10¹ Believe me, friends, all I want for Israel is what's best for Israel: salvation, nothing less. I want it with all my heart and pray to God for it all the time. ² I readily admit that the Jews are impressively energetic regarding God - but they are doing everything exactly backwards. ³ They don't seem to realize that this comprehensive setting-things-right that is salvation is God's business, and a most flourishing business it is. Right across the street they set up their own salvation shops and noisily hawk their wares. After all these years of refusing to really deal with God on his terms, insisting instead on making their own deals, they have nothing to show for it. ⁴ The earlier revelation was intended simply to get us ready for the Messiah, who then puts everything right for those who trust him to do it. ⁵ Moses wrote that anyone who insists on using the law code to live right before God soon discovers it's not so easy - every detail of life regulated by fine print! ⁶ But trusting God to shape the right living in us is a different story - no precarious climb up to heaven to recruit the Messiah, ⁷ no dangerous descent into hell to rescue the Messiah. ⁸ So what exactly was Moses saying? The word that saves is right here, as near as the tongue in your mouth, as close as the heart in your chest. ⁹ Say the welcoming word to God - "Jesus is my Master" - embracing, body and soul, God's work of doing in us what he did in raising Jesus from the dead. That's it. You're not "doing" anything; you're simply calling out to God, trusting him to do it for you. That's salvation. ¹⁰ With your whole being you embrace God setting things right, and then you say it, right out loud: "God has set everything right between him and me!" ¹¹ Scripture reassures us, "No one who trusts God like this - heart and soul - will ever regret it."

¹² It's exactly the same no matter what a person's religious background may be: the same God for all of us, acting the same incredibly generous way to everyone who calls out for help. ¹³ "Everyone who calls, 'Help, God!' gets help." ¹⁴ But how can people call for help if they don't know who to trust? And how can they know who to trust if they haven't heard of the One who can be trusted? And how can they hear if nobody tells them? ¹⁵ And how is anyone going to tell them, unless someone is sent to do it? That's why Scripture exclaims, A sight to take your breath away! Grand processions of people telling all the good things of God! ¹⁶ But not everybody is ready for this, ready to see and hear and act. Isaiah asked what we all ask at one time or another: "Does anyone care, God? Is anyone listening and believing a word of it?" ¹⁷ The point is, Before you trust, you have to listen. But unless Christ's Word is preached, there's nothing to listen to. ¹⁸ But haven't there been plenty of opportunities for Israel to listen and understand what's going on? Plenty, I'd say. Preachers' voices have gone 'round the world, Their message to earth's seven seas. ¹⁹ So the big question is, Why didn't Israel understand that she had no corner on this message? Moses had it right when he predicted, When you see God reach out to those you consider your inferiors - outsiders! - you'll become insanely jealous. When you see God reach out to people you think are religiously stupid, you'll throw temper tantrums. ²⁰ Isaiah dared to speak out these words of God: People found and welcomed me who never so much as looked for me. And I found and welcomed people who had never even asked about me. ²¹ Then he capped it with a damning indictment: Day after day after day, I beckoned Israel with open arms, And got nothing for my trouble but cold shoulders and icy stares.

3¹ So what difference does it make who's a Jew and who isn't, who has been trained in God's ways and who hasn't? ² As it turns out, it makes a lot of difference - but not the difference so many have assumed. ³ So, what if, in the course of doing that, some of those Jews abandoned their post? God didn't abandon them. Do you think their faithlessness cancels out his faithfulness? ⁴ Not on your life! Depend on it: God keeps his word even when the whole world is lying through its teeth. Scripture says the same: Your words stand fast and true; Rejection doesn't faze you. ⁵ But if our wrongdoing only underlines and confirms God's rightdoing, shouldn't we be commended for helping out? Since our bad words don't even make a dent in his good words, isn't it wrong of God to back us to the wall and hold us to our word? These questions come up. ⁶ The answer to such questions is no, a most emphatic No! How else would things ever get straightened out if God didn't do the straightening? ⁷ It's simply perverse to say, "If my lies serve to show off God's truth all the more gloriously, why blame me? I'm doing God a favor." ⁸ Some people are actually trying to put such words in our mouths, claiming that we go around saying, "The more evil we do, the more good God does, so let's just do it!" That's pure slander, as I'm sure you'll agree. We're All in the Same Sinking Boat

There Is None Righteous

⁹ So where does that put us? Do we Jews get a better break than the others? Not really. Basically, all of us, whether insiders or outsiders, start out in identical conditions, which is to say that we all start out as sinners. Scripture leaves no doubt about it: ¹⁰ There's nobody living right, not even one, ¹¹ nobody who knows the score, nobody alert for God. ¹² They've all taken the wrong turn; they've all wandered down blind alleys. No one's living right; I can't find a single one. ¹³ Their throats are gaping graves, their tongues slick as mud slides. Every word they speak is tinged with poison. ¹⁴ They open their mouths and pollute the air. ¹⁵ They race for the honor of sinner-of-the-year, ¹⁶ litter the land with heartbreak and ruin, ¹⁷ Don't know the first thing about living with others. ¹⁸ They never give God the time of day.

¹⁹ This makes it clear, doesn't it, that whatever is written in these Scriptures is not what God says about others but to us to whom these Scriptures were addressed in the first place! And it's clear enough, isn't it, that we're sinners, every one of us, in the same sinking boat with everybody else? ²⁰ Our involvement with God's revelation doesn't put us right with God. What it does is force us to face our complicity in everyone else's sin.

Righteousness through Faith

²¹ But in our time something new has been added. What Moses and the prophets witnessed to all those years has happened. ²² The God-setting-things-right that we read about has become Jesus-setting-things-right for us. And not only for us, but for everyone who believes in him. For there is no difference between us and them in this. ²³ Since we've compiled this long and sorry record as sinners (both us and them) and proved that we are utterly incapable of living the glorious lives God wills for us, ²⁴ God did it for us. Out of sheer generosity he put us in right standing with himself. A pure gift. He got us out of the mess we're in and restored us to where he always wanted us to be. And he did it by means of Jesus Christ. ²⁵ God sacrificed Jesus on the altar of the world to clear that world of sin. Having faith in him sets us in the clear. God decided on this course of action in full view of the public - to set the world in the clear with himself through the sacrifice of Jesus, finally taking care of the sins he had so patiently endured. ²⁶ This is not only clear, but it's now - this is current history! God sets things right. He also makes it possible for us to live in his rightness. ²⁷ So where does that leave our proud Jewish insider claims and counterclaims? Canceled? Yes, canceled. What we've learned is this: God does not respond to what we do; we respond to what God does. ²⁸ We've finally figured it out. Our lives get in step with God and all others by letting him set the pace, not by proudly or anxiously trying to run the parade. ²⁹ And where does that leave our proud Jewish claim of having a corner on God? Also canceled. God is the God of outsider non-Jews as well as insider Jews. ³⁰ How could it be otherwise since there is only one God? God sets right all who welcome his action and enter into it, both those who follow our religious system and those who have never heard of our religion. ³¹ But by shifting our focus from what we do to what God does, don't we cancel out all our careful keeping of the rules and ways God commanded? Not at all. What happens, in fact, is that by putting that entire way of life in its proper place, we confirm it.