Your Story is too small: Salvation and the Old Story of a Surprising God - Romans 10:4-13

⁴For Christ is the end of the law so that there may be righteousness for everyone who believes. ⁵Moses writes concerning the righteousness that comes from the law, that “the person who does these things will live by them.” ⁶But the righteousness that comes from faith says, “Do not say in your heart, ‘Who will ascend into heaven?’” (that is, to bring Christ down) ⁷“or ‘Who will descend into the abyss?’” (that is, to bring Christ up from the dead). ⁸But what does it say? “The word is near you, on your lips and in your heart” (that is, the word of faith that we proclaim); ⁹because if you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. ¹⁰For one believes with the heart and so is justified, and one confesses with the mouth and so is saved. ¹¹The scripture says, “No one who believes in him will be put to shame.” ¹²For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; the same Lord is Lord of all and is generous to all who call on him. ¹³For, “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.” 

I know many struggle with Paul – he’s hard. It’s biblical to think so. The Apostle Peter who had a number of difficult encounters with him said it best, “Bear in mind that our Lord's patience means salvation, just as our dear brother Paul also wrote you with the wisdom that God gave him. He writes the same way in all his letters, speaking in them of these matters. His letters contain some things that are hard to understand, which ignorant and unstable people distort, as they do the other Scriptures, to their own destruction.” (2 Peter 3:15-16). Okay, we’ve read the warning on the label – but this is medicine for our salvation, so we have to take it. And trust me; the Book of Romans is a big pill! This is what Paul says we need to know about salvation.

            1.      Salvation is about what we read

For Paul, salvation is a story of the whole Bible – not 1/3. Paul quotes from the OT four times in this discussion of salvation: Leviticus 18:5 in vs. 5; Deut. 30:14 in vs. 6; Isaiah 28:16 in vs. 11; and Joel 2:32 in vs. 13. The gospels (which means “good news”) are particular books in our Bible but The Gospel is NOT only a genre but the epic story of our salvation – a much bigger thing than any one book, a much more harrowing story with twists and turns, a lot more characters, geographies, subplots, and themes. It’s the story of the God who created us out of his good pleasure, who allowed us the freedom to go our own way even though it harmed us, enslaved us, but who loved us enough to pursue us relentlessly and to accomplish for us what we were incapable of doing for ourselves – he died and rose again. Paul will later say in Romans 15:4 says, “For everything that was written in the past was written to teach us, so that through endurance and the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope.” This is why we read the Old and New Testament – they belong to the same story and this is why he asks in vs. 8, “But what does it say?” and quotes Scripture throughout.

So we need to read it – all of it, thoroughly, for salvation is at stake. In the Old Testament Moses urged the Israelites to tie portions of Scripture on their arms and foreheads (called, phylacteries), to place it on their doorposts, to talk about them at home and away, as reminder of what the law was for – called the Shema Deut. 6:5-9, which Jesus quotes as the greatest commandment and representing the whole of the law: “You shall love the LORD your God, with all your hear, all your soul, and with all your mind.” These people understood that Scripture should be central to knowing God, themselves, their salvation. The symbolism of wrapping one’s body in scripture seems apparent enough – the Bible is to connect directly to our lives, our thoughts, our comings and goings, our actions and what we love. That Scripture portions were tied both on the head and the arm is instructive – this is a story for both head and heart.

But more than just OT practice, we need to read and learn the OT because Jesus read it, used it to talk about God and God’s plan, it was his platform for ministry, his response to temptation, his solace when he understood the crucifixion - his own transfiguration featured two men who embody the OT (Moses and Elijah, the law and the prophets). Jesus will even go so far as to claim the authority of Torah in the sermon on the mount as both its author and interpreter.

This is why Paul says that Jesus is the goal of the law, in vs. 4. Another way of saying this is to say that, Jesus, himself, is the Word. So, if Paul says that Jesus is the culmination of the law, then why does he continue to quote from it – that is, the law. Why not simply be a NT church? Because Christ has come to make clear the true purpose of the law, and used it to describe himself and God’s work. 

My point is not to denigrate the OT but direct how we read it. Similarly, Luther argued that Christ was the sole content of the Bible.  He likened the words of Scripture to the swaddling clothes within which Christ lay and, therefore, insisted that Scripture must be interpreted Christocentrically.

So the OT should inform our relationship with God, our theology and doctrine, our ethic and hospitality. Not in a simple way for there is much that remains past as well as much that remains present. How do we discern that? We discern through Jesus’ teaching as well as his death, burial and resurrection.

