Romans 10:14–21
“How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? How will they believe in him whom they have not heard? How will they hear without a preacher? And how will they preach unless they are sent? As it is written:
‘How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the Good News of peace,
who bring glad tidings of good things!’
“But they didn’t all listen to the glad news. For Isaiah says, ‘Lord, who has believed our report?’ So faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.
“But I say, didn’t they hear? Yes, most certainly,
‘Their sound went out into all the earth,
their words to the ends of the world.’
“But I say, didn’t Israel know? First Moses says,
‘I will provoke you to jealousy with that which is no nation.
With a nation void of understanding, I will make you angry.’
“Isaiah is very bold and says,
‘I was found by those who didn’t seek me.
I was revealed to those who didn’t ask for me.’
“But about Israel he says,
‘All day long I stretched out my hands to a disobedient and contrary people.’”
Paul has declared that salvation belongs to everyone who calls upon the Lord. There is no distinction between Jew and Greek in access to that salvation because the same Lord is Lord of all and is rich toward all who call upon him. Paul now traces the movement that leads to that calling: people call upon the one they believe, they believe the one they hear, they hear through proclamation, and proclamation comes through those who are sent.
The sequence places the proclamation of Christ at the center of the human response of faith. The righteousness of faith does not arise from religious intuition or from an inward confidence detached from revelation. The gospel announces what God has accomplished in Christ so that those who hear may believe and call upon him.
Yet the sequence also raises a question central to Paul’s argument concerning Israel. If faith comes through hearing, might Israel’s unbelief be explained by a failure to hear? Paul rejects that possibility. The good news had been proclaimed, but “they didn’t all listen to the glad news.” Israel’s problem was not simply the absence of revelation.
Paul then presses further. Perhaps Israel heard but could not have known that God would bring people from outside the covenant nation into his people. Again Israel’s own Scriptures answer the objection. Moses had spoken of God provoking Israel to jealousy through those who were “not a people,” and Isaiah described God being found by those who had not sought him.
The final quotation brings the argument to its sharpest point. Concerning Israel, God says, “All day long I stretched out my hands to a disobedient and contrary people.” The God whose sovereignty Paul has defended throughout Romans 9 is not portrayed as withholding himself from Israelites who desired to come to him. His hands are extended. Their resistance is described as disobedience.
Israel heard. Israel had been warned in its own Scriptures. God stretched out his hands. Yet many remained unbelieving.
How Will They Call?
Romans 10:14
“How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? How will they believe in him whom they have not heard? How will they hear without a preacher?”
Paul begins with the promise immediately preceding the passage:
Romans 10:13
“For, ‘Whoever will call on the name of the Lord will be saved.’”
He then works backward through the conditions by which such calling becomes possible.
Calling upon the Lord presupposes believing in him. The confession Paul has just described is not an incantation in which the words themselves produce salvation. The mouth confesses Jesus as Lord because the heart believes. The person who calls upon Christ therefore calls upon someone in whom he has placed faith.
Believing presupposes hearing. Faith in Christ requires content concerning Christ. Paul has already identified the message as “the word of faith which we preach” and summarized its content through confession that Jesus is Lord and belief that God raised him from the dead. A person cannot believe that saving message without encountering it.
Hearing therefore requires proclamation: “How will they hear without a preacher?”
The importance of the preacher lies in the message rather than in the messenger. Paul does not insert a human mediator between Christ and the sinner. The messenger announces the Christ upon whom the sinner may call. The gospel concerns events God has accomplished—the coming, death, and resurrection of Christ—and those events must be proclaimed if people are to know the Lord in whom they are called to believe.
The sequence also preserves the meaningfulness of human response. Paul does not move from proclamation directly to salvation as though hearing automatically produces faith. People hear the message so that they may believe, and those who believe call upon the Lord.
The distinction will become important almost immediately, because Paul will acknowledge that not everyone who heard the good news responded to it in faith.
How Will They Preach Unless They Are Sent?
Romans 10:15
“And how will they preach unless they are sent? As it is written:
‘How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the Good News of peace,
who bring glad tidings of good things!’”
Behind proclamation stands sending. The messenger does not invent the message but carries news concerning what God has done.
Paul draws his language from Isaiah:
Isaiah 52:7
“How beautiful on the mountains are the feet of him who brings good news, who publishes peace, who brings good news of good, who publishes salvation, who says to Zion, ‘Your God reigns!’”
Isaiah 52 announces the restoration of Zion. The preceding verses speak of God’s people knowing his name and recognizing that Yahweh has acted, while the messenger arrives announcing peace, good news, salvation, and the reign of God. The beauty of the messenger’s feet lies in what his arrival means. He comes because there is good news to announce.
