The law was not given so that we might justify ourselves through obedience, but in order to drive us to Christ to receive His righteousness by faith. In this sermon, R.C. Sproul reminds us of the relationship between the law and the gospel

Finally, after several weeks of focusing our attention on the heavy matters set forth by the Apostle Paul in the ninth chapter of his letter to the Romans, we are approaching the end of that chapter. As I indicated last week, you can now take a deep breath and sigh of relief as we turn our attention to other matters beyond the weighty questions of election and predestination.

Today, I will begin reading at verse 25 through the end of chapter 9, and begin the first paragraph of chapter 10, so I will be reading Romans 9:25–10:4. I ask the congregation to stand for the reading of the Word of God:

As He says also in Hosea:

“I will call them My people, who were not My people,
And her beloved, who was not beloved.”
“And it shall come to pass in the place where it was said to them,
‘You are not My people,’
There they shall be called sons of the living God.”

Isaiah also cries out concerning Israel:

“Though the number of the children of Israel be as the sand of the sea,
The remnant will be saved.
For He will finish the work and cut it short in righteousness,
Because the Lord will make a short work upon the earth.”

And as Isaiah said before:

“Unless the Lord of Sabaoth had left us a seed,
We would have become like Sodom,
And we would have been made like Gomorrah.”

What shall we say then? That Gentiles, who did not pursue righteousness, have attained to righteousness, even the righteousness of faith; but Israel, pursuing the law of righteousness, has not attained to the law of righteousness. Why? Because they did not seek it by faith, but as it were, by the works of the law. For they stumbled at that stumbling stone. As it is written:

“Behold, I lay in Zion a stumbling stone and rock of offense,
And whoever believes on Him will not be put to shame.”

Brethren, my heart’s desire and prayer to God for Israel is that they may be saved. For I bear them witness that they have a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge. For they being ignorant of God’s righteousness, and seeking to establish their own righteousness, have not submitted to the righteousness of God. For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes.

This is the Word of God for the people of God. Please be seated. Let us pray.

Again, our Lord, as we turn our attention to this text that has been delivered to us through the hand of Your Apostle, who wrote under the inspiration of the Spirit of truth, we pray that we may plumb the depths and riches of what is set forth in this place, that we may rejoice more fully in the sweetness of Your mercy and grace, that this may give to each of us a renewed appreciation of the good news that comes to us in Your gospel. For we ask these things in Jesus’ name. Amen.

The Righteousness of God

Before we look at the text I have just read, I want to take just a moment of recapitulation. Before we go forward, we will look backward to the very beginning of this epistle, where the Apostle introduced its central theme: the righteousness of God. This is not referring to God’s own inherent righteousness but the righteousness that God makes available by faith. The grand theme of justification was introduced in Romans 1:17.

Immediately after that, we saw an interruption of Paul’s announcement of the good news, when he declared that “the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men” (Rom. 1:18). Then Paul began to explain why people are exposed to the wrath of God: God, in the self-disclosure of His revelation, has made the knowledge of Himself so clear and so plain through the works of nature and through the revelation of Himself to our own consciences that we are without excuse.

Nevertheless, despite our clear knowledge of the righteousness of God, we have become fugitives to that righteousness. We have fled from the presence of God. We have repressed the knowledge that He has made available to us. Then Paul shows that both Jew and gentile together have jointly repressed this knowledge of God and are equally guilty under the law before God.

Paul then spells out in chapter 3 the degree of our corruption, pointing to the fact that no one can be justified in the sight of God through the works of the law: “Therefore by the deeds of the law no flesh will be justified” (Rom. 3:20). Then he explains and sets forth the central theme of the epistle: the doctrine of justification by faith alone. After that, he explains the benefits of justification, then moves on to sanctification and adoption.

Finally, in chapter 8, Paul comes to the order of salvation that began in eternity with God’s decrees to elect some unto salvation. He defends this most pointedly in chapter 9, where he uses the example of Jacob and Esau, that before either had been born, before they had done any good thing, God had decreed that the elder would serve the younger, and that through the mercy of God’s sovereign election, Jacob was loved in a way that Esau was not.

