Romans 10:2 - I always read this passage with self justification of my judgment and criticalness of others' faith. Their zeal is not based on knowledge. But reading it and considering it in context, Paul is almost making excuses from the Jews. "I bear them witness that they have a zeal for God" he says, if it were only based on knowledge.
Romans 10:3 - "Ignorant of the righteousness that comes from God, and seeking to establish their own" Wow, that hits home. I have felt that I have attempted to become righteous on my own terms, in my own way. I need to pay more attention to God's way.
Romans 10:6-10 - Don't worry about who is or isn't going to heaven, who is or isn't saved. Worry about yourself, if you do that and you follow Jesus as your Lord with faith you'll be saved. Although this does give a sort of overview of salvation (faith and submission), it is by no means an check list of how to be saved. There's no mention of repentance, baptism, love. Yet so many in Christianity use it this way - "all you have to o is believe and say you do." Of course, the COC and ICOC have used Acts 2:38 ("all you have to do is repent and be baptized") and Matthew 28:18-20 (If you're not making disciples, you aren't a disciple and aren't saved) in much the same way. This simple, one verse type of salvation is contrary to the design of the scriptures, I think. The Bible is not a How To book, nor does it contain a How To list on becoming right with God. I think God wants us to seek and to study to find Him and I think as we teach others, we would do well to teach them to search and study.
"Ignorant of the righteousness that comes from God, and seeking to establish their own"
Are you sure this is talking about righteousness on God's terms versus on our terms?
Could it not actually mean a righteousness from God (i.e. the righteousness of Romans 5 which is a gift) versus any form of self righteousness? There's a big difference between righteousness on God's terms and actually receiving God's righteousness...
"For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith"
Grace and peace,
Mick
Mick - I think you're right on. That's what I was trying to allude to, I guess not so successfully. :-) I find that I forget that I did nothing to earn God's favor and His gift of righteousness, yet I find myself consistently trying to earn the right to keep it. I scurry around trying to 'be good' thinking that I have to in order to stay in God's favor.
That's backwards thinking, and contrary to the call of Romans. Paul in Romans is saying it is because of the gift of righteousness that we have already received that we should be changed. He is not saying that we need to change to keep (or even receive) the gift. That's just not how it works.
Thanks for your comment.
You are right when you say "He is not saying we need to change to keep (or even receive) the gift." I believe that you can switch the word repentance for the word change and still be right. Repentance is Biblical but I sure don't teach it the way I used to teach it. After getting a better understanding of Grace and the Gift, it became clear to me how works oriented my repentance was.
I must say that when I read that possibly the church there would not do the churchwide repentance thing, I was glad. I haven't seen a tremendous change in that teaching yet and hopefully the added time is due to additional study.
I believe you have touched on it here. I am convinced with men like yourself and the Power of God's Word it will become even more evident.
I appreciate you and your heart in searching these things out. God Bless.
Bryant - Thanks for the encouragement.
On the church wide repentance - what we were going to do was not like anything I've seen done before in an ICOC church. Our church wide repentnce before was very much works oriented. It was about getting us moving & evangelizing. It was decided for you how you would repent or what sort of repentance was needed.
What we were headed for was a Solemn Assembly, based partly on this article by a man named Richard Owen Roberts. It was to be about true contrition before God and listening for His Spirit's leading and prompting. This also came from Ed Anton's book, Repentance. It's well worth the read if you haven't read it yet.
This sort of corporate repentacne was reflective, contepmlative, self-directed and intended to be lead by the Spirit. It was not intended to produce anything except church closer to God.
Thanks for responding.
I'm sure that is what you meant; I just raised it because it's a reasonably contentious issue - many see Jesus' death as bringing forgiveness but do not see the other side of the exchange - that he also gives us his righteousness.
A friend of mine preached on this recently - I would encourage you to listen to it because it's pretty amazing for a once-was-ICoC church sermon:
http://www.bcoc.org.au/site/?q=node/42
Yours in Christ
I think you're right... we like to turn salvation into this cut-and-dried thing; but I think that's really in an attempt to prevent distortion. Many people have some crazy ideas about what it means to be a child of God, many of which are way off base Scripturally, and having a solid soteriology helps avoid that.