1 Brothers, my heart’s desire and prayer to God for them is that they may be saved. 2 For I bear them witness that they have a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge. 3 For, being ignorant of the righteousness of God, and seeking to establish their own, they did not submit to God’s righteousness. 4 For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes.

A grandpa in our church recently gave me a sermon that his six-year old grandson wrote by hand while he was sitting in church one Sunday, listening to a message from Romans. This little six-year old boy wrote this message:

“Jesus is not just a friend, He is a Father. That’s why you should love Him. Let me explain Him to you. He is nice, kind, friendly, everything. Everyone should love Him, but not everyone does. The devil does not. Everybody in hell does not. Everybody that is going to hell does not love Him. And that’s not a good thing. That’s why it’s good that you should love Him. And that’s why I do love God and Jesus.”

I love this little sermon that this six-year old boy wrote! Now, this young man, as he matures in Christ, as the Spirit leads him, will grow in his understanding of God and of Jesus as Lord of all. Yet, even now, he has a better grasp of the Gospel of Jesus than many adults who have attended Christian churches for far more years than he’s been alive. This boy’s short sermon clearly explains the Gospel more clearly than many sermons that are going to be preached on this Sunday morning by Seminary graduates. Think of the strong doctrines that this young man communicated in his message.

1. Jesus is not just a nice person. He is an authority over us and He loves us deeply.
2. Everyone should love Jesus. He’s the kind of person that is so great, every person on earth is right to love Him and is wrong if they do not love Him.
3. The devil is a real person and the devil does not love Jesus.
4. Hell is a real place. It’s a place where people who do not love Jesus live.
5. If you love Jesus, you escape the terrible danger of hell. It’s not good works or religious efforts that relieve us of the judgment of God, but it’s personal love. It’s relationship with the Lord Jesus.
6. We need to make a committed, personal response to Jesus in order to escape hell. Jesus needs to be personally appropriated. Now he didn’t use the word “appropriated,” but that’s what he’s saying. He needs to be personally appropriated and received in order for us to obtain the eternal benefits that He offers.
7. In his little sermon, he gave testimony that we believers need to make a clear, public confession of our love for the Lord Jesus. He ended his message with this personal testimony, “That’s why I do love God and I do love Jesus.”

Now many deeply religious people have never understood and believed the central truths of God’s Gospel. We’re going to bring this back to the basics this morning as we open our Bible’s to Romans 10:1-4. My prayer is that God will open our eyes to see His Son very clearly and the good news that His Son announces to us.

The central idea behind this passage, these four simple but amazing verses in Romans 10, is that religious people often stumble over Jesus and they miss God’s salvation because they depend upon their own good deeds and religious rituals in order to satisfy God’s demands for righteousness. But God’s demand for righteousness is satisfied only through faith in Jesus, who offers it—this righteousness—to us as a free gift.

I want to ask you a question: Do you realize that it’s possible to be a really nice, really moral, really spiritual, really religious person, and be eternally lost? This is the state of the Jewish friends, at least many of the Jewish friends, of the Apostle Paul as he is writing this letter. He understands their lost condition because he lived most of his life in that same state. In Philippians chapter 3 he of sort of gives his testimony. He says we, believers

Philippians 3:3b-4a put no confidence in the flesh—though I myself have reason for confidence in the flesh also.

He says, “This is where my confidence used to be. It used to be in the flesh, and I had reason. If I’m going to base confidence of my relationship with God on something I’ve done, I really had a lot of reason. He goes on to list those reasons why he used to put confidence in the flesh.

Philippians 3:4b-5 If anyone else thinks he has reason for confidence in the flesh, I have more: circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee;

In other words, every day he was aligned with the law of God.

Philippians 3:6a as to zeal, a persecutor of the church;

I wanted to eradicate any enemy that I considered God had.

Philippians 3:6b as to righteousness under the law, blameless.

There’s not one thing that any person outside of me looking at my life could say, “Paul, you are not walking in obedience to this law that we’ve set before you.” But then he says, “But then I found Jesus. I thought I had all that gain of confidence in the flesh.

Philippians 3:7-8 But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ.

He says, “I can’t have confidence in Christ and confidence in my own righteousness. And so I’ve considered all these things that I used to count as so precious and so dear to commend me to God, as completely nothing so that I can have Christ. And it’s in Christ that I found everything that I need, everything I’ve longed for, everything I’ve hoped for.”

