Thursday, January 23, 2025
Scripture Readings
- Primary Reading: Romans 9-10
Key Verse
Romans 9:28 — “For he will finish the work, and cut it short in righteousness: because a short work will the Lord make upon the earth.”
Devotional Thought
Paul opens Romans 9 with a confession that must have cost him tears: “I have great heaviness and continual sorrow in my heart.” He is not writing abstract theology; he is writing as a Jewish man about his own kinsmen, the Israelites. To them belonged the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the law, the temple service, and the promises—and from them, according to the flesh, came Christ Himself. Yet many had stumbled over Him. Paul says he could almost wish himself “accursed from Christ” for their sake, echoing Moses, who asked to be blotted out of God’s book rather than see Israel perish. This is love that looks like crucifixion.
Paul then wrestles with the hardest question: has God’s word failed? His answer is no. Not all who descend from Abraham are truly Israel; Isaac was a child of promise, not merely of flesh, and God told Rebecca before her twins were born, “The elder shall serve the younger.” Paul presses further still, anticipating the objection: “Is there unrighteousness with God?” He answers with the potter and the clay. The vessel does not interrogate the hand that shaped it. Mercy belongs to God, who says, “I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy.” And yet—here is the wonder—the mercy spills past Israel’s borders to Gentiles who “followed not after righteousness” and still attained it, by faith.
Chapter 10 turns that theology into a prayer: “Brethren, my heart’s desire and prayer to God for Israel is, that they might be saved.” Paul honors their zeal even while grieving that it is “not according to knowledge.” They sought to establish their own righteousness and did not submit to God’s. But the righteousness of faith is not far off, not hidden in heaven or in the deep. “The word is nigh thee, even in thy mouth, and in thy heart.” Confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus, believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, and you shall be saved. Whosoever—Jew or Greek—calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.
And then the chain that reaches all the way to us: how shall they call on Him they have not believed? How believe without hearing? How hear without a preacher? How preach unless sent? “Faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.” In these gray weeks of January, when the year still feels new and resolutions have begun to fray, Paul’s burden searches us. Someone once preached to us—a parent, a pastor, a stranger, a page. And all day long, verse 21 says, God stretches out His hands to a disobedient and gainsaying people. His arms are still open. The question is whether ours will be.
Reflection
- Paul was willing to be “accursed from Christ” for his kinsmen’s salvation. Who in your life carries that weight in your prayers—and have you grown content to let them drift?
- “Faith cometh by hearing.” Who first spoke the word of God to you, and to whom are you being sent to speak it in this season?
Prayer
Father, we thank You that Your word has not failed and that Your mercy runs to whomever You choose. We confess that we have often gone about establishing our own righteousness instead of submitting to Yours. Teach us the simplicity of faith: the word near us, in our mouth and heart, the confession that Jesus is Lord and the belief that You raised Him from the dead. Give us Paul’s burden for the lost, and make our feet beautiful as we carry the gospel of peace. Stretch out Your hands through us, we pray, to a world that still has not heard. In Christ’s name, Amen.