Romans 10:1-4 – Israel’s Great Problem: Zeal Without Knowledge

And now in Romans 10 Paul narrows the focus even further.
He’s going to explain not only that Israel stumbled but he’s going to explain why they stumbled, and that’s very important because there are a lot of people who stumble.
The question is always why.

Let’s begin in Romans 10: 1.
BRETHREN, my heart’s desire and prayer to God for Israel is, that they might be saved.

Notice Paul’s heart here.
Sometimes when we study Paul’s writing, we can forget that he wasn’t just a theologian.
He wasn’t simply an instructor, and He wasn’t just giving Bible information. Paul cared.
Look at the language he uses.
“My heart’s desire…” “My prayer to God…”

This is personal; it’s emotional, it matters deeply to him, and it should.
These are his kinsmen according to the flesh, his people.
These are the people that received the promises, who had the law and the prophets.
These are the people who should have recognised their Messiah, but they didn’t, and Paul’s heart’s broken over it.
The motivation behind Paul’s writing of this passage is an extension of his opening statement in the last chapter, Romans 9:1-2, where he opens with,
“I SAY the truth in Christ, I lie not, my conscience also bearing me witness in the Holy Ghost,
That I have great heaviness and continual sorrow in my heart.”

We can’t help but notice that first he has this heaviness and sorrow in his heart and then, in Romans 10:1, he has this great desire in his heart,
“Brethren, my heart’s desire and prayer to God for Israel is, that they might be saved.”

Both the heaviness, the sorrow and the desire of his heart are, of course, for Israel, his Jewish kinsmen.
Paul doesn’t open this chapter with criticism of his brethren, but with compassion.
In Romans 9, he talked about his continual sorrow. Now in Romans 10 he talks about his prayer.
That’s interesting because sometimes when people reject the truth long enough, they stop caring. Paul didn’t.
Sometimes after enough arguments, enough opposition, enough rejection, we write people off. Paul didn’t.
In fact, what amazes me is that these are the very people trying to kill him. Yet he’s praying for them. Think about that.
The people stoning him, chasing him around the country, accusing him and dragging him before rulers are the people he’s praying for.
Why?
Because that’s what grace does.
Grace makes you want other people to receive what you’ve received.

Have you ever wondered why Paul kept going to synagogues? Read Acts sometime. It’s almost predictable. Paul goes into a city, and he goes to the synagogue where he preaches Christ.
People get angry, and he gets thrown out, so he moves to the next city where the same thing’s repeated.
Why keep doing it? Wouldn’t you eventually learn?
Well, Romans 10:1 answers that.
His heart’s desire and prayer for Israel was that they might be saved.
Paul wasn’t trying to win arguments; he was trying to win people.
It’s a lesson worth remembering.
Sometimes we get so focused on being right that we forget the purpose of being right, and that purpose isn’t to win debates; it’s to help people know the truth.
Paul knew the truth better than anyone, yet his response wasn’t arrogance; it was prayer.

Romans 10:2 2 shows Israel’s real problem, and it says:
“For I bear them record that they have a zeal of God, but not according to knowledge.”

Now that’s interesting. Paul doesn’t say they don’t care. He doesn’t say they’re lazy, and he doesn’t say they’re not religious. In fact, their problem is almost the opposite.
They’re zealous, passionate, committed and sincere, and that’s one reason this passage is so important.
Because sincerity doesn’t save.
Israel definitely had zeal in spades. The Cambridge Dictionary describes zeal as great energy, intense enthusiasm, or passionate devotion in pursuit of a cause, goal, or activity.
They were passionate, committed, dedicated, sold out for God, you might say, but they were wrong. Zeal alone’s not enough.
People often say, “Well, as long as someone’s sincere,” meaning what does it matter if they’re right or wrong, so long as they’re sincere, but Paul disagrees.
Israel was sincere. They were zealous and devoted, yet they still needed salvation.
Zeal without truth is dangerous, and passion without knowledge is dangerous as well, just as religion without Christ is dangerous.
A person can have great enthusiasm and still be heading in the wrong direction.

Paul knew this from his own experience; he isn’t speaking theoretically here; he’s speaking personally.
Who better to talk about misguided zeal than Paul?
Before he met Christ, nobody was more zealous. He wasn’t just casually religious. He wasn’t someone who attended synagogue once in a while.
Paul lived it. He breathed it. He consumed himself with it.
He persecuted believers; he imprisoned Christians, and he pursued them into other cities and here’s the shocking thing: he thought he was serving God.
He genuinely believed he was doing God’s will.
Before he was saved, Paul was one of the most zealous men in Israel.
In Philippians 3:6, he describes himself and his zeal,
“Concerning zeal, persecuting the church; touching the righteousness which is in the law, blameless.”
In Acts chapter 26, we see Paul brought from prison to King Agrippa, where he details his extreme zeal, even saying that when Christians were condemned to death, he approved of it and cast his vote against them.
He persecuted Christians. He imprisoned believers and supported their execution. That’s zeal!
He thought he was serving God and he was very sincere, but that sincerity didn’t make him right.
A person can take the wrong road and still arrive at the wrong destination, while all the time being sincere. They can sincerely believe error and still be deceived. The point is that sincerity alone doesn’tmakes a person genuine or correct.
Paul was sincere. The Pharisees were sincere, and many religious people today are sincere. But the question isn’t sincerity. The question is truth.
You can be sincerely wrong, and that’s exactly where Israel was.