So now, in this part of the letter, Paul is thinking about his Jewish friends who are still living in the darkness of this confidence in the flesh. He knows this darkness well because again, he lived so much of his life in this particular spiritual blindness. And his heart aches for his fellow Israelite. So in these chapters of Romans chapters 9-11, Paul addresses his fellow Jews specifically and their position before God, specifically. He begins chapter 9, as you may recall, with an expression of his love and spiritual concern for his own people. You might just turn back there.

Romans 9:1-2 I am speaking the truth in Christ—I am not lying; my conscience bears me witness in the Holy Spirit—that I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart.

Now, he goes on and makes an emphasis of how he’s not lying because the Israelites at this point, were not very kind to Paul. And he says, “Y’all know how deeply that they have attacked me and mocked me and persecuted me and tried to have me killed. But I want you to know, and I’m not lying about this. I really mean it. I really do love them and my heart aches over them and over their condition.”

Romans 9:3 For I could wish that I myself were accursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my brothers, my kinsmen according to the flesh.

“If that would bring them salvation, I’d do it.”

So despite the harsh rejection and persecution from the Jewish leaders, he still loves them and he longs for their salvation. This chapter 9 ends describing how the Jews have stumbled over the Messiah instead of receiving Him and building their lives upon Him as a cornerstone. They stumble over Him and they fall and they are ruined before Him. And so now, he opens up chapter 10 the same way he opened up chapter 9. He’s emphasizing his concern for his fellow Israelite.

1 Brothers, my heart’s desire and prayer to God for them is that they may be saved.

That word “desire” is interesting because it’s not used often in the New Testament. It presents this idea of delight or just good pleasure. He says, “Here’s what would bring happiness to my heart. That is that my fellow Israelite would come to faith in Christ, receive Jesus as the cornerstone of their life, believe on Him, and be rescued from their sin. Receive God’s righteousness, become adopted into God’s family, be reconciled to God, be loved by God forever and ever. There’s nothing that I desire more in life than that.” So we see the fond affection that Paul has for even his enemies.

A heart’s desire for others’ salvation always flows from a life that walks closely with Jesus. And that “others” includes our enemies. It includes those people who hurt us the most, who mock us the most, who disrupt our peace or our joy the most. It would have been the most natural thing in all the world for Paul to just say, “You know what? These folks who are stoning me, who are beating me, who are trying to have me driven from city after city after city, who are hating me with this intense hatred, I’m just going to leave them over to the justice of God.” And in that, he probably would have felt pretty righteous even that he wouldn’t take his own personal vengeance. But that’s not what he does. He goes beyond that and he continues to press in with fond affection for these very people. And he says, “It would be the happiness of my heart to see that they would come to Christ, receive His forgiveness, and be changed, be rescued.”

When we love God, we will love people. And that’s without condition and without exception. If we have an abiding communion with Christ, we will burn in our hearts for other people’s salvation. This spiritual concern for others is a central mark of a life lived in vibrant communion with God. It’s a central mark! The absence of such spiritual concern is a symptom of being lukewarm in our relationship with God. And so, if you’re here this morning and you say, “I don’t know if I’ve thought about the unsaved at all for weeks, or months. Maybe it’s been years. I don’t know if I’ve had any ache in my heart for people who don’t know Christ or had any inclination that my heart would just rejoice if these neighbors around, these people who maybe make life difficult for me at work. I don’t know if I’ve ever had an inclination that my joy would be complete if they would come to Christ.” Please understand that the root cause is a distance, it’s a disconnection somehow from the heart of Christ. And the answer is just not to say, “You know what? I need to think about this more.” The answer is “I need to press into Christ more and be changed by Him.” It’s our hearts that are always the problem.

So what does Paul do with his spiritual concern to have his fellow Israelite come to salvation? Well, he does two things. And they’re the two things that every one of us do when we love other people in Christ. First, he prays for them. We’re going to talk about that in a moment. But, he prays. He doesn’t just say he’s going to pray. He prays for them with a yearning and longing, pleading with God to bring them to Himself. And then secondly, he preaches the Gospel to them. And that’s really the story of the book of Acts. Wherever Paul went from city to city, it was his custom, it was his practice to go first to the synagogue and proclaim the Gospel there, explaining the Messiah through the Scriptures to the Jews in the synagogue.