Paul sees the proclamation of Christ within that prophetic pattern. The gospel is first an announcement of divine action. The sinner does not ascend into heaven to bring Christ down or descend into the abyss to raise him from the dead. God has already acted. The messenger therefore does not arrive with instructions for accomplishing salvation but with news that salvation has been accomplished in Christ.
That news summons a response. Jesus is Lord. God raised him from the dead. Those who hear are called to believe and to call upon him.
The sequence from sending to proclamation to hearing to believing to calling consequently does not describe a human construction reaching upward toward God. It describes God bringing the word near through the proclamation of what he has done.
Yet the arrival of good news does not mean that everyone welcomes it.
They Did Not All Obey the Good News
Romans 10:16
“But they didn’t all listen to the glad news. For Isaiah says, ‘Lord, who has believed our report?’”
Paul immediately qualifies what he has said about hearing. The good news was proclaimed, but “they didn’t all listen.”
The underlying language carries more than the idea of sound reaching the ear. Paul is concerned with a hearing that responds to the message. His supporting quotation makes the issue explicit: “Who has believed our report?”
The quotation comes from the opening of Isaiah 53:
Isaiah 53:1
“Who has believed our message? To whom has Yahweh’s arm been revealed?”
The question introduces Isaiah’s description of the servant who is despised and rejected, bears griefs and sorrows, is wounded for transgressions, and ultimately accomplishes God’s purpose through suffering. The announcement of God’s saving work is therefore accompanied in Isaiah itself by the question of who will believe what has been proclaimed.
Paul finds the same pattern in Israel’s response to Christ. The existence of unbelief does not mean that no message was given. A message can be heard and nevertheless rejected.
This distinction is essential to what follows. Paul is about to ask whether Israel heard. Verse 16 has already prepared the answer. The problem is not simply that the sound of the gospel failed to reach Israel. “They didn’t all listen to the glad news.” Hearing in the ordinary sense occurred without the believing response the message called for.
Paul therefore does not treat faith as an automatic effect produced whenever the gospel enters someone’s hearing. The message genuinely comes to people who may refuse it. Isaiah’s question—“Who has believed our report?”—makes unbelief a response to proclamation rather than evidence that proclamation never occurred.
Faith Comes by Hearing
Romans 10:17
“So faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.”
Paul now summarizes the relationship he has established between proclamation and faith.
Faith comes through hearing, and that hearing comes through the proclaimed word concerning Christ. The statement belongs to the chain Paul began in verse 14 rather than functioning as an isolated principle concerning exposure to Scripture generally.
The “word” in view has already been identified:
Romans 10:8
“‘The word is near you, in your mouth, and in your heart;’ that is, the word of faith which we preach”
Paul then supplied the content of that preached word: Jesus is Lord, and God raised him from the dead. The hearing through which faith comes is therefore hearing the gospel concerning Christ.
This guards the nature of faith from two opposite errors. Faith is not a meritorious work by which sinners establish righteousness for themselves, but neither is it an undefined spiritual disposition without an object. Faith responds to what God has revealed and accomplished. Christ is proclaimed so that he may be believed.
The verse also follows immediately after Paul’s observation that not everyone obeyed the good news. Hearing is necessary for faith, but hearing and faith are not identical. Israel can therefore have heard and yet remain unbelieving.
That is precisely the possibility Paul now considers.
Didn’t They Hear?
Romans 10:18
“But I say, didn’t they hear? Yes, most certainly,
‘Their sound went out into all the earth,
their words to the ends of the world.’”
If faith comes through hearing, Israel’s unbelief might appear explicable if Israel had never heard the message. Paul asks the question directly and rejects that explanation: “Didn’t they hear? Yes, most certainly.”
His supporting quotation is surprising because it comes from Psalm 19:
Psalm 19:1–4
“The heavens declare the glory of God.
The expanse shows his handiwork.
Day after day they pour out speech,
and night after night they display knowledge.
There is no speech nor language
where their voice is not heard.
Their voice has gone out through all the earth,
their words to the end of the world.”
In the psalm, the words Paul quotes describe creation. The heavens declare God’s glory without ordinary human speech, yet their testimony extends universally. Their “voice” goes throughout the earth.
Paul takes that language of far-reaching proclamation and applies it to the spread of the gospel. He is not claiming that Psalm 19 originally predicted Christian missionaries or that David’s subject was secretly gospel preaching rather than creation. The force of the quotation lies in the scriptural language of a testimony whose sound goes outward broadly and unmistakably.
That language serves Paul’s immediate question: Israel cannot appeal to absence of proclamation as the explanation for its unbelief.
The history of the gospel makes the point especially forceful. The message concerning Christ did not begin among distant Gentile nations and bypass Israel. Jesus ministered within Israel. The apostles proclaimed the risen Christ in Jerusalem. The earliest church was Jewish. Paul himself repeatedly entered synagogues and reasoned from Israel’s Scriptures concerning Christ before his ministry extended more fully among Gentiles.
