How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them? And how can anyone preach unless they are sent? As it is written: “How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!” But not all the Israelites accepted the good news. For Isaiah says, “Lord, who has believed our message?” Consequently, faith comes from hearing the message, and the message is heard through the word about Christ.
Romans 10:14-17 (NIV)
Someone Was Sent First
Paul’s argument here runs backward. Calling on God needs believing first, believing needs hearing, hearing needs someone to speak, and speaking needs someone sent. He walks the chain link by link until he reaches the far end of it, and at the far end God is the one doing the sending. A person gets sent. It happens to him before he opens his mouth.
Hearing takes a voice and a distance short enough for that voice to cross. The compliment in the quotation Paul reaches for goes to the feet. How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news. That praise lands on the part of a person that gets dirty on the way and turns up at a door. It is praise for covering the ground and arriving with news you didn’t invent.
Then, in the middle of his own argument, he admits that the message got refused. But not all the Israelites accepted the good news, he writes, and he borrows a line from Isaiah to say it with: Lord, who has believed our message? Those words are a question aimed upward, out of a man who had already done the talking.
That admission changes what the passage can ask of anyone. You are one link in something long. You can be sent, you can say it plainly, and the man across the table from you can look at his phone and change the subject. Paul writes that outcome into his own argument, with a prophet’s name on it, and he calls the feet beautiful anyway.
So the eternal outcome for the people you love doesn’t wait on whether you find the right sentence this year. God never put that load on you. The sending belongs to him, the believing belongs to the one who hears, and the speaking is the part left in the room with you, in your own voice, at whatever volume you can manage.
Faith comes from hearing the message, and the message is heard through the word about Christ. That is what the passage shows and all it shows. God sent people out, they talked, and what they said landed in other people’s ears.
The beautiful feet in that quotation belong to people God sent before they ever went anywhere.
A Prayer to Remember
I’ve stayed quiet with people I love because I didn’t want the conversation to go badly, Lord, and I called that respect. Send me where you want me and let me talk like myself when I get there. Then keep the outcome where it already is, with you. Your message, somebody else’s ears.
In Jesus’ name I pray. Amen.
