the cross. That requires humility. It requires you to see your pride as repulsive and antithetical to grace. And that’s hard. So hard that many people who hear the gospel reject it for that reason only. It’s humiliating and embarrassing to admit that you can’t save yourself. That you can’t cultivate the righteousness necessary to stand before God.

God’s acceptable righteousness must be received from God, in faith, by virtue of union with Christ. Works of the law won’t get you there. They will always fall short. The tragic irony is this: the very same law that Israel sought to follow to earn their righteousness, when rightly appropriated, will lead inevitably and infallibly and immutably to the true source of righteousness: Christ. And that is Paul’s focus in verse 4.

Verse 4- Christ as the goal of the law

By not subjecting themselves to God’s righteousness, Israel did not subject themselves to Christ. Paul calls back to Romans 3 here, where you may recall that he said that apart from the law, the righteousness of God has been revealed, namely, the righteousness which comes by faith in Christ.

Paul effectively chastises Israel for failing to grasp the point of the Law and by extension the entire Old Testament. Notice the word here translated end. This is the Greek word telos, and I’ve referenced it before in this and other series. It is translated in a variety of ways, but Paul’s use of it here seems to indicate that he intends us to understand it in reference to completion, perfection, or fulfillment. In other words, Christ is the completion of the law, the perfection of the law, and the fulfillment of the law. Sometimes it’s easy to read this and say “If Jesus is the end of the law, then now that He is here, the Law is over and done with and irrelevant,” and that’s the type of teaching that leads us, at best, to misread the Old Testament and at worst to unhitch from it. Rather, Paul actually magnifies the Law by making this statement. The Law and the Prophets and the whole Old Testament become crucial for a sound and orthodox Christology. To put it another way, with a tip of the hat to the young Puritan William McEwen, without the Old Testament you do not understand the glory and fullness of Jesus Christ.

But we must not misunderstand Paul here. For Christ to be the goal of the Law means that He was always the ultimate intention of the Law. In other words, everything God ordained and decreed in the moral and civil and ceremonial laws of the Old Testament is intended to find it’s culmination in Christ. Let me illustrate this.

I live in Santa Clarita. Santa Clarita has rightly been described as nothing more than a parking lot for Six Flags Magic Mountain. As you drive north on the 5 through Santa Clarita, once you come over the hill at McBean Parkway you can see a large sign off to the left announcing that this is where Six Flags Magic Mountain is. You get off on the appropriately named Magic Mountain Parkway exit, turn left, and go about a half mile and you get to Six Flags. In so doing, you go right past that sign, which actually rises up next to the freeway out of the parking lot of a Wendy’s restaurant. Now this sign illustrates an important truth for us about the Old Testament. The massive sign is important, even essential for you to arrive at the park. If you don’t follow the arrows on the sign, you won’t arrive at the park. The sign is not the park, and the park is not the sign, but you can’t have the park if you don’t have and understand the sign. This is the relationship that the Law has to Christ. It is an important and essential part of arriving at Christ and fully understanding Christ. It is not Christ, but you cannot get to Christ without understanding the Law.

Here’s a funny addendum to the illustration. As I am known to do, I was enjoying a Baconator at the Wendy’s where this massive sign is located. I was sitting there, enjoying the Baconator, when a rather loud family walks in, marches right up to the counter, and asks the kid taking the orders if this is Six Flags. Based on the accent, these folks were not from California. Perhaps Texas if I had to guess. The kid, looking a bit stunned, says “No? This is Wendy’s? Six Flags is down the street.” And the woman goes, I kid you not, “This is where the sign is! This should be Six Flags!” After a few moments of this back and forth the kid was finally able to explain to these people that just because the sign is here doesn’t mean that the park is here. Confused and disgruntled, they left the restaurant and I can only assume they found their way to the park. This story further illustrates, rather humorously, a tragic truth about Israel: they were so fixated on the sign that they missed the park. They were so fixated on their own righteousness through the Law that they missed the whole point of the Law: Christ Himself.

This tragic blindness to the true intent of the Old Testament speaks with remarkable incision into our world.

I have sounded this alarm in the past, and will do so again today. A surprising and dangerous number of people fail to understand the purpose and goal of the Old Testament the way that Paul understands it here.

