Commentary on Romans 10:8b-13

The several exegetical challenges in the passage itself and in its context need not divert from Paul’s overriding focus on the absolute indispensability of wholehearted trust in God. During Lent, this reminder could not be more appropriate. The passage calls Christians to remember where the focus of their self-examination and confession should be: asking themselves whether they fully embrace God’s righteousness, complete trustworthiness, and capacity to bring life out of death. Living otherwise is a denial of God’s grace in offering us God’s own character (dikaiosūne righteousness/justice). 

This passage is a warning not to be like those Paul cares about so deeply—his fellow Israelites—whom he believes have a tragically ignorant zeal for God (10:2). In his view they do not know the righteousness of God, which leaves them in a situation of seeking to understand righteousness in or on their own terms (10:3). The obvious consequence of this is that, even though his fellow Jews have the law, they do not subordinate themselves to God’s righteousness (10:3).

Paul underscores that the life of faith is not a self-generated life, and certainly not something to take pride in. The life of faith is not one that works to be righteous but rather one that enacts the righteousness given by God through Christ. The word dikaiosūne means both righteousness and justice. While these two English words have different connotations, one focused on character (righteousness) and the other on action for the sake of others (justice), both meanings should be heard: What is essential for Paul is that it is only God’s dikaiosūne that is true righteousness/justice. And, moreover, that God’s righteousness/justice cannot be achieved by human beings; it can only be received.

The life of faith is lived from the righteousness that accompanies the gift of trust in God’s faithfulness (4:21) and power to create life (4:17). This was made evident from the start of the Jewish people: “For the promise to Abraham and his offspring that he would be heir of the world did not come through the law but through the righteousness of faith” (4:13).   

The righteousness of faith is the way of life of those who submit in faith to God’s righteousness/justice. In distinction from the righteousness of the law (10:5), the dikaiosūne of faith is equivalent to Christ (though, as we shall see, this does not prevent Paul from recognizing that the law illuminates the righteousness of faith). Christ and the righteousness of faith are organically connected; one without the other is inconceivable. It is not only that belief in Christ accords people God’s righteousness/justice but that Christ manifests righteousness/justice by faith. Christ entirely demonstrates knowledge of God’s righteousness and submission to God’s righteousness (10:3). 

Consequently, the telos of the law is Christ (10:4), in the sense of being its objective; Christ’s character and actions on behalf of others, revealed in both his incarnate and exalted life, are sourced in his absolute submission to God’s will, and so to God’s dikaiosūne.

Paul dramatically presents Christ as the manifestation of God’s righteousness by inserting Christ in place of the law in Deuteronomy 30. When Deuteronomy speaks of “who will go up into heaven” (Deuteronomy 30:12)—words Paul uses in Romans 10:6—it concerns the law. Moses in Deuteronomy exhorts the Israelites that the law is doable: “Surely, this commandment … is not too hard for you, nor is it too far away. It is not in heaven, that you should say, ‘Who will go up to heaven for us and get it for us so that we may hear it and observe it?’ … No, the word is very near to you; it is in your mouth and in your heart for you to observe” (Deuteronomy 30:11–14). 

Paul makes his identification of Christ with the law unmistakable by his explanatory statement “that is, to bring Christ down” (10:6). And the organic connection between Christ and the righteousness of faith is made plain when Paul writes that it is the latter that says “Do not say in your heart, ‘Who will go up into heaven?’” (10:6). The righteousness of faith knows where Christ is and who Christ is. It knows that “‘the word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart’ (that is, the word of faith that we proclaim)” (10:8). The “word of faith” is clearly Paul’s proclamation of the gospel, which, as he says at the outset of Romans, concerns Jesus Christ our Lord (1:1–4). 

Whereas in Deuteronomy what is near is the commandment of the law, Paul claims that what is near is Christ and the proclamation of Christ. And whereas Moses claims that the law is not too difficult and that it promises life (Deuteronomy 30:16), Paul rewrites these convictions: The only way to life (salvation; 10:9) is acknowledging that “Jesus is Lord” and wholeheartedly believing that “God raised him from the dead” (10:9).  

Such faith is essentially submission to God’s righteousness (see also 10:3)—it is an acknowledgment of where God’s righteousness is found—in Christ; and where it is not—in seeking to define and enact righteousness apart from life in Christ. Paul is not here criticizing or discarding the Jewish law but, rather, focusing attention on Christ, the one who manifests the righteousness of God to which the law itself bears witness.

This passage occurs amid Paul’s anguished explanation of his desire for his fellow Jews who do not yet know Christ (Romans 9–11). He believes that though God has not rejected his people (11:1) and that in the end they will be saved (11:26), nevertheless, their lives of law-keeping are deeply impoverished if they are ignorant of Christ. Notably, Paul sees the righteousness of faith as speaking words from the law, and in the process, the law illuminates Christ (10:6–10).

Paul here emphasizes that our greatest failure is to be ignorant of the righteousness God offers in and through Christ. It invites us to know that through God’s grace, Christ and the understanding of Christ (the proclaimed word) are near us, indeed within us. We do not need to strive but may trust. This is not, however, an exhortation to obsess over how much faith we might have. Rather, it is an encouragement to see that the word/Christ is near us and within us—and so, through trust that Jesus is Lord, we are embraced by the dikaiosūne of God.