Robert Capon, an Episcopal priest, gives a helpful example of what I am saying with respect to why we should read the whole Bible and how we should read it with Jesus in mind. When you watch a movie, you don’t stop 10 minutes into the film and try to decide what it means. You cannot fairly say anything about the movie until you have seen the whole thing and hold it in your mind as a whole piece. And that is what needs to be done with the Bible. It has to be seen as one thing. So I encourage you to see biblical authority, not as a matter of word-by-word inspiration, but as scenes in a movie which work only as a whole.

A simple example is that you cannot fully understand what the very first words in the Bible, “In the beginning,” mean until you see all the other occurrences of the image of “beginning” in the rest of the film. You can’t properly understand God’s activity in the beginning until you hear John say of Jesus, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God.” And finally, at the end, where you have in Revelation, “I am the beginning and the end, the alpha and the omega,” and so on.
So as the movie progresses, we find that in the beginning was Christ, the incarnate Word. You have clues woven into the movie such as, “He chose us in him before the foundations of the world.” When we see the whole picture, we can see what the director was doing with the film, what he was getting across to us, from the beginning. Before anything was made, it was all already done within the Trinity. The whole thing was accomplished before it started and the whole thing was salvation, not science, not a political action committee, not hate speech, but a story about God who knew from the beginning and who would make it so in the end.

That bring us to our next point.

               2.       Salvation is about who God is.

For Paul the OT is a gospel text and the God we find there is a gospel God and that God was in Jesus Christ! That’s what the early Christians meant when they said Jesus is LORD (which is not the same thing as saying Jesus is God). LORD means YHWH. So Jesus then is not one who challenges that God, satisfies that wrathful God, but is that God. That’s why the Shema is important, “Remember, the LORD your God is one”and why Paul states in vs. that Jesus is the "same LORD."

The point of Paul’s use of the OT is to underscore that God’s ways and intentions in the Christian message or consistent with God’s ways and intentions in the past. This God is that God. Otherwise, you have a schizophrenic God, dual personality disorder. That’s why how God treats the Jews matters, and why God’s intent with the law matters.

Salvation is about the one God. So Paul in vs. 6-7 argues that just as Moses tried to convince the Israelites that the observance of the law did not demand that one scale the heights or cross the seas, so Paul plays on Moses’ words, applying them to Christ himself. The heights have been scaled and the depths have been plumbed, for Christ has come down to the world of humanity and has been raised from the dead. To attain the status of uprightness before God, you are not being asked to climb to heaven or cross the vast sea of your own sinfulness; but only speak, to accept in faith what has already been done for humanity and to associate with Christ incarnate and raised from the dead. God has done what we can’t do for ourselves – which despite its failure, Paul says, is what the law was intended for in the first place. It was always meant as a gift from a gracious God.

           3.      Salvation is about anyone and everyone who can’t.

Paul recognizes that religion has the frightening ability to create insiders and outsiders.

The tragic point in story centers around the fact that the rejection of Jesus by many Israelites did not occur because they were not religious enough. They were very religious, and that perhaps brings us close to the root of the matter. They were so religious that they did not want to settle only for something God could give them. They wanted to be religious enough so that they could become partners with God in the matter of their salvation. 

How we want to believe that our relationship with God is due, in no small measure, to our own religious value – to being good enough, smart enough, cute enough, to be worthy in God’s eyes. And in that moment, the sin of idolatry has flared back to life. That’s Paul’s point in Romans that the law was taken prisoner by sin, forced to do sin’s bidding. Our temptation is to be something other than the trusting and grateful creatures we were meant to be. The temptation that Christians often undergo is that they feel they must, and can, earn Christ’s presence. Yet, Paul says, that Jesus is as near as heart and mouth, and he calls us, not to help him but only to acknowledge him. 

So, how do we make sense of Christianity’s claim that salvation is open to everyone but only through Jesus Christ?

The writer Lee Strobel describes two clubs to help explain the point. The first club only lets people in who have earned their membership. They must have accomplished something that makes them worthy, attractive, worth recruiting, obtained superior wisdom, or fulfilled a list of demands and requirements before they’re considered for admission. Despite their efforts, many people just won’t make the grade and will be turned away. This is not what is meant by Christianity’s claim that Jesus is the only way of salvation. 

The second club says, “Anybody who wants in can come in. Men, women, black, white, old, young, rich, poor, even enemies- whoever seeks entrance can have it through repentance and faith in Christ. Just see him – he’s paid your membership fee, he’s fulfilled all the requirements, he welcomes you, and values your membership. We won’t turn anyone away who asks to come in, but we’ll leave it up to you, whether you want to join.” That’s what Paul is saying to this morning. So which belief system is snobbish and exclusive? The door of self-righteousness or the door of the church, which is Jesus Christ – It’s open to anyone who wants to come in.

This has been God’s plan all along!