It might be said with a degree of humor that the Apostle to the Gentiles Paul was an "honorary Gentile" in the sense that he was Christian, that racially speaking Christianity was always destined to be a primarily Gentile and little Jewish religion, and that he more than any other man was used by God to make it that way, even though he himself was racially Jewish. Paul as a matter of theology of course would identify as neither a Gentile nor a Jew but as a Christian. Based on his writings, we might imagine that he would assert his Jewish ancestry only if someone were trying to use it to deny him or another soul participation in raceless faith-based Christianity. As a habit, he asserts rather his race-independent Christian identity which is the only identity that he valued. This is why when talking primarily to Gentiles, he addresses them as "brethren," at the start of Romans Chapter 10, because they are his Christian brothers. Note too how in verse 10:1 that he speaks of stumbling "Israel" as a group of which he has observance but no participation.
"Brethren, my heart's desire and prayer to God for Israel is, that they might be saved. For I bear them record that they have a zeal of God, but not according to knowledge. For they being ignorant of God's righteousness, and going about to establish their own righteousness, have not submitted themselves unto the righteousness of God. For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to every one that believeth." (Rm. 10:1-4). Paul's warm temperament and his philosophy toward the seeking of Christian conversions caused him to write and speak as respectfully as possible but, unlike many today, he never let it get in the way of his telling the cold hard truth. Unlike today's preachers he was never after the money of the Jews or of their admirers, and only wanted them to like him enough to consider Jesus and the true Jesus at that. The Gentiles who read or heard this letter were to follow his example. Therefore as in Chapter 9, in Chapter 10 he follows up a compliment with an array of criticism that would have cut a non-believing Jewish listener to the bone, all predicated on their being in the religion of Judaism instead of the religion of Christianity. "Ignorance" has an insulting connotation but is really not an insulting word unless one chooses to persist in ignorance after having a chance to gain knowledge. In Acts 17 and Romans 1, the Gentiles were painted by Paul as having been ignorant before they had been presented with Christ, and they had indeed been twice-over ignorant in that they had not even had the Law of Moses from which to derive a lesser indication of the true God's nature. Yet we must separate the two ignorances. The Law was "from God" but not "of God" per Jesus in Matthew 19, and Paul has expounded this in Romans. As he effectually concluded in Romans 3, the Before Christ Jews had been "in no wise" soteriologically less ignorant or better off than the Before Christ Gentiles, "for we have before proved both Jews and Gentiles, that they are all under sin" (Rm 3:9). So in Scripture and in the Romans 1 recap we have the ignorance of Mosaic Law that in B.C. times affected Gentiles, whereas the Jews had what was then a somewhat better indication of God's nature. However, by far more importantly, in the same B.C. times we had the ignorance of and lack of Christ which affected everyone, both Gentiles and Jews equally. Now when we get to the composition of the Epistle to the Romans, written after Christ's ministry and during Paul's third missionary journey, all that matters is whether a human being knows Christ or does not know Christ. When looking at the Gentiles and Jews, how the tables have turned from the Mosaic ignorance! In early Romans Paul darkly reminisced about the former, but now he states the current situation as one in which it is the Jews who are "ignorant" and he tells this to the Gentiles of Rome. The implication here and throughout the Epistle is that it is the Jews who are generally ignorant about Jesus Christ, and the Gentiles who are generally knowledgeable about Jesus Christ and becoming more so every day. Whether the Gentiles have resolved their Mosaic Law ignorance is relatively immaterial and has no impact on their righteousness or their salvation.
From Romans 10, verses 5 to 10, it seems that the Christian Gentiles now have something much better than the Law to focus on, which is both free and ready-made for them: "For Moses describeth the righteousness which is of the law, That the man which doeth those things shall live by them. But the righteousness which is of faith speaketh on this wise, Say not in thine heart, Who shall ascend into heaven? (that is, to bring Christ down from above:) Or, Who shall descend into the deep? (that is, to bring up Christ again from the dead.) But what saith it? The word is nigh thee, even in thy mouth, and in thy heart: that is, the word of faith, which we preach; That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation."
Thus in place of the works-based Law, a road arduous to the point of practical intraversability, all Christians have instead the royal road of faith in Jesus. The Gentiles were in a sense given this better road more so than the Jews because they lacked the heavy social impetus to try taking the human legality route just as many generations before had. And what exactly is mild-mannered but honest Paul saying about the Jews who continue to take the Jewish road as it were, in an attempt to find righteousness before God? He is fearlessly telling them in these ten verses that 1) the road of Jewish Law is your illegitimate road and not God's legitimate road; 2) Your religion of Judaism is false; and 3) You have learned nothing.
