Romans 10:14

How then shall they call on him in whom they have not believed? and how shall they believe in him of whom they have not heard? and how shall they hear without a preacher? and how shall they preach, except they be sent? even as it is written, How beautiful are the feet of them that bring glad tidings of good things!

Two of the big words Paul had just used were "no distinction" (Romans 10:12) and "whosoever" (Romans 10:13), and these amply supported his position of extending the gospel to all people, Jews and Gentiles alike, on the same terms. We noted that this great leveling of all people before God and considering them as one race lost in sin was offensive and repugnant to Jews, causing a deep resentment against Paul. Paul vindicated his own conduct in these two verses.

Hodge has the following clear word on the construction of Paul's defense here:

As invocation implies faith, as faith implies knowledge, knowledge instruction, and instruction an instructor, so it is plain that if God would have all men to call upon him, he designed preachers to be sent to all, whose proclamation of mercy being heard, might be believed, and being believed, might lead men to call on him and be saved. This is agreeable to the prediction of Isaiah, who foretold that the advent of the preachers of the gospel should be hailed with universal joy .... It is an argument founded on the principle that if God wills the end, he wills also the means; if he would have the Gentiles saved, according to the prediction of the prophets, he would have the gospel preached to them.[12]

These verses are the enabling charter of every true missionary labor on earth. God's answer to the wretchedness of earth's sin and squalor is a messenger, yes a preacher, with the message of redemption authenticated by the Name,

For neither is there any other name under heaven, that is given among men, wherein we must be saved (Acts 4:12).

How beautiful the feet ... From heaven's viewpoint, there is nothing more beautiful than the message-bearer of God's merciful offer of salvation to people. Hope for lost and fallen humanity does not derive from anything that man can do for himself, nor from anything that he might either build on earth or hurl out into space. Nothing that man can send up into heaven can save him, for it is God's message alone that can cleanse his sins, break the chains of his bondage, and endow his spirit with love and hope. How pitiful, ineffectual and utterly inadequate God's plan appears to the dim eyes of mortal people. Save the world by preaching? Ridiculous. Paul himself acknowledged this when he wrote:

It was God's good pleasure through the foolishness of the preaching to save them that believe (1 Corinthians 1:21).

Therefore, people must look again at the method God has chosen; and, remembering the omnipotence of him who chose, the divinity of the message, and the power of the living word, they must dare to trust and use the means God elected as the instrument of his holy will. Churches should cease their striving after new methods, novel devices, and so-called "modern approaches" to saving people's souls. There is only one way: preach the word!

The last sentence of these two verses is a quotation from Isaiah 52:7; and, as Moule noted:

The immediate reference of Isaiah 52:7 is to good news for Zion, rather than from her to the world. But the context is full not only of Messiah but of "many nations" (Romans 10:15).[13]

Of course, as already noted twice in this chapter, Paul's meaning was often extended beyond the context of his Old Testament quotations.

How shall they believe him whom they have not heard ... has the significant implication of making Christ the one heard in his preachers and also the one believed. By the same sacred logic, Christ was said to have baptized more disciples than John, although the disciples, not the Lord, administered the ordinance; but still it was Christ who did it "through them." (See John 4:1,2.)

In this remarkable clause is also the compelling inference that the preacher must preach the word of the Lord, for in no other way may his hearers hear Christ. The preacher who preaches the opinions of himself and his fellow mortals to the near exclusion of the scriptures fails in a double category: (1) his audience does not "hear Christ," and (2) he forfeits the dignity that belongs to the faithful messenger.

[12] Charles Hodge, Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1968), p. 346.

[13] H. C. G. Moule, op. cit., p. 274.