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In this message we will cover three more aspects of the experience and enjoyment of Christ revealed in Romans 10.
In Romans 10:4-13, Christ is presented as Christ, the Word, and the Lord.
Verse 4 says, “For Christ is the end of the law unto righteousness to everyone who believes.” This verse indicates that Christ came to be the end of the law unto righteousness to everyone who believes in Him.
Christ is the end of the law. As such, He fulfilled the law, completed the law, and replaced the law, thereby ending the law (Matt. 5:17). When He died on the cross, Christ completed and terminated the law. The law ended in Him. Since the law was terminated on the cross of Christ, we should no longer be under it.
The Jews treasured the law and tried to keep it that they might establish their own righteousness before God. They did not see that the law had been fully completed and terminated by Christ. If they had seen this, they would have stopped their attempts to keep the law. They would never again have tried to establish their own righteousness before God.
The principle is the same with many Christians today. After being saved, they make up their minds to do good to please God. As a result, they spontaneously make regulations for themselves, regulations which may be considered self-made laws, and they endeavor to fulfill them in an attempt to be pleasing to God. Like the Jews, they do not see that Christ is the end, the termination, of all regulations and that they should take Him as their life that they may live righteously before God.
If we desire to experience Christ, we must realize that most of us are under certain laws, including our self-made laws. We need to see that when Christ visits us, He comes to us as the end of our self-made laws. When He grants us a gracious visitation, we will be stopped from trying to keep our self-made laws. His visitation will stop all our activities as well as all our desires, intentions, and even schedules made by ourselves.
Christ is the end of the law unto righteousness. The termination of the law is unto, or results in, righteousness to everyone who believes in Him. This means that the result of Christ terminating the law is that God’s righteousness is given to everyone who believes in Christ. He replaced the law that we may believe in Him to have Him as our righteousness. We need to see that the only genuine righteousness before God is Christ, the One who has terminated the law that He might be the living righteousness to everyone who believes in Him. Everyone who believes in Him receives God’s righteousness, which is Christ Himself. He is the end of the law so that we may gain and enjoy Him as our real and living righteousness before God.
Romans 10:5-8 reveals Christ as the word: “For Moses writes concerning the righteousness which is out of the law: ‘The man who does them shall live by them.’ But the righteousness which is out of faith speaks in this way, ‘Do not say in your heart, Who will ascend into heaven?’ that is, to bring Christ down; or, ‘Who will descend into the abyss?’ that is, to bring Christ up from the dead. But what does it say? ‘The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart,’ that is, the word of the faith which we proclaim.” In these verses, the word is used interchangeably with Christ, indicating that this word is Christ. Christ was incarnated by coming down from heaven and was resurrected by coming up from Hades. Thus, He has become the living Word, the Spirit (Eph. 6:17), to be in our mouth and in our heart, just like the air, the breath, that can be taken into our being. He is near and He is available.
Christ as the Word descended from heaven to mingle Himself with humanity for the accomplishment of redemption. Surely, the Word here is Christ personified. If the Word were not a living person, He could not have descended from heaven to mingle Himself with humanity for the accomplishment of redemption. Paul quotes Deuteronomy 30:12, saying, “Do not say in your hearts, Who will ascend into heaven?” He then points out that this means “to bring Christ down” and that this refers to Christ’s incarnation, for Christ came down from the heavens in His incarnation.
In His incarnation, Christ as the Word brought the infinite God into the finite man, thereby mingling the Triune God with the tripartite man, that is, divinity with humanity (Matt. 1:20). He mingled Himself with humanity in order to accomplish God’s redemption (John 1:1, 14, 29). After passing through His human living, Christ went to die on the cross as a God-man to redeem us back to God (1 Pet. 3:18).
Christ as the Word ascended from the dead for justification unto life to those who receive Him by believing. After His death Christ as the Word descended into the abyss, Hades, and He ascended from that place in His resurrection so that those who receive Him by believing in Him may be justified by God and have His life. We need to see that the Word descended from the heavens and ascended into heaven. Paul says that we should not ask, “Who will descend into the abyss?” To “descend into the abyss” means to bring Christ up from the dead and refers to Christ’s resurrection. To descend into the abyss means to die and to enter into Hades. When Christ died, He descended into the abyss, and in resurrection He was brought up from the dead, that is, out of the abyss. Christ is the One who has passed through incarnation and resurrection. Therefore, we may say that He as the Word is the “processed” Christ, Christ incarnated and resurrected.
