Romans 9:30 - 10:13
Paul develops this contrast in three somewhat parallel paragraphs (9:30–33; 10:1–4; 10:5–13). In each he accuses Israel as a whole of missing God’s righteousness in Christ, the only righteousness that can save (see 10:1, 9–10), because of its preoccupation with works and the law of Moses. An approach to the law informed by right knowledge would have led them to Christ and true righteousness, for the law itself points forward to Christ (10:4).
Paul’s question What then shall we say? (30) introduces the new stage in his argument. It suggests that he will be dealing with an issue raised by his previous discussion. This issue is the unexpected development in salvation-history that he has just mentioned (24–29): Jews, God’s ‘chosen people’, are left as only a remnant, while Gentiles, once far from God, are now being called ‘sons of the living God’.
In 10:1–4, Paul elaborates on this ‘stumbling’ of the Jews over Jesus Christ. After reasserting his deep longing for the salvation of his Jewish brothers and sisters (see 9:1–3), Paul faults the Jews for not having a knowledge of God’s ways and purposes that matches their undoubted zeal. To use the race imagery of 9:30–33, Israel were running strenuously, but they were not heading towards the true finishing line of the race.
Paul’s third statement of the contrast between the two ways of righteousness (10:5–13) has two main purposes. It uses the OT itself to reassert that the key difference between them is the difference between ‘doing’ (the law) and ‘believing’ (the gospel) (5–10) and reinforces the ‘universalistic’ dimension of the righteousness of God by faith (11–13; cf. 10:4b: for everyone who believes). Paul’s quoting of the OT apparently ‘against itself’ in vs 5–8 has been the topic of considerable controversy and discussion. We cannot avoid the problem by eliminating the contrast between vs 5 and 6 (Cranfield, for instance, would translate ‘and’ at the beginning of v 6) or by denying that Paul is truly quoting the OT in v 6–8). Rather, we should understand Paul to be teasing out a fuller meaning of the passages he quotes in the light of Christ’s coming. Lv. 18:5 may stand as a valid expression of the righteousness that is by the law because it focuses on what was characteristic of the Mosaic legal system: doing. Only by obedience, Moses repeatedly emphasized, could a Jew live, i.e. enjoy God’s covenant blessings. Taken on its own terms, severed from the undergirding promise of God, the Mosaic law offers the possibility of righteousness and life only if it is truly done. By focusing so narrowly on the Mosaic law the Jews had put themselves in the position of being able to find life and salvation only by ‘doing’ it—an impossible task, as Paul has made clear (cf. 3:9–20).
It is precisely the ready availability of the righteousness that is by faith, in contrast to the impossibility of achieving the righteousness that is by the law, that is the point of Paul’s selective quotations from Dt. 30:12–14 in vs 6–8. The Deuteronomy passage encourages obedience to the law of God by reminding the Israelites that the word of God’s law is near, and that there is no need to ascend to heaven or into the deep (Paul may here have mixed an allusion to Ps. 107:26 with his quotation) to find it. Paul can apply the text to Christ’s death and resurrection (6–7) and to the word of faith, the gospel (8), because he sees in Christ the culmination of the law (4). What the OT attributed to the law Paul now understands to be ‘fulfilled’ in Christ and the gospel message: the ready availability of the means of righteousness. To continue to strive to fulfil the Mosaic law as a means of righteousness—as the Jews were doing—is to miss the fact that God has now brought near his word to people in the message of the gospel of Christ’s death and resurrection.
First, because God has already ‘done’ what is needed to secure righteousness, all that people are required to do is to believe. Secondly, the gospel is ‘near’ for everybody, not just for the Jews.