Romans - Lesson 41

Romans 9:32-10:4 

Why not? Because they pursued it not by faith but as if it were by works. They stumbled over the stumbling stone. As it is written: “See, I lay in Zion a stone that causes people to stumble and a rock that makes them fall, and the one who believes in him will never be put to shame.” Brothers and sisters, my heart’s desire and prayer to God for the Israelites is that they may be saved. For I can testify about them that they are zealous for God, but their zeal is not based on knowledge. Since they did not know the righteousness of God and sought to establish their own, they did not submit to God’s righteousness. Christ is the culmination of the law so that there may be righteousness for everyone who believes.

A. Christ is a Stumbling Stone for the Jews: 

The end of verse 32 introduces this idea of the stumbling stone which becomes a key idea here in the passages we are going to cover. They that is Israel stumbled over the stumbling stone; obviously in this context identified with Christ. Paul quotes a couple of verses in Isaiah, both verses using the language of stone to get his idea across. God has put in Zion a stone. You can either stumble across that stone or build on that stone. This is the imagery here. Those who believe in Christ can build on the stone; other people stumble over Him. 

It is as if Paul is saying here is the path everyone has to take. Picture a very narrow path between two cliff faces with a stone or boulder in the middle of the path that you can’t avoid. You either stumble over it or you build on it. Israel unfortunately as a whole, has stumbled, whereas many of the Gentiles perhaps in their naivety have built on it. 

Paul goes over this again in a slightly different way in 10:1-3. “My prayer is that the Israelites might be saved.” Paul was apostle to the Gentiles, we see him talking about this in chapter 11. But that doesn’t mean that he left his concern for his own people behind. Always Paul continued to have a concern for his own people, Israel. 

“I testify about them that they are zealous for God, but their zeal is not based on knowledge.” Here is the root problem. They genuinely have a zeal for God but they don’t understand; they are ignorant about what God is doing. In verse 3specifically says that “they don’t know the righteousness of God; they have sought to establish their own, they haven’t submitted to God’s righteousness.” Again, the problem we talked about just a moment ago, Israel didn’t understand what God was doing; not open to the new revelation which God was bringing to them.

B. Christ, the Culmination or Goal of the Law: 

Then we have verse 4, a famous verse, often translated, “Christ is the end of the Law.” The NIV translates it as “Christ is the culmination of the Law” which I think is a better translation here. The word Paul uses here in the Greek is a word that can either mean ‘end’ in the sense of termination, or ‘goal.’ I can’t wait for the end of class; the termination, it is over, done with. A lot of people think that is the meaning of the word here. Christ puts an end to the Law; He terminates it; the era of the Law is over. 

Others, however, insist that the word has a sense of goal. Paul uses this word in 1 Timothy 1, saying that the end of the commandment is love, that is the goal of the commandment. This is what the commandment is designed to accomplish. It’s goal or intended result is love. Some people say that what Paul is saying here is that Christ is the goal of the Law. 

I think the imagery combines a little bit of both of those. This is why I like the translation ‘culmination’ or ‘climax’. It seems to me that Paul is talking about a broad understanding of the history of salvation. God gave His Law to the people of Israel, but all along that Law was pointing forward to Christ. This is again the mistake that the Israelites have made. They had an absolutized the Law. They said that when God gave us the Law, that was it; that was the central, key, final thing He has done. So, anyone claiming to be the Messiah has to be fit into the mold of the Law. It was like forcing the new wine into an old wine skins. 

Paul’s point here is that the Law was never intended to be God’s last or final word; that in the unfolding plan of salvation, God gave the Law pointing forward to the coming Messiah, who was of course, Jesus of Nazareth. So, the image t Paul uses here combines both the idea of goal the Law points to Christ, and end because now that Christ is here, the era of the Law is at an end.

The ‘pursuing’ language that Paul uses at the end of chapter 9 is language often used in Paul’s world about a racecourse. That is the most helpful, somewhat contextually based illustration for what Paul was saying here. It is as if the Law is the race and the finish line is Christ. The runner is running the race, but not forever. The race is not the goal; the race is not the only thing. No, they are running the race in order to cross the finish line. That is the goal and once the finish line is crossed, the race is over. This is what Israel has failed to understand. Now that Christ has come, He is what the Law was pointing to all along, so there is the continuity, but now that He has come, there is an end to the era of the Law. 