Christ as the Word has passed through a long process from incarnation through resurrection. In this process He accomplished everything that is required by God’s righteousness, holiness, and glory and all that is needed to enable us to partake of Him. He was God incarnated to be a man, and as a man, He was transfigured through resurrection into the life-giving Spirit (1 Cor. 15:45). Now in resurrection as the life-giving Spirit, He is so available that we may receive Him and take Him in at any time and in any place. As the life-giving Spirit, He is now moving on earth, ready for and available to anyone who will receive Him. Whoever receives Him by believing into Him will be justified by God and receive His life. According to Paul, this processed Christ, Christ incarnated and resurrected, is “the word of the faith which we proclaim” (Rom. 10:8).
Christ as the living Word is not only in our mouth but also in our heart. This indicates that the word must be in the Spirit. Otherwise, the word may be in our mouth, but it cannot be in our heart. Christ in resurrection as the life-giving Spirit is the living Word. This corresponds with the New Testament revelation that the Word is the Spirit (Eph. 6:17). Christ in resurrection is both the Spirit and the Word. He is the Spirit for us to touch, and He is the Word for us to understand. We may receive Him as both the Spirit and the Word. The resurrected Christ as the life-giving Spirit is the living Word that is so near to us. He is in our mouth and in our heart. Our mouth is for calling, and our heart is for believing. Thus, we can call upon Him with our mouth and believe in Him with our heart. When we call on Him, we are saved; when we believe in Him, we are justified.
The word, which is personified, is not only in our mouth but also in our heart. The word is not merely the written word but also the living Word, that is, the person of Christ Himself. This word is actually the gospel (1:13; Col. 1:5). When we hear the word, we hear the gospel; when we receive the word, we receive the gospel and Christ Himself.
Romans 10:9-13 reveals that Christ is the Lord.
Verse 12 says, “For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek, for the same Lord is Lord of all and rich to all who call upon Him.” Christ is the same Lord of all (Acts 10:36; 1 Cor. 8:6). Here all refers to all persons including the Jews and the Gentiles. Christ is the Lord of all peoples, that is, He is the Lord of all races, tribes, and nationalities (Rev. 5:9).
Acts 13:1 confirms that Christ is the same Lord of all: “Now there were in Antioch, in the local church, prophets and teachers: Barnabas and Simeon, who was called Niger, and Lucius the Cyrenian, and Manaen, the foster brother of Herod the tetrarch, and Saul.” In this verse we see that different peoples had become one church. The prophets and teachers in the church in Antioch were from a number of different sources. Barnabas was a Levite, a Cyprian by birth (4:36). Niger, whose name means black and should denote a Negro, was probably of African origin. Lucius the Cyrenian was from Cyrene in North Africa. He may have been a Jew if he was the Lucius in Romans 16:21, who was Paul’s kinsman. Manaen was the foster brother of Herod and was governmentally related to the Romans. Hence, Manaen must have been Europeanized. Finally, Acts 13:1 mentions Saul, a Jew born in Tarsus and taught by Gamaliel according to the law of Moses (22:3). The five prophets and teachers recorded here were composed of Jewish and Gentile peoples with different backgrounds, education, and status. This indicates that the church is composed of all races and classes of believers regardless of their background. The church is not the church of any particular race; rather, it is the church of the believers from different races who have been redeemed and regenerated and are being transformed to be glorified (1 Thes. 1:1). Although every race considers itself to be superior to other races and thus looks down on others, Christ is the same Lord of all and the church is composed of all races and classes of people.
Christ is rich to all who call upon Him (Rom. 10:12b), irrespective of nationality, wealth, behavior, culture, or education. Moreover, that Christ is rich to those who call upon Him reveals that God selects us, redeems us, justifies us, sanctifies us, conforms us, and glorifies us in Christ in order that we may enjoy His unsearchable riches in Christ (Eph. 3:8). The secret to this enjoyment is to call on His name. If we open our mouth wide and call on the Lord, the riches of His divinity will be our portion (Psa. 81:10).
Christ needs our participation in Him. Since we have been made vessels to contain Him, we need to believe with our heart to receive Him and to call on Him continually with our mouth to take Him in, thus allowing His riches to fill our empty vessel (Rom. 9:21-23).
