Let God Be God

Romans 9-12

03/15/22 – 03/22/22

Man’s Responsibility

By Michael Youssef, Ph D.  03/17/22

Read Romans 10.

In Romans 8-9, Paul unpacks the concept of election—how God in His sovereignty has predestined believers to be saved since before the foundation of the world. Then, in Romans 10, Paul begins to explain how all of humanity is responsible to respond in faith to God’s offer of grace.

Do not be deceived, Paul is not contradicting himself. Man is responsible, and God is sovereign. When it comes to salvation, no one has an excuse for not accepting God’s gift of forgiveness. The full responsibility of rejecting God and His only means of salvation—namely the Lord Jesus Christ—rests squarely on the shoulders of the one who has done the rejection.

Five times in Romans 10 Paul makes this point clear, placing the full responsibility for rejecting Jesus at the feet of those who have rejected Him (see vv. 8, 11, 12, 16, and 21). In fact, the concluding verse of this chapter is a poignant plea on the part of God to a hard-hearted people: “All day long I have held out my hands to a disobedient and obstinate people” (v. 21).

If a person dies without Christ, it is not because he was not elected or predestined, but because he or she has rejected God’s loving invitation of forgiveness and eternal life. How depraved we are to refuse such a love. How wondrous the grace of God to offer it to us! May these Truths compel us to live humbly before our awesome God.

Prayer: Father, how wondrous Your offer of salvation! Help me grasp how wide and long and high and deep is Your love. I pray in the name of Jesus. Amen.

“For there is no difference between Jew and Gentile—the same Lord is Lord of all and richly blesses all who call on him, for, ‘Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved'” (Romans 10:12-13).