To put it another way, Paul insists that we have to understand the Law in terms of Christ, not Christ in terms of the Law. This is where he differed from most of his fellow Jews. They took the Law as the given, the starting point, the central issue, and tried to fit Christ into the Law. But Paul said, no, God has manifested Himself decisively in Christ Messiah; we have to understand the Law in relationship to Him. 

Now Paul says one other thing in this verse: Christ is the culmination of Law. This means as a result is that there is now righteousness for everyone who believes. Here comes the New Perspective back into the picture again. James Dunn rightly notes this emphasis here. One of the important reasons why Christ is the goal and end of the Law, its climax is now to allow the Gentiles to participate.

C. Using the Law to Keep the Gentiles Out: 

Here again is where the New Perspective has a certain point. One of the things that the Law did, because it was a law given to Israel, was to keep Gentiles out. It was a barrier that separated Jews from the Gentiles. The imagery that the Jews used sometimes for the Law was like a fence or wall that they constructed around their own identity, their own nation. This was so that they could be preserved as their own people and keep the Gentiles out. 

Think for instance of Orthodox Jews in our today who insist on wearing strange looking clothes, avoiding eating certain kinds of food, and worshipping on a certain day. Why do they do those things? First to honor God because they think that is what He is calling them to do. But certainly, secondarily, and very importantly, they want to maintain their distinct identity. The more of those social practices you can engage in that are distinct to your community, the easier it will keep yourselves from being assimilated into the larger population. 

I am not claiming that Christian groups do this, but make the application yourself. Certain Christian groups, certain denominations, certain traditions are doing something like this sometimes. This is sometimes rooted in Scripture and sometimes it isn’t, but practices, forms of dress, forms of behavior, taboos and prohibitions that serve to maintain the cohesion of a community and to keep it separate from the bigger world out there. 

So, this is where the New Perspective people have a point, they are correct; that was how the Law was being used in Paul’s day and that is one of the problems he has with the Law. In effect, it was a way of keeping Gentiles out and now, Paul says, God’s righteousness is for everybody who believes, Jew and Gentile alike. In verses 9 and following Paul is going to come back and emphasize this point.

Student: 
Within that though, like in the Church of God denomination, you have one church that is like that, and another church, like mine, that isn’t like that. We are conservative based but not legalism based. 

D. We Are to Be a Witness in the World: 

I am not accusing all churches of doing this. Let me make it clear that Scripture talks about certain values that should typify the Christian community and make us distinct. 

Student: 
In that, we’ve got this conflict constantly of that church saying that churches like mine are too liberal, and churches like mine are saying they are too conservative (but mine isn’t saying that!)

Dr. Moo: 
Those debates go on endlessly, don’t they? There are clear things in Scripture that say what the Christian community is supposed to be typified by: our love for each other, our concern for each other, the care that we show for each other, the holiness that we are to exhibit in ourselves and in our relationship to each other. That is how we are to be distinct and to show ourselves to be distinct, rather than some of these cultural trappings that we have picked up over the years. We can argue for or against whether of them are useful or appropriate or not but always testing it against Scripture. 

Student: 
I think it is refreshing to see that evolve to where you can see people get along, revisit it. All of a sudden everyone is able to come together – that is so refreshing. Somebody says, I didn’t really realize that – the young and the old, and all of them. That is refreshing.

Dr. Moo: 
It is, it is a wonderful thing. The kind of unity that we are to have and let’s face it, this is a challenge that we face in our area, and I think you have the same issues down here. You tend to have white and black churches. That is the kind of the way we tend to operate almost everywhere. I understand the reasons for that. Sometimes those reasons are good but to me the Pauline vision is a witness to the world of a place where there is neither black nor white, neither male nor female, neither Jew nor Greek, young and old, rich and poor, as a witness to the world of what Christ can accomplish in His people, breaking down all of the barriers that our cultures work with. This isn’t easy to do; don’t be offended because I understand that there are reasons for a church to be predominantly a Black church in terms of its focus and ministry, and others to be a White church. But there is something about this I have to say that doesn’t ring entirely true to the vision that Paul has for the body of Christ that crosses all those barriers and is an implicit witness to the world and chastisement to the world of the artificial barriers we create among ourselves. 

But in Paul’s day, the great divide was the Jew-Gentile issue. He does talk about male and female, he talks about slave and free so some of those other things get involved, but it is the Jew and Gentile conflict that was critical and that is why he keep talking about it the way he does.