The Bible reveals that calling on the Lord is the way to partake of and enjoy the Lord. Deuteronomy 4:7 says that the Lord is near “whenever we call upon Him.” Psalm 145:18 says that the Lord is “near to all who call upon Him.” Psalm 18:6 and 118:5 say that David called upon the Lord in his distress. In Psalm 50:15 the Lord asks us to call upon Him in the day of trouble, and in Psalm 86:7 David did it accordingly. Psalm 81:7 says that the children of Israel did the same thing (Exo. 2:23) and that the Lord told them, “Open your mouth wide, and I will fill it” (Psa. 81:10). Psalm 86:5 says that the Lord is good, ready to forgive, and is abundant in lovingkindness to all that call upon Him. Psalm 116:3-4 says, “The bonds of death encompassed me, / And the distresses of Sheol fell upon me; / I fell upon trouble and sorrow. / But I called upon the name of Jehovah.” Verse 13 of the same psalm says, “I will take up the cup of salvation / And call upon the name of Jehovah.” In order to take the cup of salvation, that is, to participate in and enjoy the Lord’s salvation, we need to call upon the name of the Lord.
Lamentations 3:55-57 makes it clear that when we call upon the Lord He draws near to us and that our calling upon Him is our breathing, our cry. By this we can realize that to call upon the Lord is not only to cry to Him but also to experience spiritual breathing (Exo. 2:23) in which we breathe out all that is within us, whether it be agony, pain, pressure, etc. Jeremiah did this when he called upon the Lord out of a low dungeon, that is, out of the lowest pit. Whenever we are in a spiritual dungeon or pit, under a certain suppression, we can call on the Lord, breathing out the heaviness within us, and thus be delivered from the lowest pit. This kind of calling on the Lord not only enables us to breathe out the negative things from within us but also to breathe in the Lord Himself with all His riches as our strength, enjoyment, comfort, and rest. In this way we partake of the riches of the Lord. Hence, in Romans 10:12 Paul tells us that the Lord is “rich to all who call upon Him.” Today in resurrection the Lord is ready and available for our participation in Him, and He is rich for our enjoyment of Him. We simply need to call on Him all the time. Calling on Him, we partake of and enjoy all His riches.
Calling on the Lord is different from merely praying to Him. The Greek word for call on or call upon means to invoke a person, to call a person by name. Although it is possible to pray to the Lord silently, calling on the Lord requires that we cry out to Him or address Him audibly. The Hebrew word for call in Genesis 4:26 means to “call out to” or “cry unto.” Isaiah 12:4 and 6 show that to call upon the Lord’s name is to “cry out and give a ringing shout.” Lamentations 3:55 and 56 reveal the same thing — to call upon the Lord’s name is to “cry” to the Lord. To call upon the Lord is to cry to Him.
According to the Scriptures, this matter of calling on the name of the Lord began with the third generation of mankind. From the time of Enosh, “men began to call upon the name of Jehovah” (Gen. 4:26). Then Abraham (12:8), Isaac (26:25), Job (Job 12:4), Moses (Deut. 4:7), Jabez (1 Chron. 4:10), Samson (Judg. 16:28), Samuel (1 Sam. 12:18), David (2 Sam. 22:4; 1 Chron. 21:26), Jonah (Jonah 1:6), Elijah (1 Kings 18:24), Elisha (2 Kings 5:11), and Jeremiah (Lam. 3:55) all practiced this matter of calling on the name of the Lord. Moreover, in Joel 2:32, Zephaniah 3:9, and Zechariah 13:9 it is prophesied that people will call on the name of the Lord.
On the day of Pentecost the New Testament believers also called on the name of the Lord to receive the outpoured Spirit as the fulfillment of Joel’s prophecy (Acts 2:17-21). God poured out His Spirit, and the believers opened their mouths to receive the Spirit by calling on the name of the Lord. The Spirit has been poured out by God, but we need to receive Him. The way to receive Him is to open our mouths and call on the Lord. Hence, the New Testament believers, like Stephen (7:59), practiced this. By calling on the Lord they made it known that they were followers of the Lord (9:14). When Paul was Saul, the persecutor of the church, he intended to arrest the believers, recognizing them by their calling on the name of the Lord. After he was converted, he was advised to wash away his sins, mainly referring to his persecution of those who called on the Lord, by calling on the name of the Lord himself (22:16). Undoubtedly, this practice was common among the early saints.