On the one hand, you have the narcissistic spiritualist interpretation. For these people, David is you, and you are David, and Goliath is whatever first world problem you are facing. God exists only to help you slay Goliath like he helped David slay Goliath. This interpretation will lead you to moral therapeutic deism, the favorite heresy of the visible post-modern church. Moral therapeutic deism teaches you that God only exists to help you be a good person and to help you feel better about yourself, and is generally unconcerned about anyone or anything other than you, and is only relevant in your life when you call him up for help to be a better person or to feel better about yourself. You’ll see a lot of preachers on TV or YouTube who preach the Bible and particularly the Old Testament this way. I’ll name names. This type of false teaching marks the “ministries” of Joseph Prince, Steven Furtick, Joel Osteen, and TD Jakes, to name a handful. These men will give you a shallow, feel-good type of teaching that misses the entire point of the Scriptures. This type of teaching needs to be marked and avoided.

But on the other end of the spectrum, you have another method of interpretation that also misses the point of the Scriptures. I call this type of teaching rational empiricist interpretation. This type of teaching came out of the Enlightenment and essentially teaches that only those directly observable interpretations are valid. Again, to apply this to the story of David, David was a real boy with a real sling, and it was probably made out of leather, and the smooth stones were characteristic of brooks that you might find in that part of the world, and Goliath was a mutant, and maybe he was descended from the Nephilim, and the reason David had 5 stones was because ancient near eastern legend said that there were five giants, including Goliath, from Gath, and David was preparing to slay all of them. The moral of the story is this: David sets the example for us because he had a courageous faith in God. This type of teaching is equally dangerous.

What is the issue here? Scenario 1 paints David as a type of you. David is you and you are David. Scenario 2 paints David as a merely historical figure who did some good and courageous things through the power of faith. But both ways of reading David miss Paul’s point in Romans 10:4: The goal of Samuel’s record of David is Christ. It’s not you. It’s not David.

Listen to how Joel Beeke handles this narrative:

By studying the text in context, we learn that David had been recently anointed by Samuel as the king of Israel and filled with the Spirit. We see here the God-centered theme of God providing a savior to deliver his people from their enemies, as he did through the judges and King Saul. We also recognize the theme of God doing mighty works through what seems weak and despicable or rejected by men. In the covenantal context, we discover that God later promised David that his offspring would reign perpetually under GOd’s love, described by Isaiah as “the sure mercies of David.” We perceive that David is a type of Christ, who is called David by the prophets.

David’s battle with Goliath was not a personal duel but a contest of champions representing two peoples. Goliath was the champion of the wicked, the power that threatened the people of God with enslavement and death. We hear echoes of the battle between the seed of the woman and the seed of the Serpent. The story reaches a theological high point in David’s proclamation that he would kill Goliath by God’s power for the glory of God’s name. His words contain a promise for God’s people: “The battle belongs to the Lord.” David’s victory became the victory of all God’s people, who celebrated him in their songs of praise.

All these factors converge to transform a tale of courage into a revelation of God’s plan of salvation for his people through his King, for his glory. God’s people face a terrifying enemy. Christ, though seemingly insignificant and weak, has won the decisive victory over the champion of evil. Now we, His army, can press on while clinging to the promise that “the battle is the Lord’s.” Seated at the right hand of God and present with us in his Spirit, he will lead us to victory over the Devil and all his hosts. Fear not, people of God! Our David, Christ the Son of David, has won the contest and reigns forever!

The goal of David is Christ, the end of David is Christ. He is the end of the law and the prophets and the writings and all that the Scriptures contain. We must constantly read our Bibles with this in mind, looking for the ever-present Christ at the end of every verse and every line.

And it was a failure to do this that brought condemnation on Israel. They failed to understand that all this was pointing them to the one promised to Eve and to Abraham and to David.

In conclusion, this is the heart of Paul’s lament for Israel. The reason that he prophetically and pastorally prays for Israel, desiring that they be saved, is because they missed the point of all the blessings they received in 9:1-5. They failed to arrive at the intended goal of the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the law, the temple service, the promises, and the fathers. They failed to arrive at Christ, both before the incarnation and after.

Paul weeps and Paul prays, but Paul does not lose heart. He knows better than anyone else that even the most ignorantly zealous Israelite can be saved, for such was he. He knows better than anyone else that if Israel simply believes upon Christ they will be saved. And Paul is confident that this will take place in fulfillment of all of God’s good promises to Israel.

Paul will now turn his attention to the mechanics of saving faith, as he teaches us how this righteousness is accomplished and applied in the life of the believer.