The Jews Have Heard the Message
But not all the Israelites accepted the good news. For Isaiah says, “Lord, who has believed our message?” Consequently, faith comes from hearing the message, and the message is heard through the word of Christ. But I ask: Did they not hear? Of course they did:
“Their voice has gone out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world.” Romans 10:16-18
If evangelism is made up of a series of successive stages (10:14,15), beginning with heralds being sent and ending with sinners being saved, how can Israel’s unbelief be explained? ‘Not all the Israelites accepted the good news’ (10:16). The word ‘Israelites’ actually isn’t in what Paul wrote. The NIV has added it to clarify that in this section Paul is writing about the poor response of Jews to the gospel.
Their unbelief, Paul says, was foretold in Isaiah 53:1, “Lord, who has believed our message?” The five stages of 10:14 are now reduced to three: ‘faith comes from hearing the message, and the message is heard through the word of Christ’ (10:17). Christ is both the content and author of the message. Preaching leads to hearing and hearing to believing. Why then hasn’t Israel responded? Paul now mentions but rejects two possible explanations (10:18,19) and then gives his own (10:20,21).
First, ‘Did they not hear?’ (10:18). After all, believing depends on hearing. ‘Of course they did’ (10:18). Paul knows how many thousands of Jews have heard the gospel from him, let alone all the other Christians who had shared it with Israelites.
To confirm this, Psalm 19:4 is quoted:
“Their voice has gone out into all the earth,
their words to the ends of the world.”
Psalm 19 is all about the universal witness of the heavens to its Creator. Paul appears to be transferring the biblical language of global witness from creation to the church. If God wants the general revelation of His glory to be universal, how much more must He want the special revelation of His grace to be universal too?
But have ‘their words (gone out) to the ends of the earth’ as Paul infers? He will write later to the Colossians that the gospel ‘has been proclaimed to every creature under heaven’ (Colossians 1:23) so that ‘all over the world this gospel is bearing fruit and growing’ (Colossians 1:6). This is understandable hyperbole but in our text in Romans Paul is referring mainly to Jews hearing the gospel. This is more likely a form of “representative universalism” (F. F. Bruce). Wherever a Jewish community existed, there the gospel has been shared. In this sense the Jews have ‘heard.’ Their unbelief isn’t because they haven’t heard.