So by way of application, the two most loving acts that we can give to our unbelieving family and friends are prayer for their salvation and sharing the Gospel of Jesus. It’s the primary, it’s the fundamental, it’s the foundational way that we who are in Christ love those who are outside of Him; through prayer and through proclamation of the Gospel.

Now, as we walked through Romans 9, we learned that salvation is based upon God’s free mercy alone and not upon the will of man, not upon the efforts of man.

Romans 9:15-16, 18 For he says to Moses, “I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.” So then it [the reception of mercy, or salvation] depends not on human will or exertion, but on God, who has mercy…So then he has mercy on whomever he wills, and he hardens whomever he wills.

Now, our series through Romans 9 has brought a lot of questions and some of you have written emails asking questions. I’ve not had even opportunity to answer them all. So, I hope to get to them. And undoubtedly that chapter, once we understand it, will give rise to many, many questions. But some of you have asked, “If God is completely sovereign in electing His people unto salvation, why would we proclaim the Gospel? Why would we pray for them? God’s going to do what God’s going to do anyway. So what’s the point of proclaiming the Gospel? What’s the point of prayer?”

First, I would observe that the person asking this question is correct to observe that any doctrine that diminishes our zeal for proclaiming the gospel to our unbelieving friends or that diminishes our zeal for praying for unbelieving friends is not a healthy doctrine. So if this is the case, that the doctrine of God’s sovereign election of His people would diminish our zeal for evangelism or our zeal for prayer for the lost, then that would be an unhealthy doctrine. But Paul demonstrates and he illustrates by his own life, that that’s not the case. Healthy doctrine always leads to healthy living when it’s rightly received and applied.

But Paul demonstrates that the doctrine of God’s sovereign mercy does not lead us away from prayer and it does not lead us away from bold Gospel proclamation. Rather, it’s used in the Apostle Paul’s life as a motivation toward prayer and as a motivation toward evangelism. Paul is emboldened by God’s sovereign mercy to pray and to preach even more zealously. He knows that God has people everywhere that he is being sent. And so, he doesn’t know who they are. That’s part of the secret counsel of God. It would be wrong for us to think that we could or to attempt to do so. But Paul knows it’s true that God ordains as an end that people would come to faith in Jesus and be rescued and be given eternal life. And on that basis then, he knows every one of the efforts that God prescribes for him to be part of in that work, are powerful and effective. And God clearly describes that His ends of placing His mercy upon vessels of mercy are going to be brought about as His church, His people, are involved in proclaiming the Gospel and praying. So God ordains the ends, but He also ordains the means. The ends are personal and the means are personal. And God says, “I am going to let you have a part in this.” And this motivates Paul to pray and to preach.

A couple of applications that we want to make from this:

1. Let us pray for the salvation of our friends, our children, our neighbors and our co-workers.

If that has not been a habit in your life, I urge you brothers and sisters to begin praying. And if you can’t have a heart to pray for them, ask God to give you a heart so that your heart would draw near to Christ and to His glory and to the neediness of the people around you. We’re right to pray for many temporal blessings, but we must not stop there. “What does it profit a man if he would gain the whole world and would lose his soul,” Jesus asks. (Mark 8:36) So what does it profit if we pray for physical health and they’re healed, but when they die, they’re separated from God forever and ever? They receive His eternal condemnation. What does it profit? What does it profit a man if we pray for their job, we pray for them to have money to feed their children, but when they die, they all die without Christ? What does it profit? What does it profit a man if we pray for a marriage that’s broken or we pray for encouragement and strength through some severe trial, the death of a loved one, and yet, when they die, they’re separated from God forever and ever? Is it right to pray for all these temporal needs? Absolutely! We’re right to pray for the temporal needs even of unbelievers as part of just our desire for God to bring His common grace and His blessing upon people. But as we pray, let us have as the cornerstone of the prayer for our unbelieving friends, neighbors and relatives, that they would be saved. That that would be the key request we would bring before God and pour out our hearts in fervent intercession.

2. Pray especially for the spiritual blessings of those who have been unkind to you or have hurt you.

This is particularly hard because we don’t naturally think of it. We roll through our minds about people who have hurt us and we think what we’d say next or how we wish they would have responded or what we hope, what outcome would come from that. But the question is: Do we ever stop and really pray for those folks and say, “God, would You open their heart to Your joy? Would You bless them? Would You bring your favor upon them?” Jesus says love your enemies. And He says pray for those who persecute you. (Matthew 5:44) It is a direct command for us to do this! Pray for those who irritate or make life hard for you. Pray for them, Jesus says.