To tell the proud Jews that every religious action that they have ever taken has been at base wrong and, now more than ever, is not only entirely ineffective but offensive to God, this must have seemed very radical. It was to discredit every old Jewish man who had spent a lifetime studying and meticulously observing. Yet as shown in Romans 4, the law of faith preceded their law as evidenced by how righteousness was credited to their earliest ancestor Abraham. Over and above that fact written in the mutually-accredited book of Genesis, in the New Covenant this ancient truth of God entirely supplanted Judaism through the life and blood of Jesus Christ. The ultra-religious Jews were thus steeped in tradition to the point that they missed the earthly renaissance of the peak truth, when it was unusually made known in the minds of those of many nations — "tradition" being what has been established and propagated by the ignorant masses, and "peak" being what is the best of all time and space objectively in the mind of God (with "classical" being a third category entirely). The Jews did not establish Mosaic Law, but they were guilty of going "about to establish their own righteousness" through it (Rm. 10:3). Their misappropriation of Mosaic Law as a substitute for the law of faith that had been publicly restored through Jesus Christ was enough by itself for Paul to declare the Jews as rebellious against "the righteousness of God" (Rm. 10:3). It can be easily deduced what he must have thought of wholly-human scribal additions to the Mosaic Law, and what he would think of rabbis and the Talmud today.
But whether or not someone understands that Romans is a polemic against the non-believing Jews, their approach to the Mosaic Law, their man-made laws, and their way of life — which it inseparably is since it honestly defines New Covenant Christianity which is the opposite of Judaism — he or she can still have salvation in Christ by a single thought, which naturally leads to words and acts. At first glance, it might seem that Paul in verse 10:9 is adding verbal action to the faith condition. However in our monumental verse of Mark 16:16, Jesus similarly mentioned baptism along with belief — belief being synonymous with faith. Both audible profession of Christ and visible performance of baptism in Christ may be seen as natural outcomes of truly accepting Christ through the mental act of believing in faith. Jesus said in Mark 8:38 that "Whosoever therefore shall be ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation; of him also shall the Son of man be ashamed, when he cometh in the glory of his Father with the holy angels," and the parallel is in Luke 9:26. Here in Romans 10 Paul echoes the truth by quoting Isaiah in verse 11, "Whosoever believeth on him shall not be ashamed" (Rm. 10:11), and uses it to explain why, per the preceding verse 10, that a heart which believes in Christ will certainly confess. The believing is said to give righteousness, and the confession salvation, but if the two are interlinked without fail, it can be assumed that one who is given righteousness for belief will inevitably receive salvation for confession. Put simply, and it very much is simple, the New Testament asks us to believe, in other words to have genuine faith in Jesus Christ, and then to publicly proclaim Jesus Christ through words and baptism. Paul specifically mentions "shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead," and with the ambiguity of the word "believe" as used elsewhere, it is not a good idea to deny other key historical achievements and eternal attributes of Christ, in order to narrow what is believed about His power. When dealing with God, one theoretically should err on the side of believing that there is more glorious detail attributable to His Name rather than less, so as not to tempt our fate which will be heaven and hell, and to overestimate the omnipotent God is difficult. However Christianity is just "belief in Christ," and it is most usually simply stated that way scripturally, and as so one might surmise that it comes with few other requirements for salvation itself. It is so easy that it can be presented as no human action at all but an act of God, and mentally accepting is of no human merit relative to God's merit. Yet it does most powerfully separate us from all other men, and for that reason, because we allow God the King to inhabit our hearts, and then to control and instruct us in living our daily lives. We become courtiers in His Christian Kingdom. Yet if one understands what Judaism is and still believes in any worth in Judaism — which is the polar opposite! a people-powered religion that is mired in a hopeless rebellion against the King of the Universe! — how can he or she "submit themselves unto the righteousness of God" (Rm. 10:3)? One cannot "serve in newness of spirit" when stuck in the "oldness of the letter" (Rm 7:6) because the two are mutually exclusive (Rm. 7:1-4). So it must be asked, can one truly believe in Christ and at the same time knowingly proclaim and promote Judaized falsehoods and lies about His dejudaized New Covenant? From the Scripture, one would conclude that those who do so are false Christians (fake Christians! not Christians!), or otherwise they Judaize in confusion without really understanding what Christianity is. May God have mercy on their souls by bringing them to repentance, and may we in the meantime obstruct their satanic work.