Paul’s history before he was saved tells us that a person can be devoted. A person can sacrifice, pray and fast and can be admired by everyone around them, yet still be completely wrong.
This was Paul, and if Paul could be, anyone can be.
Zeal isn’t enough’

Let’s slow down here because this is where many people struggle. We tend to admire passion, and there’s nothing wrong with passion. God actually wants us to be zealous for truth, but zeal by itself isn’t proof we’re right.
Passion doesn’t make something true. People have passion and zeal for many things, such as football and music, where sometimes people will stand for hours at concerts. People spend fortunes chasing dreams and dedicate their lives to hundreds of different causes, so passion and zeal are not rare. But truth is.

Paul’s point is not that Israel lacked passion; they lacked knowledge.
What they needed wasn’t more effort; what they needed was truth, the knowledge of the truth.

Notice what Paul says in Romans 10:2
“For I bear them record that they have a zeal of God, but not according to knowledge.”

Not according to knowledge.
That little phrase explains everything.

Their problem wasn’t intensity or commitment or even effort.
Their problem was ignorance.
Now that’s surprising because if anyone had knowledge, shouldn’t it have been Israel?
After all, who had the Scriptures? Israel. Who had the prophets, the law, the covenants? Israel.
Who had centuries of revelation?c Israel.
Yet Paul says they were ignorant. How can that be? Well, easy, actually. You can have a Bible in your house and not know what it says. You can even quote verses and still miss the point. You can know all the facts and miss Christ, and that’s exactly what happened to Israel. That’s exactly what happened. They had all the facts and knew all that Scripture told them to do but completely missed the entire point: that without belief, faith, it was all useless.
They saw the doing part but missed the believing part.

In Romans 10:3 we see the lesson they never learned,
“For they being ignorant of God’s righteousness,”

Now let’s stop at that statement because this is really the heart of the passage.
What is God’s righteousness?
Most of the time, people hear that phrase, “God’s righteousness,” and immediately think about God’s holiness, and that’s certainly part of it.
But in Romans there’s a lot more going on.
God’s righteousness is His way of making sinners right.
It’s God’s provision. It’s God’s solution. It’s God’s answer to man’s problem.
And Israel missed it.
They thought righteousness came through them, through their acting out the law and the traditions. And even though every one of them knew deep down that they were failing miserably at it, the burning desire to appear righteous to a world they desperately wanted to be better than kept them from the realisation of their own sin and the impossible task of making themselves righteous by those means. They were self-deceived.

God says righteousness comes only through Him, but they thought righteousness came through law.
God says righteousness comes through Christ, but they thought righteousness came through performance.
God says righteousness comes through faith alone, but they thought it came through works alone.
That’s the difference.

The law was never the finish line.
One of the great ironies in Scripture is that the very thing Israel trusted was trying to teach them they couldn’t trust it.
The law was a schoolmaster, says Galatians 3:24. What was the lesson it taught?
The law wasn’t saying: “You can do this.” The law was saying: “You can’t do this.”
The law wasn’t saying: “Look how righteous you are.” The law was saying: “Look how sinful you are.”
The law wasn’t pointing them to themselves. It was pointing them to Christ.
That’s why Paul says in Romans 3:
“By the law is the knowledge of sin.”
It’s not “by the law is the knowledge of self-righteousness.”
It’s the knowledge of sin. The law was exposing the disease, and Christ was providing the cure. Israel wanted the diagnosis but rejected the physician.

So, let’s spend a little more time in Romans 10:3 because this really gets to the heart of the matter.
Paul says:
“For they being ignorant of God’s righteousness, and going about to establish their own righteousness…”

Notice he doesn’t say they were trying to establish wickedness, or that they were running after immorality or seeking evil. They were seeking righteousness, and that’s what makes this so dangerous.
The problem wasn’t their desire for righteousness; the problem was the source they were seeking it from.
A person can be aiming at the right destination while travelling on the wrong road, and that’s exactly where Israel was.
They wanted God’s blessing. They wanted God’s kingdom and God’s promises. And they wanted righteousness. But they were trying to establish their own.
That’s so natural for all of us. Our flesh loves the idea of contributing something.
We like being able to say: “I helped, I earned it. I deserve it. I was faithful. I was better than others. I tried harder.”
That’s natural human thinking. But grace cuts right through all that.
Grace says: “I contributed my sin. Christ contributed my salvation.”
That’s why grace is offensive to religious people. Religious people don’t mind doing things. In fact, they usually enjoy doing religious things.
What they don’t like is being told that all their doing can’t save them.
And that’s exactly what Paul is saying.
Israel’s great mistake wasn’t that they ignored righteousness. Their great mistake was that they tried to manufacture their own.

