Only One Name Can Save
Sermon Notes
Good morning! It’s great to see you here this morning. If we haven’t had a chance to meet, my name is Zack and I’m one of the pastors here at City Awakening. Last week, as a school assignment for one of our kids, we were having a family discussion at dinner about dating and marriage. One of the goals was too look at the difference between dating and courting, and discuss the pros and cons of each. On one hand, the two don’t seem that different, but what really sets dating and courting apart is the motive going into the relationship. Dating is casual and while the intent is courting is marriage from the outset. Beyond that it gets difficult to define the difference because there’s no set system or steps in place for either. You can’t systematize a relationship. And, if you do then you’re going to end up missing the actual relationship part of it. You can have a schedule and checklist of dinner dates, movies, flowers, and even a set number of text messages to send in a day, but in doing all of that you could overlook the actual person you’re supposed to be building a relationship with, right?
Something similar can happen when it comes to our faith and religion. Systems and steps can be helpful, but they can’t be the end goal. In our text today, we’re going to see how this was a problem for many of the Jews living in Rome and the rest of the ancient world. And, I believe it can still be a problem for us today.
If you have your Bibles, I want you to turn to Romans 9. The title of today’s message is “Only One Name Can Save.” We’re going to be picking up with the last few verses of ch. 9 before we move on to ch. 10. Last week, Pastor Louis covered the bulk of ch. 9 with the difficult topic of free will verses God’s sovereign election. And what we learned is that there is a delicate balance between both. God is completely and solely responsible for our salvation, but how we respond to his work and call is up to us. We’re going to see even further evidence of that today.
Look with me at ch. 9 vs. 30:
30 What should we say then? Gentiles, who did not pursue righteousness, have obtained righteousness—namely the righteousness that comes from faith. 31 But Israel, pursuing the law of righteousness, has not achieved the righteousness of the law. 32 Why is that? Because they did not pursue it by faith, but as if it were by works. They stumbled over the stumbling stone. 33 As it is written,
Look, I am putting a stone in Zion to stumble over
and a rock to trip over,
and the one who believes on him
will not be put to shame.
If you read much of the New Testament you’ll see that there was a lot of controversy over the salvation of non-Jewish people, usually referred to as the Gentiles. This was confusing, concerning, and even detrimental for a lot of the Jews.
Paul says that the Gentiles, who were not even trying to follow God, they didn’t care about the things of God, have now obtained righteousness, while the Jews, who were trying really hard to follow God, have not achieved righteousness. How can that be? The word pursue means to chase down with all haste, like a hunter going after its prey. In other words, the Israelites were like a dog chasing a rabbit. Now a couple of weeks ago we talked about how we all tend to wake up chasing the rabbit, going after whatever measure of success we see in front of us. For the Jews that was righteousness…which seems like good thing! But notice that Paul says the Gentiles obtained a righteousness from faith, and the Israelites were pursuing the law of righteousness as if it were by works. Notice that only one group actually obtained righteousness.
The unfortunate irony was that the pursuit caused the Jews to miss God’s righteousness. In all their doing, they had removed faith from the equation all together and this was the problem. They tried to systematize their relationship with God. They were running so hard they ran right over what they were after. This is why Paul includes the quote from Isaiah 8:14,
He will be a sanctuary;
but for the two houses of Israel,
he will be a stone to stumble over
and a rock to trip over,
and a trap and a snare to the inhabitants of Jerusalem.
The stone is Jesus. Jesus is referred to as the stone in several context, but for the Jews he was a stone of stumbling because he messed up their whole system of works-based self-righteousness. He was not the Messiah they were expecting and the things that he taught and way he lived were in contrast to most of their long list of rules. To further exhaust the rabbit example from before, it’s as if they were dogs who overlooked a real animal to keep right on chasing Rusty, the fake rabbit, around the track.
This tragedy is breaking Paul’s heart. He said at the beginning of ch. 9 that he would be willing to give up his own salvation for theirs, and he expresses that concern again in ch. 10. Remember, he is Jewish. At one time he was among the elite of those pursuing the law of righteousness. Look at 10:1,
Brothers and sisters, my heart’s desire and prayer to God concerning them is for their salvation. 2 I can testify about them that they have zeal for God, but not according to knowledge.