Then Paul anticipated objections that people have been giving since this letter was first received in the Christian church in the first century, particularly that God’s election seems to indicate some kind of unrighteousness in God. He asked the question: “What shall we say then? Is there unrighteousness with God?” (Rom. 9:14). He answered emphatically in the negative.

Notice throughout chapter 9 that, from the very first chapter of Romans, there is a concern about the righteousness of God. The word there in the Greek is dikaiosynē, and it is sometimes translated “righteousness.” Sometimes it is translated “justification,” because the concept of being justified in the sight of God is inseparably related to the idea of God’s righteousness that is made available to us by faith.

The Privilege of God’s Love

When we come to the end of Romans 9, Paul looks back to the past, to the pilgrimage of Old Testament Israel, and reminds us of the object lesson that we ended with last week regarding Hosea’s being required to marry an adulterous woman, and he reminds us how the names of her children had symbolic significance.

One child was called Lo-Ammi, which means in the Hebrew, “Not my people.” God had expressed His judgment against the ten tribes of Israel that had become apostate at that time and He declared His wrath upon them, saying in essence: “You are no longer My people. But I will call those who are not My people My people.” The failure of one group of people became the occasion for God’s expanding His mercy to those outside of the community. Paul applies that to the gentiles who are receiving the gospel because the Jewish people who had been the stewards of the oracles of God had missed the coming of the Messiah. He continues with these references to the Old Testament, where he says from Hosea:

“I will call them My people, who were not My people,
And her beloved, who was not beloved.”

To be adopted into the family of God means to experience an affection from God that we have no claim upon. There is nothing in us that in the sight of God is lovely. But rather, He has been pleased in His mercy to call us His people, to adopt us into His family when we have no birthright or entitlement to it. In Christ, He calls us His beloved.

We need to pause for a second because the culture in which we live endlessly repeats the myth that God loves everyone equally and it is no big thing to be loved of God: “Of course God loves us. He is a loving God.” We take for granted God’s divine favor upon us by virtue of the fact that we are human beings. We are tempted to think: “God loves everyone. We are buddies, so therefore, He loves us.”

Paul is reaching back into the Old Testament and showing that to be loved by God is a privilege, not a birthright. Inherently, we have no claim on the love of God. There is nothing in me that would make Him desire me. Yet while I have nothing of loveliness to present to Him, by his mercy He has turned His affection to me and to all who put their trust in Christ.

We always must understand the mystery of the doctrine of election in terms of election being in Christ. Why are you a Christian and your neighbor is not? Why are you redeemed and your friends are not? As we have labored throughout the entire epistle, it is not because of any righteousness that can be found in you that is lacking in your neighbor or any righteousness that can be found in me; it is by the sheer grace of God alone.

Why then would God bother to redeem anybody? The only answer I can come up with is that He redeems us because of the great love the Father has for His Son. The Father will not allow the Son to see the travail of His soul and not be satisfied. Throughout John’s gospel, we see this doctrine taught from a different perspective. Those who are believers are the gift that the Father gives to the Son. It is because of the Father’s love for Christ that He gives Christ a people as His legacy. By God’s mercy we are included in that.

“I will call them My people, who were not My people,
And her beloved, who was not beloved.”

Paul continues citing the Old Testament prophet:

“And it shall come to pass in the place where it was said to them,
‘You are not My people,’
There they shall be called sons of the living God.”

Not only do we participate in the family of God, but we know that God has only one Son, and yet because God has placed us in Christ, we participate in that sonship. We are being called the sons of God who are not by nature children of God.

A Remnant Saved

Paul continues:

Isaiah also cries out concerning Israel:

“Though the number of the children of Israel be as the sand of the sea . . .”

