Romans 10:1-3
“Brethren, my heart’s desire and my prayer to God for them is for salvation. For I testify about them that they have a zeal for God, but not in accordance with knowledge. For not knowing about God’s righteousness and seeking to establish their own, they did not subject themselves to the righteousness of God.”
The apostle Paul wrote to the church at Rome, that the Israelites had a zeal, “but not according to knowledge.” It is possible that apostle could have thought of himself, as an example of this behavior. Before his conversion, he could have thought he was a prime example of such misdirected zeal. What did his zeal do to him? It so distorted his thoughts and lead him to perceive Christ and Christians as enemies of the faith of his teachers had instructed him. He was responsible for throwing many Christians into prison, and some were even put to death as a result of his zeal. Apparently, he could not tolerate anybody who thought a little bit differently from the way he did. Jesus Christ had to strike him down on the road to Damascus.
Even today, our nation is filled with church buildings, and the vast majority of the people are truly sincere, even zealous. However, true knowledge is still lacking. From the book of Acts, it appears that the zeal of Paul’s world reflects the Jewish belief that a person is capable of justifying himself before God on the basis of merit. In other words, as long as a person did what was considered “good works,” they were earning salvation “merits,” and God was obligated or owed them salvation.
In our modern day cultural Christianity, the pendulum has swung the other way and largely teaches that Christians have no responsibility to obey the Law of God. The cultural Christianity instructs its followers to only have faith. Based up the Bible, a Christian’s justification is by grace through faith (Ephesians 2:8), but that faith includes obedience to law, as Paul advised in Romans 2:13 and Romans 7. In I John 3:4, the apostle John reminds us that we sin when we transgress the law, because, “…sin is the transgression of the law.” If the law has been done away, then there is no such thing as sin. James explains that the faith that is “living” obeys the royal law (James 2:8-12). The faith that justifies is an obedient faith.