Paul cared for these people deeply, and knew that they were truly passionate about their pursuit of righteousness. The Jewish people truly thought they were doing the right thing. The problem is, Paul says, they lacked knowledge or discernment. It’s interesting because they had lots of knowledge. The Jewish Rabbis, and even ordinary people, could quote the first 5 books of the Bible, what they referred to as the law, from memory. They had all the information, but they lacked the discernment to see the real truth. Paul says in v. 3:
3 Since they are ignorant of the righteousness of God and attempted to establish their own righteousness, they have not submitted to God’s righteousness.
Essentially they were so zealous and in such hot pursuit of God that they ended up going a different way than what God intended. They were no longer following God because they had taken matters into their own hands. You can imagine then, when Jesus came along, and begin to talk about loving your enemies, being poor in spirit, and even eating with the tax collectors and prostitutes, how offensive it was to their self-made system of righteousness. They couldn’t accept him because it went against everything they were practicing. Their zealous pursuit of God kept them from accepting God himself.
If we’re not careful, we can be guilty of the same thing. We are familiar with the stereotypical Christian elites who have a “holier than thou" attitude and cast judgement on everyone who has a tattoo, drinks beer, or watches TV. In general, I don’t think that’s this congregation (that describes 90% of the people in the room). But, we can still create our own system of righteousness. We pray before meals, we listen to worship music in the car, we read our Bibles (most of the time), we come to church, and if you’re really into it you’re in a small group and even serve once a month. You may thinking, “I thought those were good things?” All those things are good things…. really good things in fact. But they can become just a checklist that we do to feel good about ourselves, and when we don’t do them we feel guilty. The truth is none of those things necessarily require any faith. It doesn’t take any faith in God to listen to Z88.3…well maybe some because you have to have perseverance or it’ll drive you crazy. It doesn’t take any faith to show up here on a Sunday morning. It doesn’t even take any faith to stand at the door and greet someone or get on stage and strum a guitar.
I’m not trying to downplay the importance of you being here, and I’m not even accusing anyone here of being self-righteous, I just know from my own life, I have to check my own heart from time to time. Even as a pastor, if I’m not careful, I can do a lot of my religious duties by my own power and with a self-righteous motivation. This is exactly what Paul is pointing out here in Ch. 10. Look at verse 4,
4 For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes, 5 since Moses writes about the righteousness that is from the law: The one who does these things will live by them.
I want to do my best to give justice to the text here, but it’s a complex argument Paul is making and there’s a lot of debate over what he’s really saying. One of the challenges is that he brings in several scriptures from the Old Testament that we have to consider to really understand what he’s saying. First he gives a loose quote of Leviticus 18:5 which says, “Keep my statutes and ordinances; a person will live if he does them.” This is God speaking through Moses reminding the Israelites of the importance of following God’s law. Some scholars think Paul is using this to show the difference in righteousness by faith and righteousness by the law. The Israelites had a righteousness by the law, if they obeyed the law they would be saved. Therefore Christ is the end of the law because that system of righteousness is now finished since people are now saved by faith in Jesus. But that’s not consistent with the rest of the New Testament, and I think a better understanding is that keeping the law was always about having faith. Any Israelite that was committed to keeping the law of God did so because of their faith in the promise of God, and that’s how they were saved. Earlier in Romans Paul highlighted Abraham who believed God’s promises and that counted to him as righteousness. Those promises carried over to Moses and the Israelites as God delivered them out of Egypt and then guided them to the promised land. He gave them a king that they wanted, but still promised one day a King, the Messiah, that would come fix everything. Obedience to God always started with faith in God. As theologian, Etienne Jodar put it, “Leviticus 18:5 constitutes a call to faith for the simple reason that it is a promise. It basically says, ‘You will have life if you choose me.’” Choosing God meant choosing to trust in his promises.
So when Paul says that Christ is the end of the law it really means that he is the fulfillment of the law and the fulfillment of the promise. The word end is often used in reference to reaching a goal. In other words, the ultimate goal of the law has been fulfilled. Imagine an old school telescope (like you see Pirates using). They keep extending out until the end, and that’s where you can see the best. The law was like a collapsed telescope that allowed the Israelites to see a little, but when Christ came the telescope was fully extended and now we see clearly God’s plan to fulfill his promise, which is why Paul often says that the mystery has been revealed.