Faith, belief, baptism, and confession with tongue all speak to the universal nature of God's Christianity, and these are chosen and easy actions as opposed to unchosen born-on traits such as one's birthplace or race. The latter are conditions impossible for all to satisfy, such as in Judaism if someone was not born a Jew but also does not want to be treated inferiorly by the born-Jewish men and women in that religion which proclaims born-Jewishness as superior. Christianity on the contrary is quite beautifully raceless and egalitarian in its rewards, as stated yet again in Romans 10 verses 12 and 13: "For there is no difference between the Jew and the Greek: for the same Lord over all is rich unto all that call upon him. For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved." "Greek" in verse 12 of course means "all Gentiles," and here this is even more obvious since it is flanked by the word "whosoever" (Greek original "Pas") in verses 11 and 13. We might celebrate the occasion by restating from the Gospels its use in the most beautiful Bible verse of all: "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life" (Jn. 3:16).
The rest of Romans Chapter 10, specifically verses 14 to 21, is a drawn-out logical proof that the Jews are without excuse, just as everyone else, and in some ways with less of an excuse than everyone else. The end of Chapter 9 and the start of Chapter 10 showed that they are exceptionally obstructed by their Law from finding God's true righteousness in Jesus Christ. The middle of Chapter 10 showed how typically easy this is for anyone to find, and that the finding is easy by its very faith-based nature. Beginning with verse 10:14, Paul strains to understand and explain exactly why, even with the Law-obstruction irony, such an easy path is in practice blocked off from the Jews, and he presents a human-back-to-God chain of success as follows: 'God sends a prophet or preacher > they preach the Word of God which is the gospel > man hears > man believes/has faith > man is saved by God.' Paul the preacher then says, "So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God" (Rm. 10:17). Then this is what we must remember most heading into Romans 11, which unsurprisingly is the end of Romans 10, its last verses 18 to 21, that Romans 11:1 directly refers to: that the Jews have indeed heard, that the Jews have been preached to louder and more clearly than anyone, but that the same Jews by their own choosing have chosen not to have faith in Jesus Christ and therefore not to be saved. They, not God, have interrupted the chain of reconciliation. The Jews have not believed. God, on the contrary, has fulfilled his part, which is all the way up to the preaching, not to mention His past suffering on the cross when He Himself was the sent-prophet and sent-preacher! His passionate suffering, unthinkably chosen to be endured by a Being with access to perfect luxury, is what made the gospel valid in the first place. "I ask then: Did God reject his people? By no means!", Romans 11 verse 1 tells us that God did not reject the Jews but rather the Jews rejected God despite His best attempts.
Let us therefore examine the last verses of Romans 10 before moving to 11, which is really no move at all but a continued reading of what Paul wrote as an unbroken letter. Romans 10:18, referencing Psalm 19:4, reads "But I say, Have they not heard? Yes verily, their sound went into all the earth, and their words unto the ends of the world." This verse confirms that the Jews heard, and how could they not have, since the gospel eventually went to the ends of the earth and they were in the geographical location where it first went out from? This is the sequence that he referred to back in Romans 1:16, "For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek." Then after Paul's great reasonings from Romans 2 to 9, we definitely understand how ironically unlucky being the first to hear was for the Jews, in conjunction with the ironic unluckiness of their getting the Law and the covenants, and all by heavenly design for the Gentiles' benefit. As always, Jesus had already informed us — having commented "hearing they hear not" and "By hearing ye shall hear, and shall not understand" (Mt. 13:13-15). Paul does not therefore reveal to us a Christian principle that the chronological reader of the Bible should not have already known, but he does help Christians understand more deeply how the Jews are unfortunate. In Romans 10 and following into Romans 11 he further helps us extrapolate that, besides their people's misfortune, most of the Jewish individuals have by free will added their own choice to be ignorant of Christ despite having better access to knowledge of His truth. The concept of "ignorance" in this usage is chosen disbelief in what one has heard, or in other words is aware of, and disbelief in Jesus Christ on any level is always a foolish decision. However it is even more foolish for the Jews in that sense — the sense that they generally have heard of Christ more often and more loudly than other races. Still today they are typically more aware of Jesus than other races yet their acceptance-to-awareness ratio has to be the lowest of any. Yet even though their race was and is destined to be in opposition to Christianity, each Jew who individually rejects Jesus Christ is still a fool and rejects his or her one Way to God. The Gentiles in contrast cannot be said to be wise as much as they are fortunate, that ironically by having been second in the transitory B.C. era and in the transitory phase of the early hearing, they became first in what mattered, and that was the believing part, with the stakes being salvation or destruction. In being second, the Gentiles became first through Christ alone, and that is the progression of understanding that Paul has taken us on from Romans 1 to Romans 10. The "all the earth" and "ends of the earth" imagery in Romans 10:18 recalls the words of Jesus to the Roman centurion, "that many shall come from the east and west" to the kingdom of heaven, as spoken in Matthew 8:11. When Christ spoke the same in Luke 13, he appropriately added, "And, behold, there are last which shall be first, and there are first which shall be last." Here in Romans 10 Paul is likewise telling his gentile audience that the word has gone to the ends of the earth, meaning to all Gentile nations like theirs and those of their Empire, and that in this aspect the Jews especially of the region or with ties to the region where Christ appeared are therefore more guilty for their rejection of Him. It is already implied that more of those in the rest of the earth have accepted.