The question in Romans 10 is therefore not whether every human being alive had already personally encountered a Christian preacher. Paul’s subject is Israel, and concerning Israel his answer is emphatic: they heard.
That conclusion narrows the explanation for unbelief. The problem cannot simply be that the saving message never came.
Paul therefore considers another possibility. Israel may have heard the proclamation, but perhaps Israel could not have known that God would extend his saving mercy in the manner now occurring among the Gentiles.
Again Paul answers from Israel’s Scriptures.
Didn’t Israel Know?
Romans 10:19
“But I say, didn’t Israel know? First Moses says,
‘I will provoke you to jealousy with that which is no nation.
With a nation void of understanding, I will make you angry.’”
Paul turns to the Song of Moses in Deuteronomy 32:
Deuteronomy 32:15–21
“But Jeshurun grew fat, and kicked.
You have grown fat.
You have grown thick.
You have become sleek.
Then he abandoned God who made him,
and rejected the Rock of his salvation.
“They moved him to jealousy with strange gods.
They provoked him to anger with abominations.
They sacrificed to demons, which were no gods,
to gods that they didn’t know,
to new gods that came up recently,
which your fathers didn’t dread.
“Of the Rock who became your father, you are unmindful,
and have forgotten God who gave you birth.
“Yahweh saw and abhorred,
because of the provocation of his sons and his daughters.
“He said, ‘I will hide my face from them.
I will see what their end will be;
for they are a very perverse generation,
children in whom is no faithfulness.
“‘They have moved me to jealousy with that which is not God.
They have provoked me to anger with their vanities.
I will move them to jealousy with those who are not a people.
I will provoke them to anger with a foolish nation.’”
The context makes Paul’s choice particularly appropriate. Moses is not speaking about a faithful Israel inexplicably displaced by outsiders. Israel abandons the God who made it, turns toward false gods, and provokes Yahweh to jealousy. God answers that rebellion with a deliberate reversal: those who provoked him through what was “not God” will themselves be provoked through those who are “not a people.”
Paul sees the inclusion of Gentiles within that scriptural pattern.
Israel therefore could not claim that the presence of outsiders among the recipients of God’s mercy was wholly foreign to its Scriptures. Moses himself had warned Israel that covenant rebellion could result in God using those outside the nation to provoke Israel to jealousy.
The quotation also destroys any basis for Gentile superiority. Moses does not describe the outsiders as a naturally righteous or spiritually enlightened people. They are “not a people” and “a foolish nation.” Their place within God’s purpose cannot therefore be credited to their superiority over Israel.
The pattern is instead one of judgment and mercy. Israel’s unbelief does not obligate God to confine his saving work to the covenant nation, and Gentile distance from that covenant history does not prevent God from showing mercy to Gentiles.
The language of jealousy will become central in Romans 11, where Paul will describe his ministry among Gentiles as serving, in part, the hope of provoking some of his fellow Israelites to jealousy and saving some of them. The inclusion of Gentiles is therefore not merely judgment upon Israel. Even the jealousy it produces may serve a merciful purpose toward Israel.
Before developing that argument, however, Paul adds Isaiah’s testimony.
Found by Those Who Did Not Seek Me
Romans 10:20
“Isaiah is very bold and says,
‘I was found by those who didn’t seek me.
I was revealed to those who didn’t ask for me.’”
Paul now turns to Isaiah 65. The opening verse reads:
Isaiah 65:1
“I am inquired of by those who didn’t ask.
I am found by those who didn’t seek me.
I said, ‘See me, see me,’ to a nation that was not called by my name.”
Paul describes Isaiah as “very bold” because the prophetic language reverses ordinary expectations. God is found by those who had not sought him and revealed to those who had not asked for him.
Within Paul’s argument, that language describes the surprising inclusion of the Gentiles. Romans 9 ended with Gentiles who “didn’t follow after righteousness” nevertheless attaining the righteousness of faith. Romans 10 now describes God as found by those who did not seek him.
The two statements interpret one another. Gentile inclusion cannot become a new ground for boasting because Paul does not credit Gentiles with a superior pursuit of God. They are the people who were not pursuing the righteousness Israel pursued and who were not seeking God within Israel’s covenant life.
God nevertheless made himself known to them.
The initiative therefore belongs to God. He sends messengers. His gospel announces Christ. The word is brought near. People who stood outside Israel’s covenant history hear the proclamation and believe.
Divine initiative and human faith are not alternatives in Paul’s argument. God’s initiative provides the very revelation to which faith responds. Those who were not seeking him could find him because he made himself known, yet Paul has just explained that those who receive the saving promise do so by hearing, believing, confessing, and calling upon the Lord.