Here’s an illustration.
Suppose someone owes ten million dollars and they show up at the bank with two dollars.
Now we could admire their effort, and we could say they’re sincere; at least they’re trying.
But the debt isn’t gone. The problem isn’t effort; the problem’s the size of the debt.
That’s exactly the state humanity is in before God.
People might say, “I’m trying my best,” but the issue isn’t whether we’re trying.
The issue is whether our effort can remove our sin, and according to Scripture, it can’t. Only Christ can.

The rest of Romans 10:3 says,
“and going about to establish their own righteousness, have not submitted themselves unto the righteousness of God.”

What does it mean to “submit to God’s righteousness “?
Paul is presenting this as the core of the problem for Israel. They:
“Have not submitted themselves unto the righteousness of God.”

That’s a fascinating statement because submission is not usually how people think about salvation. We tend to think only of belief and very rightly so.
But belief requires submission.
To believe God means I stop arguing with Him. It means I stop trying to correct Him and stop trying to improve His plan.
It means I stop trusting myself.
Submission says: “God, You’re right. Even when I don’t like it, You’re right.”
“Even when my pride resists it, You’re right, and even when I think I have a better idea, You’re right.”
That’s what Israel struggled with.
God said: “You need My righteousness.” They said: “We have our own.”
God said: “You need My Son.” They said: “We have Moses.”
God said: “You need faith.” They said: “We have the law.”
And Paul says they would not submit.

It’s so interesting to learn the lesson of the law.
What’s interesting is that the law wasn’t Israel’s enemy.
The law was trying to teach them something.
As we saw in Galatians 3:24, the law was a schoolmaster to bring us to Christ.
The purpose of the law wasn’t to replace Christ. The purpose of the law was to lead people to Christ.
Think about that. Every sacrifice in the law pointed to Christ. Every offering pointed to Christ. Every priest pointed to Christ. Every feast pointed to Christ, and every prophecy pointed to Christ.
Every part of the system was teaching: “You need a Saviour.”
Then the Saviour arrived, and they missed Him. It’s tragic!
The entire Old Testament is pointing toward Him. Then He appears, and they stumble over Him.

We should notice something a bit strange in the Gospels: Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.
The publicans and sinners generally liked Jesus, while the religious experts generally didn’t.
Why?
Because the publicans knew they were sinners, but the Pharisees thought they were righteous.
That’s why Mark 2 is so important.
Mark 2:16-17
“And when the scribes and Pharisees saw him eat with publicans and sinners, they said unto his disciples, How is it that he eateth and drinketh with publicans and sinners?
When Jesus heard it, he saith unto them, They that are whole have no need of the physician, but they that are sick: I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.”

Jesus is eating with publicans and sinners, and the religious leaders were offended. They couldn’t understand it. “Why would a holy man sit with sinners?”
And Jesus answers:
“They that are whole have no need of the physician, but they that are sick.”
In other words: The very reason I’m here is the reason they came. They knew they needed help.
What was the Pharisees’ problem? The real problem wasn’t that they were too sinful.
The problem was they didn’t think they were sinful enough to need Him.
And that’s still one of the greatest barriers to salvation today.
Sometimes the hardest person to reach isn’t the drunk. It isn’t the addict or the criminal or the broken-hearted.
Often the hardest person to reach is the respectable religious person.
Why?
Because they simply don’t see their need.
They’ve convinced themselves they’re doing okay and God’s happy with their efforts.
But they’ve fallen into a serious snare. They’re comparing themselves to other sinners instead of comparing themselves to God’s righteousness. And as long as someone thinks they’re mostly okay, Christ won’t seem very necessary, and that’s exactly where Israel was.

In John chapter 9 we see the account of the blind man and the blind leaders.
Most of us know the story. Jesus heals a blind man, blind from birth, and the miracle is absolutely obvious.
Everybody can see what happened. Yet the religious leaders refuse to believe.
And Jesus says to them in John 9:39,
“For judgment I am come into this world, that they which see not might see; and that they which see might be made blind.”

The Pharisees immediately ask, “Are we blind also?” And you can easily hear the offence in their voice. And Jesus replies to them in John 9:41,
“If ye were blind, ye should have no sin: but now ye say, We see; therefore your sin remaineth.”