Justification before God has always been by faith in the person and promises of God, but the Jews of Paul’s time had distorted this promise. They turned justification into a system doing rather than trusting. Righteousness by works would never work because we can never live up to the perfect standard of the law. It has to be righteousness by grace through faith. To continue his point, Paul brings in more Old Testament scripture:
6 But the righteousness that comes from faith speaks like this:
Do not say in your heart, “Who will go up to heaven?” that is, to bring Christ down 7 or, “Who will go down into the abyss?” that is, to bring Christ up from the dead. 8 On the contrary, what does it say? The message is near you, in your mouth and in your heart.
Here he pulls in a few lines from Deuteronomy 30:12-14, and again it’s Moses preaching to the people telling them that God has made himself known to them through his law. They don’t have to go searching for him or for salvation in other places. So Paul uses this to reinforce his point that Christ is the fulfillment of the law. Jesus has already completed the work of the law as the Son of God who came down from heaven and was then raised from the dead. And, he’s made himself fully known and accessible to all people, hence the word is in your mouth and in your heart.
To summarize: the works of the law would never and were never sufficient for salvation, but faith in the God who gave the law was always sufficient for salvation. Even before Christ it was faith in the promise of God to bring a means for salvation even if they didn’t fully understand what that means would be. It’s the same principle that allows our salvation today, faith in the promises of God….we are just fortunate to be on this side and to have “the mystery revealed” through Jesus.
Now we see again the demand for a response to this all of this:
This is the message of faith that we proclaim: 9 If you confess with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. 10 One believes with the heart, resulting in righteousness, and one confesses with the mouth, resulting in salvation.
This is a call to respond. As Pastor Louis pointed out last week, God is sovereign over each person’s salvation, but we are responsible for how we respond. Paul wants to be clear that there’s no prerequisite required. No ethnic or even religious requirements that have to be met before you can be saved. What’s required? To confess your need for salvation, understanding there’s nothing you could ever do to earn it on your own, and then to believe that Jesus, in turn, has done everything necessary for you and to put your trust in him. That’s it! How simple is that? It’s so simple that it was offensive to the Jewish people then, and it’s still offensive to people now. People don’t want to confess their need for Jesus. People don’t want to confess that they aren’t sufficient for themselves and that they don’t have it all figured out. And the really hard part is that confessing our need means giving up control of our lives. This is why so often it takes a tragedy, a broken heart, or hitting rock bottom for people to turn to Jesus. That’s when we realize that there’s no other hope. We have to come to the end of ourselves to fully put our trust in God.
That’s also why health, wealth and comfort are some of the biggest enemies to our faith. Those things take away our felt need for help. They give the false allusion that everything is OK, that we have it all under control, but the truth is those things won’t last forever. They will fail eventually.
Unfortunately, it’s really easy to find our security and hope in all the things that life has to offer. I’m guilty of this too. I hate how I struggle with anxiety when my bank account drops below a certain number. I hate how I allow my joy to be taken away when my plans don’t go as planned. I hate how angry I can get when I feel disrespected or taken advantage of. All of those feelings are pretty good indicators of self-righteousness on my part because they threaten my power, ability, and self-sufficiency, which means they aren’t feelings that come from trusting in the promises of God. See, you may not feel self-righteous, but are you putting 100% of your faith in person and promises of God? If we’re not trusting God, we’re putting our faith in something or someone else…and that will fail us every time.
Look at what Paul says in v. 11:
11 For the Scripture says, Everyone who believes on him will not be put to shame, 12 since there is no distinction between Jew and Greek, because the same Lord of all richly blesses all who call on him. 13 For everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.
To be put to shame means to be humiliated or disappointed. Paul is implying that putting our faith in anything or anyone else will always disappoint us. Money will disappoint, your career will disappoint, relationships will disappoint, politics will disappoint, your self-help efforts will disappoint, but Jesus will never disappoint. Everything else will fail, but Jesus never will. He will always come through on his promises. He will always keep his word, which means you will never regret saying, “Lord, I need you!”
