Unashamed: The Power of the Gospel (Romans 1:16-17)

Introduction

Allison, raised Buddhist, sought validation and achievements but found no peace. After a suicide attempt, she heard the gospel, and found new hope and purpose.

Carla was struggling with grief after her father’s untimely death. She questioned God’s goodness. A compassionate friend listened, loved, and shared the gospel. Carla found peace through faith in Jesus.

Lowell, spent 10 years in solitary confinement in prison, but found solace and a new purpose through reading the Bible and listening to Christian programs, ultimately finding freedom and redemption in Christ.

Bryan Flanery, an Army veteran who experienced physical and emotional scars after serving in Afghanistan, heard the gospel message from a friend. He believed and found healing and hope through his faith in Jesus and God’s grace.

Casey Diaz lived a chaotic and violent life as a gang member who, at the age of 16, committed murder. He led a violent lifestyle until an encounter with the gospel transformed his life and propelled him in a totally different direction. Years later, Casey is now a pastor.

These are just a few examples of the powerful transformation that takes place in the lives of those who hear the gospel and place their faith in Jesus.

Go to any bookstore in America, and you will find shelf after shelf of self-help books. Millions of words have been printed, claiming to offer advice on how to be better at whatever profession, skill, or dream one is pursuing. Want to be a better golfer? You can find a book for that. Want to be a better salesman? A better parent? A better writer? A better anything? You can find a book. Even if you just want to be a better you, there’s a book for that too. Yet, what we all need, and what the gospel offers is not something better, but something brand new.

The brief stories I shared a moment ago were not about people becoming better. Allison didn’t become a better Buddhist; Casey didn’t become a kinder person—they became totally new people. This is what people need; and this is what the gospel, not only offers but does.

When talking about the result of salvation in a person’s life, Paul didn’t say we become improved creatures. Listen to what he wrote: Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has passed away, and see, the new has come! (2 Corinthians 5:17, CSB)

Paul knew what he was talking about, because he experienced the transformational power of the gospel himself.

For you have heard about my former way of life in Judaism: I intensely persecuted God’s church and tried to destroy it. I advanced in Judaism beyond many contemporaries among my people, because I was extremely zealous for the traditions of my ancestors. But when God, who from my mother’s womb set me apart and called me by his grace, was pleased to reveal his Son in me, so that I could preach him among the Gentiles (Galatians 1:13–16, CSB)

When Paul said, “For I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes,” he knew from personal experience what he was talking about.

Many suggest that in Paul’s confident declaration in Romans 1:16-17, he was stating the theme of the entire letter. In fact, scholar Robert Mounce writes that these “are pivotal verses in the New Testament. They state concisely and with unusual clarity a fundamental tenet of the Christian faith. The heart of v. 16 is that the gospel is the saving power of God.” (Mounce, Robert H. 1995. Romans. Vol. 27. The New American Commentary. Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers.)

Some have asked, and it’s a good question, why did Paul find it necessary to establish that he was “not ashamed”? Usually to state a negative means that there might be a reason for it. Is there a reason to be ashamed of the gospel? Was Paul once ashamed? Were there people in the Roman church who were ashamed? Are we ashamed of the gospel? Good questions, because …

1. Whenever the gospel is faithfully preached, it arouses opposition, often contempt, and sometimes ridicule (1:16a).

There were deeply ingrained social reasons why Paul could have been ashamed to proclaim such a gospel [a gospel of Christ crucified]’.… In a world in which matters of honor and shame were extremely important, Paul had to reject the shame heaped upon him by those who despised the gospel. Who would conquer an empire with kindness? What warrior would defeat an enemy by allowing them arrest and kill them? To the unbelieving mind, Jesus’ ministry ended in defeat: a humiliating and shameful defeat on a cross. But Paul declared that he was not ashamed of the gospel.

And it may be that there were people in Rome who despised the simplicity of the message (there were certainly some elsewhere, Acts 17:32; 1 Cor. 1:18, 23). Such people would look down on the Christians and their unusual gospel. Whatever be the case with others, Paul emphatically stands by the message. And remember that sharing the gospel brought him neither ease nor comfort: “Paul had been imprisoned in Philippi, chased out of Thessalonica, smuggled out of Beroea, laughed at in Athens. He had preached in Corinth where his message was foolishness to the Greeks and a stumbling-block to the Jews, and out of that background Paul declared that he was not at all ashamed of the gospel” (Barclay). He had certainly had his share of trouble as he proclaimed the message. But the gospel had proved adequate for the needs both of himself and his hearers, and Paul was far from being ashamed of it.