Paul later, just in the next chapter, chapter 12, is going to say something similar. He says

Romans 12:14, 20-21 Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them… To the contrary, “if your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink; for by so doing you will heap burning coals on his head.” Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

That’s the application. He’s first showing by way of example and then he’s going to give us by way of precept this application.

3. Let us look for opportunities to share the Gospel.

Paul said,

Romans 1:16a For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation…

He’s saying, “Why should I be ashamed of it?” Well, it’s because we have the fear of man often that controls our hearts and our minds. So let us not be ashamed of the Gospel of Jesus or fearful of others’ rejection. And I know we need the Holy Spirit to strengthen our faith in order to have that happen. We can’t just make ourselves do that. But if we’re so fearful that we recognize that God is opening up doors for us to share the Gospel and we’re not walking through those doors, again, the answer to that problem first is to recognize it’s a problem. It’s to recognize “This is not right. My soul is not healthy. I can’t continue living as a worshiper of Jesus Christ and continue to have that happen in my life.” But secondly, it’s not just simply saying, “Okay. I’m going to do better.” It’s to lean into Christ who rescues us from the fear of man and say, “God, would you strengthen my heart?” And bind ourselves in communion with God so that we might act as God’s servants, as fishers of men.

So after sharing his heart’s desire and prayer for the Israelites, Paul explains the problem of the Jewish people. And this problem he describes is not only a problem for 1st century Jews. I believe it describes a problem of religious people, Jews and Gentiles alike, living in the 21st century. It describes people who go to church, who believe in God, who care about God and care about religious things. And he describes four problems that keep religious people from heaven.

Problem #1: Zeal for God without knowledge.

2 For I bear them witness that they have a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge.

Is it a good thing to have a zeal for God? Yes…except when it’s not. And when is it not? Well, when that zeal is without knowledge. Zeal must be filled with truth in order for zeal to be healthy for our soul. Zeal for God without knowledge is a very unhealthy thing. It moves us in the opposite direction of God and of His blessing.

I’ll give you an illustration. I was golfing with a friend of mine a number of years ago. It was well over ten years ago. We were on the tee box of this course that neither of us were super familiar with. It was just one large plateau. The tee box for Hole #1 was here and the tee box for Hole #10 was here. So you came back to the same spot. On Hole #1, you hit the golf ball north; on Hole #10, you hit the golf ball south. So we did our first nine and I go in to get a snack. I come back out and my friend is already on the tee box. He’s on tee box #10, but he’s still facing north. He’s not seeing that he needs to hit south. So I was just kind of sitting back and thinking, “Well, this is kind of fun.” (Laughter!) So I watched him hit the ball, and it was beautiful. It was the best he shot of the whole day. It was straight, right down the center, about 260 yards out. It was just a thing of beauty. And he just looked at that and he looked over at me with this grin of accomplishment. He said, “What do you think about that?” And I looked at him and I said, “Man! That was a great shot!” I said, “There’s only one problem with it. Now, you’re 260 yards farther away from the hole than when you started!” (Laughter!) So, of course, I made him go back and hit again. It counts, so he has to hit again. (Laughter!)

Religious people are like my golfing friend. They hit some beautiful shots. And I have to acknowledge there’s some beautiful shots hit by religious people. There’s beautiful shots of morality, beautiful shots of neighborly love, beautiful shots of devotion, beautiful shots of sacrificial giving. They give sacrificially to their church or their synagogue. There’s beautiful shots of human expression of kindness. All of that is sincere. Really, from a human point, it’s really remarkable! There’s only one problem with that. They’re further from God after they hit that shot, than they were before. How could that happen? They’re aiming in the completely wrong direction. They’re aiming for a hole that is marked “human righteousness.” And the closer they get to human righteousness, the farther they get away from God’s righteousness.

That’s what Paul’s saying. They have an amazing zeal for God. This zeal puts many of those who are inside God’s family to shame. And yet it’s completely without knowledge. Zeal for God must be accompanied by knowledge if it is to profit our soul. Zeal for God alone cannot bring life to a soul. Paul knows this personally. Early in his life, he was deeply zealous, and yet he was not saved. He was far from God. His zeal kept him from Christ. He stumbled over Christ because he was so zealous for God in his pursuit of human righteousness. What knowledge then, if it’s knowledge that we need, and it’s not just information, but it’s knowledge, it’s personal knowledge of the Gospel, a personal appropriation of the truth of the Gospel, of Jesus Himself. What knowledge is needed for zeal to have any profitable effect upon our souls? I think of at least three.