If you don’t remember anything else from today, remember that, “You will never regret saying, ‘Lord, I need you!’” That’s what Paul means by calling on the name of the Lord. It’s an appeal for help. It’s a cry of surrender. It’s Carrie Underwood singing Jesus, take the wheel! It’s a confession that we pray every skeptic and non-believer would come to the point of making as you realize your need for salvation. It’s also the prayer that every believer should make on a daily basis as we surrender ourselves once again to the one true God who loves and gave himself up for us. Calling on any name besides Jesus is a self-righteous salvation, and it will fail. That doesn’t mean you can’t ask people for help or confess your sins to others. That’s an important part of Christian community. But when it comes to our eternal salvation, the only solution is to call on the name of Jesus.
Calling on Jesus doesn’t mean we’ll have a perfect faith. It’ll be a stumping pursuit of holiness. But it also doesn’t mean we should fall into a pattern of just trying to “do more” for God….attend church more, do more devotionals, listen to more worship music, pray before meals more….Those are good things but if doing more is our focus, then we’re just chasing the rabbit of salvation. We can do all those things while still neglecting our relationship with Jesus or putting our faith in him. There are plenty of religious people in the world that confess Jesus with their mouths, but in their hearts they’re still believing in themselves.
Belief in God will always take us to a place that requires faith in God. I firmly believe God doesn’t want us to live a status quo life. Here’s what I mean. The things that require faith are emptying ourselves of us, leaning into our weakness because it’s there that we have to depend on God, it’s loving people that are hard to love, forgiving people that are hard to forgive, looking beyond our own needs and looking to the needs of the people around us, it’s letting go of the control and harder still, the comfort, that is our security blanket yet it robs us of the joy of being generous, serving others or the church, and even sharing our faith.
This leads us to a final application of the argument that I think Paul is building. I really just want to set it up as we conclude, because next week we’ll see it fleshed out more fully in the rest of ch. 10.
In his letter to the Galatians, Paul addresses a very similar issue with the Christians there who are falling back into a pattern self-righteousness according to the law. He says in Galatians 5:6 For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision accomplishes anything; what matters is faith working through love.
If health, wealth, and comfort are the enemies of faith which can lead to self-righteousness, then self-righteousness is the enemy of love. We become self-righteous when we try to validate our worth through our strengths, relationships, position or actions. The religious leaders in Jesus’ time loved the position of authority and clout that the law gave them. They elevated themselves and then brought judgement on others. They were not known as a loving group. We can fall into a similar pattern. Do you ever find yourself thinking these things:
Can you believe they….? At least I’m not like that….
Those people are so….
Why do they get….? Don’t I deserve….?
Not only do these feelings come from a self-righteous attitude, they fog up our gospel-glasses and make it very difficult to love people well. Our pride, entitlement, and defensiveness work against faith working through love, and they work against the spread of the Gospel. They cause us to look on others with judgement for their actions rather than a burden for their souls. It’s antithetical to Paul’s statement that everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.
My point is that we have to carry this belief and hope for ourselves, remembering our need for salvation and putting our trust in Jesus. But, we also have to believe this is true for everyone else. No matter how different they are, how far left or right their political views are, how deep in sin they seem to be….if they call on the name of Jesus they too will be saved. I’m going to leave that there for now. You can come back next week for more….
As we conclude today, I want to invite you to take a few minutes invite the Holy Spirit to do a scan of your heart.
Some of you have tried calling on every other name: Muhammed, Buddha, Science, Career, Education, Sports….how’s that working out for you? If you’ve been skeptical of Jesus so far in life or you’ve been afraid to let go and put your trust in him, let today be the day that you call on the name of the Lord! Put your trust in him and you will be saved.
If you are a believer, I want you to ask the Spirit to examine your motivations, to help you see if you are pursuing a righteousness on your own or a righteous through faith in Jesus. Here’s another way of asking it: If each day of your life were a movie, who would be the hero? You or Jesus? Are relying on your own strength, own power, own abilities? And is that causing you to be judgmental, jealous, or condemning of other people?
We all need to remember that calling on any name besides Jesus is a self-righteous salvation, and it will fail. Let Jesus be the hero. He will save you, and he will never fail you or disappoint you.