This makes the contrast with Israel especially severe. The Gentiles did not possess Israel’s privileges, yet God made himself known among them. Israel possessed the law, prophets, covenants, and promises and had heard the gospel proclamation.
Paul now quotes the next verse of Isaiah to describe Israel’s response.
I Stretched Out My Hands
Romans 10:21
“But about Israel he says,
‘All day long I stretched out my hands to a disobedient and contrary people.’”
The contrast between verses 20 and 21 comes from adjacent statements in Isaiah:
Isaiah 65:1–2
“I am inquired of by those who didn’t ask.
I am found by those who didn’t seek me.
I said, ‘See me, see me,’ to a nation that was not called by my name.
“I have spread out my hands all day to a rebellious people,
who walk in a way that is not good, after their own thoughts.”
Paul does not merely select two unrelated proof texts. Isaiah itself places the two conditions beside one another. God makes himself known where he had not been sought, while simultaneously extending his hands toward a rebellious people who persist in their own way.
Paul applies that contrast to Gentile inclusion and Israelite unbelief.
The description of God is striking after everything Paul has said about divine sovereignty in Romans 9. God has mercy on whom he desires and hardens whom he desires. The potter possesses authority over the clay. God prepares vessels of mercy beforehand for glory and patiently endures vessels of wrath. None of that language requires Paul to describe unbelieving Israel as a people who would gladly come to God if only God would permit them.
His concluding picture is the opposite.
God stretches out his hands “all day long.”
Israel is described as “disobedient and contrary.”
The image therefore preserves both divine initiative and human responsibility. God is not passive. He has spoken through the prophets, sent the gospel, made Christ known, and extended his hands. Israel’s unbelief is not explained by divine silence.
Neither does the description allow Israel’s resistance to be reduced to innocent misunderstanding. Paul calls it disobedience. The gospel had been heard but not obeyed. The righteousness of God had been revealed, but Israel sought to establish its own. Christ had been placed as the stone in Zion, but Israel stumbled over him.
The hardening discussed in Romans 9 must therefore be read alongside this description rather than used to erase it. Paul can affirm divine hardening and still present God as extending his hands toward the disobedient. He can affirm God’s sovereign mercy while still locating Israel’s failure in unbelief. His categories do not require one reality to cancel the other.
Isaiah’s language also prevents Paul’s argument from ending in contempt for Israel. The people are contrary, but the hands remain extended. Paul began Romans 10 praying for their salvation, and nothing in the chapter has withdrawn that desire. Their present disobedience is real, but Paul has not yet finished discussing what God may accomplish through their stumbling.
How Will They Hear?
Paul began with the universal promise that whoever calls upon the name of the Lord will be saved and then traced the means by which that calling occurs. Messengers are sent with good news. The gospel is proclaimed. People hear of the risen Lord, and faith responds to what has been announced. The one who believes calls upon him.
The presence of proclamation, however, does not make faith automatic. Isaiah’s question—“Who has believed our report?”—allows for the message to be genuinely heard and genuinely rejected. Faith comes through hearing the word concerning Christ, but unbelief remains a possible response to that word.
That distinction becomes decisive for Israel. Paul asks whether Israel heard and answers emphatically that it did. His use of Psalm 19 takes language originally describing creation’s far-reaching testimony and applies it to the extensive proclamation of the gospel. Israel cannot explain its condition by claiming that Christ was never announced to it.
Nor could Israel regard the inclusion of Gentiles as a development without precedent in its Scriptures. Moses had already warned that Israel’s unfaithfulness would result in God provoking the nation to jealousy through those who were “not a people.” Isaiah then described God being found by those who had not sought him.
Neither passage gives Gentiles grounds for boasting. Deuteronomy calls them a foolish nation, while Isaiah describes them as those who had not sought God. Their inclusion therefore displays mercy rather than superiority.
Isaiah’s next line places Israel’s unbelief in its proper moral setting. The God found by those who did not seek him is the same God who says concerning Israel, “All day long I stretched out my hands to a disobedient and contrary people.”
That image brings Romans 9–10 to an important point of resolution. God’s word has not failed. His sovereignty has not failed. His mercy has not failed. Nor can Israel’s condition be attributed simply to lack of revelation. Israel possessed the Scriptures, heard the proclamation concerning Christ, and had within those Scriptures warnings that anticipated the very inclusion of the nations now taking place.
Yet many did not believe.
Paul therefore refuses both explanations that would distort the situation. Israel cannot claim that God never spoke, while Gentiles cannot claim that they found God because they were more righteous or spiritually perceptive. God made himself known to those who had not sought him, and God extended his hands toward those who resisted him.
The gospel has gone out. Christ has been proclaimed. The hands of God remain extended.
The tragedy Paul carries into Romans 11 is that so much of Israel has remained disobedient and contrary.