Israel's unbelief
Paul makes it unmistakably clear: God is not at fault. He has done all things well. He has made the good news of salvation known. Messengers with “beautiful” feet (Isaiah 52:7) have proclaimed and shared the good news of Christ’s salvation. No, the fault does not lie with God. The problem lies in quite another area.
But not all the Israelites accepted the good news. For Isaiah says, “Lord, who has believed our message?” 17 Consequently, faith comes from hearing the message, and the message is heard through the word of Christ. 18 But I ask: Did they not hear? Of course they did:
“Their voice has gone out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world.”
Paul states categorically that the fault lies not with God, who had his saving message proclaimed, but rather with the Jewish people, the vast majority of whom refuse to accept the good news.
Nor was this just a problem of recent development at Paul’s time. Already in his day the prophet Isaiah complained, “Who has believed our message?” (Isaiah 53:1). This is not a question for information; it’s a plaintive commentary on the reception, or rather non-reception, the prophet’s message was getting. He is saying, Virtually nobody believes our message.
Recall what Isaiah’s message in chapter 53 is. He is talking about God’s Suffering Servant, the Messiah, who was going to be rejected in person just as the prophet’s message about him was being rejected. Speaking prophetically, Isaiah says, “He [Christ] was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering. Like one from whom men hide their faces he was despised” (53:3).
What Isaiah foretold happened precisely as the prophet had predicted it would when Christ came to his people some seven hundred years later. The evangelist John summarizes Jewish rejection of the promised Messiah with the terse comment, “He [Christ] came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him” (John 1:11).
Paul experienced the same blend of apathy and antagonism toward his gospel message. He expresses that with a deliberate understatement when he says, “Not all the Israelites accepted the good news.” What he means, of course, is that very few Jews came to faith in Christ.
How did that happen? Could it be that the majority of Jews didn’t know about the fulfillment of God’s messianic promise? To follow up that possibility with his readers, Paul continues, “But I ask: Did they not hear?” And he goes right on to answer his own question, “Of course they did.”
Drawing from the wording of Psalm 19:4, he asserts:
“Their voice has gone out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world.”
In the original context, the psalmist was talking about the heavens declaring the glory of God and the skies proclaiming the works of his hands. Paul uses the same terminology but transfers it to gospel proclamation. He asserts that the gospel’s good news of forgiveness in Christ is indeed something that has gone out into all the world. Hence Paul’s fellow Jews cannot excuse themselves on the grounds of not having heard the message.