In our last visit we looked at the Apostle’s passion for his brothers, the people of Israel, described in Romans 9:1-4. Paul said he was willing to forfeit his own relationship with Christ, if that would make it possible for the Israelites to be saved. 

 

That was not possible according to the closing verses of Romans 8. In Romans10:1 he shares what he could do. Listen: “Brothers, my heart’s desire and prayer to God for the Israelites is that they may be saved.” 

 

His passion led him to prayer. This word for prayer has the idea of begging for or desperately wanting something. It is asking for a need to be met. Paul couldn’t sacrifice what he had in his relationship with Christ so that the Israelites might be saved, but he could pray for them to be saved. 

 

He wanted them to know that what he could do he was doing. The question we need to ask ourselves is this, “Am I doing all I can do to help people who are lost become saved?” 

 

For Paul’s prayer to be effective it required faith on his part and of the Israelites. When you read the end of chapter 9 Paul concludes his comments with: “They (that is, the Israelites) pursued it not by faith but as if it were by works. They stumbled over the ‘stumbling stone.’ As it is written: ‘See, I lay in Zion a stone that causes men to stumble and a rock that makes them fall.’” 

 

Paul prayed for the people of Israel’s salvation because, as he points out in his understanding of the historical perspective of God’s redemption in Romans 9-11, he sees that God isn’t through with the people of Israel. He had hope that they eventually would believe.