This looks back to the promise God made to Abraham when He said, “I will multiply your descendants as the stars of the heaven and as the sand which is on the seashore” (Gen. 22:17). That is how many descendants there would be to Israel—countless descendants. Yet out of that vast multitude of descendants of Abraham, only a remnant would actually be saved.

In the eighteenth century, theologians debated the question of whether, in the final analysis, the majority of human beings will be redeemed, or whether it will be a minority who are redeemed. The consensus based upon the teaching of Scripture was that the vast majority of people who have lived in this world will not enter the kingdom of heaven. We hope for a remnant, even from among the household of God, who will actually make it into the kingdom.

Think back to the experience of Israel when God redeemed them from the oppression of the Egyptians under Pharaoh. He called them out from the oppression of the Egyptians under Pharaoh, called them His people, made them a holy nation, and led them through the wilderness for forty years. Out of that vast array of human beings, only a few were permitted to enter the promised land, and the vast majority did not make it.

Jesus gave a warning when He said: “Wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and there are many who go in by it. Because narrow is the gate and difficult is the way which leads to life, and there are few who find it” (Matt. 7:13–14).

The warning Paul quotes in verse 27 regarding the small number of those who would be saved was spoken by the prophet Isaiah with respect to the nation of Israel. What about the Christian church? Are we not safe by virtue of our membership in the visible church? What we have learned already in the text is that there were people outside of the commonwealth of Israel who were saved while the people inside the nation of Israel were not, because God called a people who were not His people to be His people.

Visible and Invisible

In the opening chapters of this epistle, Paul raised the question, “What advantage then has the Jew?” (Rom. 3:1), since the Jews and the Greeks together were under the judgment of God? You would think that Paul would answer that rhetorical question by saying, “There’s no advantage to being a Jew.” But that is not what he said. He said, “Much in every way!” (Rom 3:2). What was the chief way in which it was better? “To them were committed the oracles of God” (Rom. 3:3).

Let me apply the same question to today: What advantage is there to being in the church? As Paul said of the Jews, a Jew is a Jew not outwardly but inwardly. It is not enough to be circumcised as an ecclesiastical ritual to get you in the kingdom of God. You must have a circumcision of the heart. The same thing applies to the Christian community. Being a member of the church and being baptized is no guarantee of redemption at all. He who is a Christian is one who is a Christian inwardly, not just externally. Having said that, then we ask the question, What good is it to be in the visible church, to be in worship like we are now? Is there any advantage to that? Yes, much in every way, because to the church has been given the oracles of God.

Let me go back to Saint Augustine, who basically fathered the distinction between the visible church and the invisible church. The visible and the invisible church do not refer to two separate churches—one that you can see over here and one that you cannot see over there. No, Augustine said the distinction is made for this reason: Not everyone who is in the visible church is in the kingdom of God.

Jesus warned that there would be tares growing along with the wheat and that people can honor Him with their lips while their hearts are far from Him. Jesus gave a dreadful warning at the end of the Sermon on the Mount, that on the last day many will come to Him saying: “Lord, Lord, didn’t we do this in Your name? Didn’t we do that in Your name?” Jesus is going to say to them: “Please leave. I don’t know who you are. I never knew you.”

They might say back: “What do you mean You never knew me? I was baptized. I grew up in the church. I went through catechism class. I was confirmed and married in the church. I was a deacon in the church. I taught Sunday school in the church. I got a Sunday school pin for perfect attendance over twenty years. I did all those things. I even preached.” Jesus will say: “What’s your name? I don’t recognize you, you who are workers of lawlessness.”

There the warning was given to people in the visible church who were not redeemed. It is a very dangerous way to gain assurance of our status before God by looking to our church membership as any proof of our inclusion in the kingdom of God.

Augustine said that you can count the people in the visible church; their names are on the roll. I can see all the people sitting in the congregation, but what I cannot see is your soul. I cannot read your heart. You cannot see my soul. You cannot see my heart. I do not know if underneath the surface of your skin you have a real affection for Christ. I do not know if you are trusting in Him and in Him alone for your redemption. But I do know this: If you have an affection for Him and are trusting Him and Him alone for your redemption, then you are certainly in the invisible church. The state of your soul is invisible to me, but it is manifestly visible to God.