1. Knowledge of our own sin.

It’s knowledge that we’ve sinned against God, we’ve fallen short of His glory. It’s knowledge that all our righteous acts are like filthy rags to God. All our efforts to be righteous are worthless to God. We cannot fulfill God’s law on our own. We need to know that or else we’re going to continue to chase after that means to gain righteousness.

2. Knowledge of Jesus’ Lordship and His saving work.

Jesus is God’s Son. He is divine. He is come in the flesh. All authority of God rests upon Him. He is Lord. He is worthy of us bowing our knee to. He died on the cross to take our punishment upon Himself so that He could offer us forgiveness. He rose again so He could offer us life. Jesus gives His righteousness to everyone who believes in Him so that we could be reconciled to God, so that our righteousness then that is ours through Christ, would be enough and be accepted by God.

3. Knowledge of the necessity of repentance from sin and faith in Jesus.

Our access to all the benefits of Jesus are through faith. So God gives us access to Jesus, His Son, and to Jesus’ work through believing upon Jesus. So faith alone reconciles our relationship with God. It’s faith alone in Jesus that opens our soul to the free gift of eternal life. Faith alone in Jesus grants us a right standing with God, freedom to call God our Father.

Zeal for God in the church is good except when it’s not. And so, if you have a zeal for God, ask “Is it a zeal with knowledge?” Is it a zeal with the Gospel right at the center of that zeal? And it’s possible, I think, even for a Christian who has some understanding of these three things still to have this wrong kind of zeal and it distorts the Christian life and it distorts the kingdom of God when it’s present. I think that’s the problem that the church in Galatia was dealing with. So ask yourself: In my zeal for God, is it filled with Gospel knowledge? And of course, if we don’t have a zeal for God, that in and of itself is a problem, too.

Problem #2: Ignorance of the righteousness of God.

3 For, being ignorant of the righteousness of God…

The Jews were not ignorant of the Old Testament. They knew their Scriptures better than most of us, if not all of us. They had a lot of Bible teaching, a lot of Bible information. But they were ignorant of the meaning of God’s Word. They missed the Messiah because they confused God’s righteousness with man’s righteousness, and that became a fatal error.

You may ask, “What’s the difference between man’s righteousness and God’s righteousness?” God’s righteousness and man’s righteousness are not merely different by degree, but by kind. It is not that human righteousness is just a little less righteous than God’s righteousness. It is that human righteousness is a totally different kind of righteousness than God’s righteousness. Let me use an illustration.

Imagine that I owed the bank $1,000,000 in U.S. currency. Thankfully, I don’t, but imagine I do. Imagine then also that I have $1,000 in Monopoly money. There’s a difference between what I owe and what I have. Wouldn’t you agree? The major difference between what I owe, though, and what I have is not in the amount. So it’s not in the amount of $1,000,000 to $1,000. That’s not the major difference. Because if that were the major difference, then what I would do is I would work hard to make that $1,000 of Monopoly money into $1,000,000 of Monopoly money. But that would still leave me with the same problem. If I did that and I took it to the bank, guess what? They’re going to say, “You still owe us $1,000,00 U.S. currency. Because that kind of currency is absolutely worthless to us. We don’t accept it. Not at all!”

So, in reference to righteousness, it is not just that God’s righteousness is infinite and ours is finite in the amount. That’s not the problem. The problem is that God’s righteousness is of a kind that is completely different from our kind. The reason why Monopoly money is different from U.S. currency is the source. Who created the money? U.S. currency is created by the United States government, therefore it has value to the United States government. Monopoly money is created by a game company, and therefore, it has no value to the United States government.

God’s righteousness is established in Himself. There is no righteousness that’s true that doesn’t come from Him. Human righteousness finds its source in itself. Human righteousness has no value in the realm of God’s kingdom. God’s kingdom only accepts the currency of His own righteousness. So if we’re going to be right with God, we must have this currency. We can’t continue to live and work to build and accumulate more and more of this kind of righteousness. And if we’re ignorant of that, we will move away and never go to the righteousness that we need. And that was what the Jews’ problem was. The Israelites thought that the righteousness that God required was simply to make more efforts on their own to live up to God’s moral demands. And yet, no error could be more fatal. And that’s where they were.

