In a Nutshell 5-16-10
This week we studied Romans 9:30-10:21. Paul began his line of thinking for this section in 9:1. He has been trying to show that God has not rejected Israel. Many were thinking that He had. What Paul is saying is that the exact opposite is true. God hasn’t rejected Israel, Israel has rejected God. Paul talks about two kinds of people in this section. We went through the passage and compared these groups. We charted it out like this.
I told the students that the majority of the people that they come into contact with who are unsaved fall into the right side of the chart. Like Israel, they think they can work their way into heaven. They ignore God’s provision of righteousness through His Son Jesus and try to do it on their own. But in 10:1 Paul says that this way does not lead to salvation. After comparing these two groups Paul asks a line of questions to tell us that our job is to evangelize these people. We need to lead them from column B to column A.
How do help people get from column B to column A? First, if someone thinks like a column B person we must help them see their Sin. The problem with column B people is that they don’t think they are sinners. They think they are good. They think their good deeds outweigh their bad deeds. Unfortunately they are wrong. So we must help them see their sin. We reviewed the way of the master questions together in class. With these questions we can help self-righteous people see that they are sinful. The Romans Road is another great tool to help people see their sinfulness. Paul leads people through certain points in Romans to make them aware of their sin. (Romans 1:18, 3:23, 6:23)
The second thing that we can do to help move people from column B to A is that we must help them see the Savior. You’ll notice in this passage that Paul constantly points to Jesus. He says those who believe in Him won’t be put to shame. He says that Jesus is the end of obeying the law to achieve righteousness. He says if we call on His name we’ll be saved. The Romans Road does the same thing it moves from sin to the Savior (5:8-9, 10:9-10, and 5:1).
I told the students that since the majority of the unsaved that they come into contact with are column Bers then they need to use the methods that Paul uses to help lead them to the Savior.
