Romans 10:14,15 - The need to preach

10:14

“How can they call ...” Why does Paul say this? Why was a Jew preaching to the Gentiles? Indeed, devoting so much energy to seeing Gentiles into the kingdom? Paul was fulfilling God’s mandate. He was fulfilling God’s general plan revealed in the Old Testament. God wanted all nations to be blessed through Abraham, there are numerous other promises of the kingdom being extended to all nations, especially in Isaiah. And Paul has demonstrated in earlier parts of Romans, and reiterated in the last chapter or so, that righteousness is by faith. So if they are going to need faith then they need to hear the message of the gospel so that they can indeed believe. So someone needs to preach to them. There is an increasing attitude in society that we should not proselytise, you may even find it in some parts of the church. This goes directly against God’s will. Even on university campuses there are those demanding that they have “safe places”, ie places where they will not hear anything that might make them question their current beliefs. There are those who say we should just accept gays as they are, that we should not evangelise Jews or Muslims. The problem we have in the church is that we do not evangelise enough or evangelise effectively (and I include myself in this). For the message of salvation is open to all who believe. If we do not preach to a particular group then we are not showing them respect, rather we are saying we are perfectly happy for them to go to hell.

10:15

So there is a general mandate to preach to the Gentiles. Paul also had a specific mandate, he had been called by God specifically to preach to the Gentiles. Paul then quotes from Isaiah 52:7. God sends His messengers with good news, and it is good for His messengers to proclaim His message. Paul could not be as effective as he was if he had not been sent.

There is a very practical problem for the church, at least in the West. We are not very good at evangelism. Most of us know and believe that it is an essential part of the church’s mission, even the primary part of the mission. Yet most of us feel pretty hopeless at it. There are some who try to use guilt to get the church into action. Such a strategy is bound to fail. If guilt could have been successful we would have evangelised the nation ages ago. Then there are those who say fear is the biggest problem. I do not believe this to be so. Rather I think the main problem is that we do not believe that what we do will make much difference to anything. Our society is increasingly inoculated against the gospel. We need God to break through. And He can break through, for there was no reason the Roman world should have been open to the gospel, yet it was. We should follow Jesus’ teaching and ask the Father to send workers into the harvest field, we need to be sent.