Romans 10:6

But the righteousness which is of faith saith thus, Say not in thy heart, Who shall ascend into heaven? (that is, to bring Christ down:) or, Who shall descend into the abyss? (that is, to bring Christ up from the dead.) But what saith it? The word is nigh thee, in thy mouth, and in thy heart: that is, the word of faith which we preach.

When Christ came, the Jews at first, impressed by his miracles, were inclined to received him; but they were repelled by the obscurity of his birth, the humility and meekness of himself and his disciples, and the denunciation which he heaped upon them because of their sins. They had, of course, expected a mighty Prince, exalted in splendor, riding roughshod over all of his enemies and restoring the glory of their earthly kingdom.

But, when Jesus foretold the ruin of their sacred temple, the dispossession of their state, and the treading down of Jerusalem itself, their minds revolted from him completely. Furthermore, at the Passover, the whole Jewish nation had seen him shamefully crucified and buried. Therefore, the conclusion of all Israel (including the disciples themselves, at first) was negative regarding Christ. No dead man, they thought, could ever be the Messiah, or bring about the glorious deliverance which they expected. It was squarely against that prejudice that Paul directed these verses. Locke's paraphrase catches the spirit of these words, thus:

Say not in thine heart, Who shall ascend into heaven? that is, to bring down the Messiah from thence, whom we expect personally here on earth to deliver us. Or, Who shall descend into the deep? to bring up Christ from the dead, to be our Saviour. You mistake the deliverance you expect from the Messiah; there needs not the fetching of him from the other world to be present with you. The deliverance by him is a deliverance from sin, that you may be made righteous by faith in him .... The word is nigh thee, even in thy mouth, and in thy heart; that is, the word of faith, or the doctrine of the Gospel which we preach.[5]

Who shall ascend ... who shall descend ...? These questions are the taunts of unbelief. The Jews had said,

Let him now come down from the cross and we will believe him (Matthew 27:42).

The taunting question regarding his coming up from the grave grew out of the fact that, when Jesus rose from the dead, he did not appear to his enemies at all, but only to his disciples. The reference to bringing Christ down from heaven was an echo of the disbelief that refused to see in our Lord the miracle of the incarnation. Putting the cavil all together, we may understand the enemies as saying, "All right, if Jesus is the Messiah, bring him down from heaven, or up from the grave, and let him lead our nation in throwing off the yoke of Roman bondage." The Jewish hierarchy seemed perpetually unaware that any such thing as an earthly kingdom was not in God's plan at all. Even the kingdom they had once possessed was not of God's will, but only of God's permission; for, upon the occasion of their original request for a king, in order to be like the nations around them, the Lord had said to Samuel,

Hearken unto the voice of the people in all that they say unto thee: for they have not rejected thee, but they have rejected me, that I should not reign over them (1 Samuel 8:7).

Thus, the past glorious kingdom of Israel was not of God's choice, but theirs; and their sin in seeking it was finally the sin that blinded their eyes to the true King when he came. It was that earthly kingdom that was the ceaseless undoing of Israel. Their evil kings led them repeatedly into rebellion against God; and the lives of many of their kings, as Solomon's for example, were lives of shameless debauchery.

The verses Paul quoted here are from Deuteronomy 30:11-14, reading thus:

For this is the commandment that I command thee this day, it is not hidden from thee, neither is it far off. It is not in heaven, that thou shouldest say, Who shall go up for us to heaven, and bring it down to us, that we may hear it and do it? Neither is it beyond the sea, that thou shouldest say, Who shall go over the sea for us, and bring it to us, that we may hear it and do it? But the word is very nigh unto thee, in thy mouth, and in thy heart, that thou mayest do it.

Paul's use of this quotation has been the source of various opinions among scholars, because of his using the words out of context, borrowing, as it were, the expressions of holy Scripture and providing them with a new and more exalted meaning. Strong agreement is felt here with the words of Batey, thus:

Paul quotes or paraphrases passages without regard to their original context or meaning whenever the words of that passage suit his purpose. It is as though the words of scripture convey a convincing power within themselves apart from their original context. The disregard of context is, in the eyes of contemporary exegetes, a glaring breach of the rules of acceptable interpretation. However, Paul's dealing with the Old Testament should be evaluated first by the convincing quality which it had for its initial readers.[6]

In this connection, it should be remembered that Paul was inspired, and therefore able to take liberties with the word of God which are not allowed to the uninspired. The strong similarity in the two uses of these passages is evident. In both, the essential point is that no outlandish miracle, such as going to heaven and back, was needed in order for people to know God's will. God had already given at Sinai the vital commandments for Israel; and, in Christ, the gospel had already been provided for all people. Any thought that Christ should make a special appearance to unbelievers, either by rising from the dead or coming down from heaven in their sight, was preposterous and ridiculous. What could have been the point of such a thing? The Pharisees knew all about the resurrection, and they bribed the soldiers with gold to lie about it. What depths of hypocrisy, therefore, was in their taunt, "Bring him up from the dead"? Paul's unconventional use of scripture should be understood as additional inspired light upon what the words truly mean. As Locke observed:

It will be an rule for interpreting St. Paul, to tie up his use of any text he brings out of the Old Testament, to that which is taken to be the meaning of it there. We need go no farther for an example than the 6th, 7th, and 8th verses of this chapter.[7]

[5] John Locke, Paraphrase and Notes on the Epistles of St. Paul (Boston: 1832), p. 347.

[6] Richard A. Batey, The Letter of Paul to the Romans (Austin, Texas: R. B. Sweet Company, 1969), p. 134.

[7] John Locke, op. cit., p. 348.