1   Brothers, my deepest desire and my prayer to God is for their salvation. 2   To their zeal for God I can testify; but it is an ill-informed zeal. 3   For they ignore God's way of righteousness, and try to set up their own, and therefore they have not submitted themselves to God's righteousness. 4   For Christ ends the law and brings righteousness for everyone who has faith. ^note

5   Of legal righteousness Moses writes, ‘The man who does this shall gain life by it.’ 6   But the righteousness that comes by faith says, ‘Do not say to yourself, “Who can go up to heaven?”’ (that is to bring Christ down), ‘or, “Who can go down to the abyss?”’ 7   (to bring Christ up from the dead). 8   But what does it say? ‘The word is near you: it is upon your lips and in your heart.’ This means the word of faith which we proclaim. 9   If on your lips is the confession, ‘Jesus

The purpose of God in history is Lord’, and in your heart the faith that God raised him from the dead, then you will find salvation. 10   For the faith that leads to righteousness is in the heart, and the confession that leads to salvation is upon the lips.

11   Scripture says, ‘Everyone who has faith in him will be saved from shame’—everyone: 12   there is no distinction between Jew and Greek, because the same Lord is Lord of all, and is rich enough for the need of all who invoke him. 13   For everyone, as it says again—‘everyone who invokes the name of the Lord will be saved’. 14   How could they invoke one in whom they had no faith? And how could they have faith in one they had never heard of? And how hear without someone to spread the news? 15   And how could anyone spread the news without a commission to do so? And that is what Scripture affirms: ‘How welcome are the feet of the messengers of good news!’

16   But not all have responded to the good news. For Isaiah says, ‘Lord, who has believed our message?’ 17   We conclude that faith is awakened by the message, and the message that awakens it comes through the word of Christ.

18   But, I ask, can it be that they never heard it? Of course they did: ‘Their voice has sounded all over the earth, and their words to the bounds of the inhabited world.’ 19   But, I ask again, can it be that Israel failed to recognize the message? In reply, I first cite Moses, who says, ‘I will use a nation that is no nation to stir your envy, and a foolish nation to rouse your anger.’ 20   But Isaiah is still more daring: ‘I was found’, he says, ‘by those who were not looking for me; I was clearly shown to those who never asked about me’; 21   while to Israel he says, ‘All day long I have stretched out my hands to an unruly and defiant people.’

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