We are told that we look on the outward appearances, but God looks on the heart. He knows everyone who is in His adopted family. He knows who they are. He knows whether you are in a state of grace in a way that I cannot possibly know. So, Augustine said that we distinguish between the visible church and the invisible church. The invisible church is the true church; it is the full number of those who are redeemed.

Means of Grace in the Church

Augustine was asked this question: Where do you find the invisible church? His answer was that you find almost totally—not quite totally but almost totally—within the visible church. It is remotely possible to be a true believer in Christ and not be involved in the visible church. I do not think that can happen for very long. If you are truly in Christ and in the Word of God, you know it is your duty to be a part of the visible fellowship of the people of God. If your heart is really in tune with God, you will, sooner or later—and in most cases sooner—unite yourself with a visible church.

We think of the thief on the cross who died before he had that opportunity. He was never a member of a visible church. He was a member of the invisible church because he was providentially hindered from ever joining a visible church.

If being a member of the visible church does not guarantee your redemption, why bother? We give the same reason Paul does for Israel: It is in church that the means of grace are concentrated. Where else can you go to hear an exposition of the Word of God? That is not on the loudspeaker at the supermarket. You are not going to hear it in the halls of Congress. You are not going to find it out there except as it is found in the church.

I realize that there are churches all over the country and all over the world that have an absolute hostility to the Word of God. You can go to these churches week after week and never experience the means of grace. Yet it is in the visible church that the means of grace are most heavily concentrated.

It was Cyprian who said, “He who does not have the church for his mother does not have God for his father.” That is an overstatement. You can be led to Christ outside the church. I was led to Christ outside the church. But I was nurtured by the church and in the church through the ministry of the church. We must never despair of the church, because that is where the remnant is found.

He Found Us

Paul goes on:

And as Isaiah said before:

“Unless the Lord of Sabaoth had left us a seed . . .”

If there were not a remnant, if after the plant was burned down and the crops were destroyed there were not seeds that spilled out from the core of the flowers or from the grain so that no seed could be planted again, then the harvest would end forever. But when God brings His judgment upon Israel, there remains a seed that will bring forth its fruit in its season. The prophet said that if God did not leave us the seed, we would all end up like Sodom and Gomorrah, where God made short work of those cities when He visited them with His judgment.

Now Paul gives us another rhetorical question: “What shall we say then?” What is our response to that grim history of Old Testament Israel? “What shall we say then? That Gentiles, who did not pursue righteousness, have attained to righteousness, even the righteousness of faith.” Here we are receiving the benefits of the gospel when we never even sought it. It was not our nature to pursue the things of God.

The gentiles to which Paul is writing in Rome had no clue about the history of redemption. They were not concerned with studying the Old Testament Scriptures. They did not care about the law of Moses. They were not pursuing the righteousness of God, and yet in God’s mercy, what they were not pursuing, they found.

Several years ago, there was a national campaign of evangelism titled, “I Found It.” You might have bumper stickers in Atlanta and other major cities in America that said, “I Found It.” You did not find anything. He found you. You were not looking. You were not pursuing. But by His grace He pursued you, and you were the one who was found. That is the message of the Christian: “I once was lost, but now I’m found.” This is not because I found it, but because He found me.

The Missed Messiah

“That Gentiles, who did not pursue righteousness”—they were not looking for justification. They attained the justification, which is by faith. Paul continues, “But Israel, pursuing the law of righteousness, has not attained to the law of righteousness.” What seems wrong with this? Paul asks, “Why?” How can it be that those who were not in the redemptive-historical covenant community have found the pearl of great price, while those who had the benefits of the oracles of God missed it?

“He came to His own, and His own did not receive Him” (John 1:11). The One whom God appointed to be the cornerstone of His house, the cornerstone of the kingdom of God, became a stumbling block, a stone of offense. Israel tripped over grace. They fell over their Messiah because they could not fathom the idea that they were not able to receive God’s favor through their own righteousness.