Then in Romans 10 verses 19 to 21, Paul again uses prophecies to show that the Gentiles did in fact accept Christ in lieu of the Jews by holy design. By this calling up of Moses and Isaiah, he again shows that the great men of Jewish history were really great men being used for what has been revealed to be Christian history. Romans 10:19 is "But I say, Did not Israel know? First Moses saith, I will provoke you to jealousy by them that are no people, and by a foolish nation I will anger you," which quotes the Song of Moses in Deuteronomy 32. Just like Romans 10 and 11, it really helps to read the end of Deuteronomy 31, which is "For I know thy rebellion, and thy stiff neck: behold, while I am yet alive with you this day, ye have been rebellious against the Lord; and how much more after my death? Gather unto me all the elders of your tribes, and your officers, that I may speak these words in their ears, and call heaven and earth to record against them. For I know that after my death ye will utterly corrupt yourselves, and turn aside from the way which I have commanded you; and evil will befall you in the latter days; because ye will do evil in the sight of the Lord, to provoke him to anger through the work of your hands. And Moses spake in the ears of all the congregation of Israel the words of this song..." (Deut. 31:27-30). Paul in Romans 10:19 quoted out of the lyrics Deuteronomy 32:21 which in full is "They have moved me to jealousy with that which is not God; they have provoked me to anger with their vanities: and I will move them to jealousy with those which are not a people; I will provoke them to anger with a foolish nation." God is therefore justly repaying the Jews for their earlier offense, just as Romans 11:1 means that God is not really rejecting the Jews because, to be exact, the Jews rather rejected God and then God followed suit. When Paul here asks if they did not understand, he is likening the Jews' rejection of the First Commandment in the Old Testament to their current rejection of Jesus Christ. When Paul here, in the 1st century A.D., quotes what the NIV translates as "I will make you angry by a nation that has no understanding," he is referring to how the Gentiles in contrast had no understanding of the Mosaic Law in B.C. times but how that God Himself has now made that inapplicable. The Gentiles have instead the love of God — Christian love which is now His only kind — and the Jews are envious because over 99% of them lack it. Thus when Moses, back in the 13th century B.C., made what would be his swan song, he was accurately inspired to prophesy that the future of the Jews would be a punishment that would strongly involve God's love for Gentiles.
Isaiah though was the greater prophet, and through two of his prophecies, Paul shows that in ancient times the Christian dichotomy of Gentiles and Jews was already planned. Paul in Romans 10:20, the Gentile verse, cites that "Isaiah is very bold," and then quotes Isaiah's verse 65:1 as, "I was found of them that sought me not; I was made manifest unto them that asked not after me." The boldness is relative to Moses, because unlike his predecessor, Isaiah is not only saying merely that the Gentiles will provoke Israel, but that the Gentiles will find God and that God will manifest or reveal or show His true nature to the Gentiles instead. That the Gentiles will be generally accepted as God's people in place of the Jews — not generally beside of the Jews, and definitely not below the Jews! — is the meaning of Chapter 10's last verse, Romans 10:21. Paul there quotes what was also Isaiah's next verse, which we have as Isaiah 65:2, when he writes: "But to Israel he saith, All day long I have stretched forth my hands unto a disobedient and gainsaying people." In this is a reemphasis of verse 18's point of how the historical sequence and intensity damns the Jews more. That is, their having been exclusively given the Law and Mosaic covenant, their having been the nation where the universal Christ was incarnated, their having been preached the gospel more so at first, and finally their still being in a religion with this historical awareness, is all proof of their greater guilt because of God's fairness. To be fair, before every Jew from the time of Christ to today He has placed the same path to salvation as He has everyone else, but Romans 1 to 10 has shown that due to their own fault, their people's "special" conditions have ironically become why they have spurned that one good path. Knowing this, God showed them the way first so that their failure to take it would be more impetus to Gentiles — the rest of the world that God so loved — to be motivated to take the path to heaven, and this has been variably stated by Jesus and Paul multiple times (Mt. 13:14-15, Mk. 4:12, Mt. 10:5-6 with Mt. 11:20-30, Acts 13:46-47, Acts 28:26-28). Shall we then cross over to the part of Romans that the Jews and their associates misuse to try to cancel out the rest of the Bible, and to try to heretically give the Jews a way around God's reach to them through Jesus Christ?