He’s saying to the religious leaders, “If you recognised your blindness, you could be healed. But because you insist you can already see, your blindness remains.”
That’s exactly what Paul is describing here in Romans 10.
He’s speaking about people who thought they could see, people who thought they understood. People who thought they were righteous and who thought they didn’t need Christ.

One reason Paul speaks so strongly here is that he knows exactly what he’s talking about because he used to be one of them.
When Paul says in verse 2 (Romans 10:2),
“I bear them record that they have a zeal of God…” he’s saying, “I know those people because I was one of those people. I understand how they think, and I understand why they do what they do.”

Nobody was more zealous than Saul of Tarsus, before he was saved and became Paul, the apostle to the Gentiles.
Nobody was working harder or trying harder, and nobody was more committed. And yet he was wrong. Completely wrong!
What changed him? Not more effort. Not more religion.Not more law. And certainly not more zeal.
It was Christ. The knowledge of Christ changed everything.
In Philippians 3, Paul outlines his incredible intellectual and religious credentials as he does in Acts when he was brought before King Agrippa. Very few of the Pharisees he was talking to here in Romans 10 could boast such incredible qualifications and pure zeal.
Yet in the passage of Philippians 3:7-9 he says,
“But what things were gain to me, those I counted loss for Christ.
Yea doubtless, and I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord: for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and do count them but dung, that I may win Christ,
And be found in him, not having mine own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith:”

All his accomplishments became loss compared to the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus. That’s a remarkable statement. The man who’d spent his life building religious credentials suddenly says:
“I’d trade all of it for Christ.”
That’s what Romans 10 is about. Zeal is not the measure of truth.
This is an important lesson for us today because our culture often confuses passion with truth.
If someone’s passionate enough, people assume they’re right. But that’s not how truth works. The world is littered with despots and dictators who were passionate and zealous and probably honestly believed they were right, and yet were passionately wrong. History is full of passionately wrong people.
The issue isn’t how loudly someone believes something. The issue is whether it’s true.
Paul says Israel had zeal, lots of it. The problem wasn’t the amount of zeal and passion. The problem was the direction that wasn’t according to knowledge, and an ounce of truth is worth more than a ton of misguided effort.

So, what does save today?
If it isn’t zeal…If it isn’t law…If it isn’t effort or sincerity…What is it?

Paul’s already answered that several times in Romans. It’s faith. Faith in what Christ accomplished, not faith in ourselves, not faith in our performance or faith in our religion, faith in Christ.
Faith in His death. Faith in His resurrection. Faith in what He did for us.
The issue isn’t: “What can I do for God?” The issue is: “What has God already done for me through Christ?”

And that brings us to Romans 10: 4.
“For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to every one that believeth.”

What a statement!
Notice Paul doesn’t say Christ is the end of righteousness. Nor does he say Christ is the end of the law. He says Christ is the end of the law for righteousness. The end of relying on the law to gain righteousness.
The law cannot make us righteous. The law can expose our sin, and it can reveal our need. The law can also point us toward Christ.
But the law cannot save us. Only Christ saves.
The law points; Christ accomplishes.
The law diagnoses, but Christ heals.
The law condemns, but Christ justifies.
The law reveals the problem. Christ is the answer.

There’s a great question to be asked here.
If Christ is the answer, then the great question becomes:
What will we do with Him? And that’s really the question Romans 10 puts before us.
Israel stumbled because of what they did with Christ.
Not because they lacked religion, effort or zeal.
They stumbled because they would not submit to Him, and people are still stumbling over the same stone today.

So let’s step back and summarise what we’ve learned.
Paul’s prayer was that Israel might be saved.
They had zeal, passion, sincerity and effort, but they lacked knowledge.
What sort of knowledge did they lack? They were extremely knowledgeable when it came to Scripture.
They were ignorant of God’s righteousness.
They tried to establish their own righteousness, and they would not submit to God’s righteousness.
And as a result, they stumbled over Christ.

The lesson is just as relevant today as it was then.
Nobody gets saved by effort. Nobody gets saved by religion or by sincerity or by zeal.
People are saved by receiving the righteousness of God that’s found only in Jesus Christ.

So if you’re trusting your church attendance, or your goodness, or your heritage, or if you’re trusting your effort, in any way, stop.
Turn, and do what Israel refused to do: submit to the righteousness of God.
Simply trust Christ and His finished work. Rest in the fact that Christ has done it all.
Believe God’s testimony concerning His Son, because the same Christ that Israel stumbled over is the Christ who saves every sinner who believes.
And that’s why Paul can say in Romans 10:4,
“For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to every one that believeth.”

Until the next episode, may God give you the certainty of His finished work in Christ.