Problem #3: Efforts to establish one’s own righteousness.

3 For, being ignorant of the righteousness of God, and seeking to establish their own…

They believed that if they were more sincere and they were more focused and more disciplined and more obedient, then God would accept their righteousness as a ticket into heaven. And so they worked and they worked and they worked and they worked to gain God’s approval. But here’s what God had already told them in Isaiah, for instance.

Isaiah 64:6a (NKJV) But we are all like an unclean thing, And all our righteousnesses are like filthy rags…

It’s a different kind! He says, “You present Me with things that are valuable in the human sphere, but are not valuable at all in My sphere, in My kingdom. They are worthless to Me. And all of your righteousness when you try to transfer them and have them value over into My kingdom, all of it is like filthy rags. I just toss them out. They’re worthless. They’re garbage.” Now our pride simply does not want to let go of the idea that we can do something to gain God’s favor. We’re like hamsters on a wheel. A snake gets in the cage and what does the hamster do? He runs faster. He’s going to continue to run and run and run and run until he can run no more. Why does he do that? Because he perceives a threat. But why does he continue to run on a wheel? Because he thinks that somehow that is what is going to help him evade this predator.

But let’s ask the question: If the hamster runs faster what will that do in reference to the threat that is chasing to take his life? Nothing! If he runs longer…so before, when he was just on a little exercise role he’d do five minutes. Now he runs a whole hour. What will that do in evading the threat that’s chasing his life? Answer: Nothing! The snake is the condemnation that we deserve of our own sin. The wheel is our own righteousness. And maybe if I run just faster and faster and faster, maybe I’ll evade it. And the answer is: No! What you need to do is get out of the cage or kill the snake. Both of which, God provides for us in Christ. He provides us with liberty to be free and He provides us with a death of sin once for all. But all that is found in Christ, not on the wheel.

Problem #4: Refusal to submit to God’s righteousness offered as a gift.

3 For, being ignorant of the righteousness of God, and seeking to establish their own, they did not submit to God’s righteousness.

Why would people refuse to submit to God’s righteousness when it’s made available freely to them? The answer is because they’re satisfied with their own righteousness. Because of their pride, they don’t want to let go. They want to say, “There’s something I can do. There’s something I must do. Otherwise I won’t feel good about myself.” And God says, “You have to come to the end of that in order to reach up as a pauper reaching up to gain bread.”

If you ask a person: Is God pleased with your life?” many religious people will say, “Yes. I live as a good person. I’m nice to others. I serve in my church. I obey God’s law. I treat others like I want to be treated. I listen to Christian radio.” Here’s the issue. Self-righteousness will always keep us from God’s righteousness. And that’s why we must not only repent of our sins, but we have to repent of our good deeds if we’re trusting in them. Because trusting in our good deeds is actually a sin. It’s a sin called self-righteousness.

Pastor James Boice used an illustration of a woman who is dying of a disease. And as she’s dying of his disease she looks in the mirror and she starts putting make-up on her face and getting her hair in order. And she says to herself as she looks in the mirror, “Everything is going to be alright because I’m looking a lot better now.” Now, I don’t doubt that the make-up will make her look a lot better than what she had before she put it on. But the make-up will do nothing for her problem. All human righteousness is putting make-up on while we have a terminal disease that is raging through our bodies, raging through our souls.

So look at the hope now. All this is problem, problem, problem, problem and then verse 4. And we’ll talk about this next time we’re together in Romans.

4 For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes.

You want righteousness? You want true beauty? You want true freedom? You want true life? Christ is the end of the law. He’s the completion of the law. He’s the fulfillment of the law. Christ is all you need. All you need! It’s not Christ plus your works. He’s all you need. He’s the completion. He’s the fulfillment. He is the giver of righteousness for everyone who would believe. He is totally sufficient in Himself with no additions needed from us.

So beloved, if we are to have God’s righteousness we will abandon all hope in producing it in our own lives. And we will submit to Christ and to His righteousness so that we might obtain that righteousness which is divine and which is accepted by God in heaven, which will free us and grant us reconciliation with Himself.

I like, we’re going to look at this next week, Romans 10:9-10. You say, “What must I do?” And here it is. It couldn’t be stated more simply or clearly.

Romans 10:9-10 if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved.

And that is God’s promise to us. And what a precious promise it is!