In addressing his first Epistle to the church at Corinth, Paul said, “All those who call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ in every place” (1 Cor. 1:2). This indicates that all the early believers practiced this matter of calling. In his second Epistle to Timothy, Paul charged him to pursue spiritual things “with those who call on the Lord out of a pure heart” (2:22). Therefore, we must also practice it. The Old Testament saints called on the Lord daily (Psa. 88:9) and throughout their entire life (116:2). We should practice calling on the Lord “out of a pure heart” (2 Tim. 2:22) and with “a pure language” (Zeph. 3:9). If we practice this, we will certainly partake of the Lord’s riches and enjoy them. To call on the Lord is not only for salvation but also for the enjoyment of the Lord with all His riches.
Romans 10:9-10 says, “That if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved; for with the heart there is believing unto righteousness, and with the mouth there is confession unto salvation.” These verses show two steps of our being justified and saved: believing in the heart that God has raised Him from the dead and confessing Him with the mouth. The former is inward, and the latter is outward. To believe with the heart is toward God; to confess with the mouth is toward man. To believe with the heart is to believe in Christ, who was glorified and raised by God from the dead; to confess with the mouth is to confess that Jesus, who was despised and rejected by man, is Lord. Both are conditions for our being justified and saved.
Christ’s being raised from the dead was invisible; hence, it requires our believing. Moreover, although Christ’s death has redeemed us, it is His life in resurrection alone that can save us. Therefore, only when we believe in the great miracle that God performed in Him in raising Him from the dead, can we be both redeemed and saved.
Furthermore, Paul says that with the heart “there is believing unto righteousness” (v. 10). Unto is an equivalent of a Greek preposition which, in many instances, means “resulting in.” Therefore, the result of believing with the heart is righteousness. If you want to be justified, that is, to have the righteousness of God, you must believe in the Lord Jesus. If you believe in your heart that God has raised Jesus from the dead, you will be justified. Believing in this way is unto, or results in, righteousness. When you believe in your heart that God has raised Jesus from the dead, your believing results in receiving righteousness. Receiving righteousness equals being justified by God.
Although believing in your heart results in righteousness, in order to complete the step in salvation, you must confess with your mouth. Paul says, “With the mouth there is confession unto salvation” (v. 10). The result of confessing with the mouth is salvation. If you want to be saved, you need to confess the Lord Jesus. Certainly, to confess with your mouth is to call on the name of the Lord, that is, to say, “O Lord Jesus.” When you call on the name of the Lord, the entire universe, including the angels, demons, men, and all created things, realizes that you are saved. You need to call on the name of the Lord audibly, even loudly. Therefore, when you preach the gospel, you must not only help sinners to believe in the Lord but also teach them to call on the name of the Lord loudly.
When we call on the name of the Lord from deep within our spirit, whether loudly, softly, or even silently, we will be beside ourselves with joy and will be brought into ecstasy. Our enjoyment of Christ by calling on His name with the exercise of our spirit is strong proof that God is now the Spirit, that our Lord Jesus Christ is also the Spirit, and that we have our regenerated spirit.
Of all the chapters in the book of Romans, chapter 10 presents the most concerning Christ. In verse 4 Christ is called “the end of the law.” In no other chapter in the whole New Testament is Christ designated in such a way. Hence, Romans 10 gives us a very crucial title of Christ: the end of the law. This Christ was incarnated by coming down from heaven and was resurrected by coming up from the abyss. Having passed through this process, Christ, who is the end of the law, has become the living word. He is near us, even in our mouth and in our heart. The two phrases in your mouth and in your heart imply that Christ is like the air (v. 8). Only air can be in our mouth and in our heart. The resurrected Christ is the living word, which is the Spirit; He is like the air, the breath, that we take into our being. All we need to do is exercise our mouth to breathe Him in, our heart to receive Him, and our spirit to retain Him. If we do this, we will be saved and supplied with all His riches by calling on His name.
Romans 10 presents an excellent description and definition of Christ for our participation. We must not only believe in Him with our heart but also call on Him with our mouth. We must call on Him, not only for salvation but also for the enjoyment of His riches. We were made vessels to contain Him; we were selected and predestinated to be His containers. This requires our cooperation in receiving Him and taking Him in. In order to do this we need to open ourselves from the depths of our being and call upon Him with our mouth from deep within our spirit so that our human vessels would be filled with Christ.