As the multitudes in Israel sought the righteousness of God through their own endeavors and through their own good works such that they missed the kingdom of God and the Messiah, so that same error is deeply ingrained in churches all over the world. I venture to say to you that, at the very least, 80 percent of people who are members of Christian churches in our country really believe that they can get to heaven through their own good works.

I was involved in Evangelism Explosion years ago in Cincinnati. I trained over two hundred people, and we went out twice a week and tabulated the results of people when we asked them the diagnostic questions. You might know the diagnostic questions. The first one is, “Have you come to the place in your spiritual life where you know for sure that when you die, you’ll go to heaven?”

We asked literally thousands of people that question, and the overwhelming majority of people who were asked that question answered by saying that no, they were not sure. They did not think one could be sure. Beyond that, they were suspicious of people who thought they were sure.

That only opened up the discussion for the second diagnostic question, which was much more important: “If you were to die tonight, and you stood before God, and God said to you, ‘Why should I allow you into My heaven,’ what would you say?” Again, 90 percent of the people we asked that question gave a works-righteousness answer. People would say, “I tried to live a good life,” or “I went to church,” or “I gave my money to this cause,” or “I didn’t do that and I did this.” Only one out of ten said: “Why should You let me into Your heaven? No reason inherently, Lord, except that You promised that if I put my trust in Your Son and in Him alone that You would bring Me into Your family. That is my only hope in life and death, not my own righteousness, but His.”

Has this not been the issue all the way through Romans? Whose righteousness matters? Whose righteousness justifies? Not our own. This was the tragedy for the Jewish nation: They sought the kingdom of God based on their own righteousness. They missed their Messiah.

Why? Because they did not seek it by faith, but as it were, by the works of the law. For they stumbled at that stumbling stone. As it is written:

“Behold, I lay in Zion a stumbling stone and rock of offense,
And whoever believes on Him will not be put to shame.”

Israel was offended by the rock. They were ashamed of a suffering servant. But those who put their trust in that stumbling block and did not trip over it are the ones, Paul tells us quoting Isaiah, who “will not be put to shame.”

Ignorant Zeal

At the beginning of Romans 10, Paul reaffirms the statement he made earlier when he said that his heart’s desire was for his people according to the flesh. Now he says: “Brethren, my heart’s desire and prayer to God for Israel is that they may be saved. For I bear them witness that they have a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge.”

“My heart is heavy,” the Apostle is saying. “I love my kinsmen according to the flesh. My deepest desire is that they would all be saved. I recognize they’re zealous for religion. They never miss the meetings in the synagogue. They have a zeal for God, but their zeal is based on ignorance.” A definition of a fanatic is someone who has lost sight of where he is going but redoubles his effort to get there. He is full of zeal, but he has no knowledge or understanding of what he is zealous about.

Let us go back for a moment to Romans 1, which formed the foundation for the entire argument that Paul follows throughout this lengthy epistle. He said that after God revealed Himself manifestly and clearly to everyone in the creation and after people repressed or suppressed that knowledge of God, they “exchanged the truth of God for the lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever” (Rom. 1:25).

The judgment Paul announces on the human race is not because the human race is given to atheism. What provokes the judgment of God is religion—false religion, the religion whose object of zeal and devotion is an idol where the truth of God is traded in, swapped for the creature, traded from the God who alone is worthy of our adoration, devotion, and service.

It is not enough to be religious. It is not enough to be a zealot. Who were the zealous people in Jerusalem when Jesus appeared on the scene? The Pharisees and the scribes. They spent their whole lives pursuing righteousness. That is what it meant to be a Pharisee, to be a separated one, someone consecrated to the pursuit of righteousness. When their righteousness came into the midst to redeem them, they killed Him because they were looking for justification by works and they stumbled over Jesus.

