NOTES for Rom 10:14-21

Continuing the conversation about righteousness, Paul returns again to the theme of choice. For him it is obvious that the question of belonging or not belonging to the people of God is determined by readiness to accept the witness about the Kingdom that the Savior brought into the world. Of course, no faith can be spoken of if there is no witness; witness remains the foundation without which there is no speaking of the spread of the Kingdom in our world, still not fully transformed (vv. 14-15). But, on the other hand, acceptance of the Kingdom can only be voluntary, and therefore each person decides for himself whether he will listen to the witness or not.

Of course, much here depends on the witness itself. It is no accident that the apostle speaks of faithfulness connected with "hearing," that is, with the ability to hear, and connects hearing with the word of God, with the revelation without which it is impossible not only to enter the Kingdom, but even simply to understand what is being discussed and where the witness is calling the listener (vv. 16-17). Witness to the Kingdom, by definition, is never a purely human matter; this applies both to the one who bears witness and to the one who hears the witness and accepts it.

But revelation is given only to the one who seeks a meeting with God and is ready to accept what God will reveal to him. It is no accident that the apostle speaks of stubbornness as the main obstacle to accepting witness, meaning not only the witness of the apostles about the Kingdom, but also the witnesses of the prophets of old about what God expected from His people in those days (vv. 18-21). As we can see, the reason for rejecting witness has been the same in every age, and in the end it came down to what the listener chose: his own ideas, or the generally accepted ideas, about God and about what He expects from a person, or the witness of those to whom the will of God had been revealed directly. Earlier the issue was the choice of a path; now the issue was the Kingdom. But both then and now, this choice determined a person's fate before God, and therefore his fate in eternity.

It is impossible to believe anyone if no one tells you about that person. So it is with Christ: you will not believe Him or entrust yourself to Him until you become acquainted with Him. The main meaning of Christian witness is precisely to give everyone the opportunity to become acquainted with Him. Of course, acquaintance by itself does not mean that a relationship of trust will arise. In fact, acquaintance by itself does not obligate us to any relationship at all: how many people do we have to meet? Not all of them become our friends afterward. But much depends on what the acquaintance was like and what the communication was like. One can communicate in different ways: seriously, or superficially. And if a person does not want real, deep relationships, they will not exist even after a very long acquaintance.

One can know a person for years and still not know that person at all. It is the same with God: one can know Him, and not know Him. Trust is born from what is heard, and hearing from the word of Christ, or from the word about Christ; the expression used by the apostle can be understood both ways. In any case, one is not so far from the other. For behind the word about Christ, if it is heard and if one trusts the one who speaks it, the word of Christ Himself will then surely begin to sound, provided, of course, that the person is ready to hear.

And here problems sometimes arise. It happens that a person does not want to hear, because sometimes it is simply easier to pretend that nothing has been heard. Such a peculiar selective deafness is at times very useful to deceitful people. But conscious deceit is not always hidden here: sometimes a person unconsciously turns on this mechanism of a kind of mental filtering. For example, when he senses that if he takes what he has heard seriously, his life will have to change, and change radically. And he does not want to change, and is afraid. Then the protective mechanisms turn on, the very filters about which a person does not think and which he may not even know about precisely because they work automatically. Yet this automatic system is initially turned on by the person himself, by his fear or his laziness. Therefore Paul speaks in this case about human responsibility, for in the end it is precisely a person's position that determines whether mechanisms will start working in his soul that reliably separate their owner from God, from Christ, and from the Kingdom, or whether they will not.

The entire life of Saint Andrew the First-Called is described in this passage from the Letter to the Romans. In his own life, he experienced the principle by which this law operates: “But how are they to call upon Him in whom they have not believed? How are they to believe in Him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching?” He believed and followed Jesus with astonishing speed. The Gospel gives us nothing but a single sentence from the Savior, after which Andrew and Peter immediately left their boat, net, and fish and went to catch people. Thereafter, although he seldom appears on the pages of Scripture, Andrew spent his whole life going out and preaching so that people might believe and, having believed, call upon the name of Jesus and be saved. The apostle’s life and death give us the basic rules of conduct for an evangelist: 1. Bring the Good News to everyone; 2. Remember that a person is free not to accept the message; 3. Do not expect visible and rapid fruits from your labor.