The Pharisees and scribes did not realize that they had to give up any claim to merit, to give up all boasting, and to say: “Nothing in my hand I bring, simply to the cross I cling. I have no righteousness to offer, God, save the righteousness that has been won for me by Your Son.” Oh, they were zealous, but not according to knowledge.

The End of Boasting

“For they being ignorant of God’s righteousness, and seeking to establish their own righteousness, have not submitted to the righteousness of God.” What does Paul mean by “to establish”? To construct it. To make that the foundation of their standing before God. To build their house upon the foundation of their own merit, of their own goodness. That is how they wanted to do it. That is how we want to do it by nature. We want to say, “Grace is for the weak.”

I experienced it just this morning. My friend Clement went over to Germany recently and told me he was going to go visit Wittenburg, the place of Luther. He said, “Can I get anything for you?” I said: “Oh yes, please. When you’re over there, would you do me a favor? Could you get me some paperback copies of Perry Mason by Earl Stanley Gardner in German?” The easiest way to keep up with languages is by reading simple dialogue stories we are familiar with but not with the English behind it. It is an easy way to study languages.

I said, “Can you pick up a couple of those for me?” “Sure,” said Clement. So, he came into church today and had a bag of books for me. I asked, “What’s that?” He had all these books of Perry Mason. I said, “Great,” and got reacquainted with Della Street and the rest of the team. I said, “Now, how much did you spend on them?” He said: “No, no, no, you can’t pay me for that. This is my gift.”

I really felt terrible. I said to my wife, “I asked him to get me those books. He did, and now he won’t let me pay for them.” You see, he wanted to be gracious, but I wanted to pay my own way.

Are you like that? “Let other people ride into the kingdom on Jesus’ coattails, thank you very much. I’ll do it myself. I have enough righteousness of my own to enter into the kingdom.” It is hard to rely on grace and grace alone, because it is the end of boasting. We have no more bragging rights. The only thing you can boast in is the perfection of the Redeemer.

Paul says that they “have not submitted to the righteousness of God. For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes.”

The Purpose of the Law

Almost every Sunday, we read one of the Ten Commandments in the liturgy of our worship service. Some people have asked us: “Why do you read the law? The law isn’t going to save anyone. Why do you put the law in front of us all the time?” The answer is that if you do not listen to the law, you will never see your need for the gospel.

The end of the law, the goal of the law, the purpose of the law is Christ. The purpose, the goal, the end of the law was never given by God as a way for you to attain status in His family. The law was given to show you the righteousness of God and to be a mirror that you can look into so that you can see the perfect righteousness of God, and by comparison see yourself, warts and all, and despair of your own righteousness. The law sends you packing. It sends you rushing to the cross. It sends you running for all your worth to grace. The law exposes our sin. Anything that exposes my sin screams to me of my need for the Savior, whose righteousness alone can justify.

Paul said that this is the tragedy of the people he loves. They missed it. They sought the righteousness of God through their own obedience to the law rather than seeing that the goal of the law, the purpose of the law is Christ and His righteousness. His righteousness can never be earned, can never be bought, and can never be deserved, but can only be trusted by faith and by faith alone.

I hope that every member of our congregation has a heart that is on fire with zeal. Jesus warned those who were neither hot nor cold but were lukewarm. He said, “I’ll spew you out of My mouth.” He wants His people to be on fire. He wants His people to be filled with zeal, but a zeal that is according to knowledge, a zeal that is informed by His Word. The fire that is in our hearts ought not be a fire that is only heat, but one that is also light, which comes from His Word. Let us pray.

Father, who are we, we who are no people with nothing to commend ourselves, that we should be called Your children, that we should be the objects of Your affection? Nothing in the world can display Your graciousness more than that, that You would love the unlovely and call us your sons and daughters when by nature we are children of wrath. Father, help us to despair forever of any hope of earning our way into Your favor, into Your house, or into Your kingdom, that we might seek that righteousness in Christ that is received by faith, that our trust may be in Him and in Him alone now and forevermore. Amen.

This transcript has been lightly edited for readability.