Yet, Paul is not the only bearer of the gospel who has received contempt and ridicule. Anyone today who consistently tells others about Jesus will encounter the same; perhaps not at the same intensity as Paul and the early believers, but opposition still the same.

If you watch even a little TV or attend movies occasionally, you will notice the contempt our culture has for Jesus and Christianity. If you are a careful observer of our culture, you will notice that people choose to live as they please, not as God pleases. In fact, it’s almost as if, by their conduct, they are turning their noses up to God. By rejecting the gospel when they hear it gives evidence that they dismiss it.

However, Paul’s declaration also should stimulate some reflection of our own faithfulness to the gospel. Why is it that the majority of Christians never or seldom share the gospel? What are we afraid of? A little ridicule? Being laughed at? Rejection? The reality is, that are unwillingness, or fear, or whatever it is that causes us to hesitate or even decline to be bold witnesses for Christ, just might reveal a little shame in our own hearts. We need to hear the reverse of what is implied in Paul’s statement. Here it is: “I am confident—in fact, I am PROUD—of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Why? Because …

2. The gospel message, which some people despise for its weakness, is in fact the power of God (1:16b).

It is the power of God …

For salvation.

The gospel is not simply a display of God’s power: it IS God’s power. The Greek work Paul used is the word from which we get our English word, dynamite.

Lexham Theological Wordbook δύναμις

Literally, it describes the ability to perform an activity; by extension, it refers to someone in a position of power or the force of a person’s action.

Salvation is not only initiated by God but is carried through by his power. To say that the gospel is “power” is to acknowledge the dynamic quality of the message. In the proclamation of the gospel God is actively at work in reaching out to the hearts of people. The gospel is God telling of his love to wayward people. It is not a lifeless message but a vibrant encounter for everyone who responds in faith. “Religious” talk is little more than words and ideas about religious subjects. Not so the gospel. The gospel is God at work. He lives and breathes through the declaration of his redemptive love for people. To really hear the gospel is to experience the presence and the power of God.

The power of the gospel accomplishes what no human can: salvation. Think back on the story in the Gospels when a rich man came to Jesus asking about salvation. Jesus saw in the man’s heart what the man was likely unaware of; that is, wealth was his god. So Jesus instructed the man to give away his wealth—in other words, abandon his idol—and then follow Jesus. The man went away sad because he had much wealth. Sad himself, Jesus turned to the disciples and stated that it is very difficult for a rich man to enter God’s kingdom. The disciples were perplexed. Isn’t wealth a sign of God’s favor? How is it then, that a rich man finds it hard to enter God’s kingdom? If not a rich man, then who is able to receive salvation? Jesus answer: With man it is impossible, but with God, all things are possible.

That is the power of the gospel. When heard and received in faith, it is dynamite that shatters the power of sin, destroys idols, conquers death, and breathes new life into a person. The gospel is the power of God for salvation …

For everyone. 

Notice, however, there is a condition: faith. Salvation is for everyone “who believes.” That word …

Lexham Theological Wordbook πιστεύω

Describes the act of believing or trusting something on the basis of its truthfulness and reliability.

The word has more in mind that intellectual knowledge. It’s not just agreeing that something is true. In other words, there are many people who “believe in God.” In fact, almost 75% of Americans believe there is a God. But this belief is not that: it is a commitment. It is an act of faith in which one’s complete allegiance and dependence is on the one believed. Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through me.”

Notice that no one is excluded from the possibility of God’s powerful, life-transforming gospel. The gospel came first and through the Jews. God chose Israel to be his bearers of the gospel message; so the gospel first came to the Jew. This takes us all the way back to God’s promise to Abraham, when God promised that through his descendants all the nations will be blessed. Jesus, though completely God, came into the world through birth. He was completely human as well as completely God. And he was born a Jew, of the tribe of Judah, a descendant of King David. The Messiah came through Jewish lineage. But just as the promise to Abraham include all the nations, so does salvation: “first to the Jew, and also the Greek.” Though the word identifies …

Lexham Theological Wordbook Ἓλλην

A person specifically of Greek descent, it was also used more broadly of a non-Jew; in other words, everyone else.

The power of God for salvation is for every person. While some unbelievers accuse Christians of being narrowly exclusive, actually the gospel is broadly inclusive. Every person in your neighborhood, in your school, at the place you work, in our town—everyone needs salvation. And the gospel is powerful enough to save them, if they will only believe. But to believe it, they must hear it.

We must faithfully and consistently share the gospel, for …

3. The gospel message reveals God’s righteousness (1:17): 

It is human nature to try to achieve what only God can achieve. Religion, separated from the hope of the gospel, is humankind’s attempt to earn salvation. That is the sad state of all religions: whether Buddhism, Islam, modern Judaism, Mormonism, every religion. Each teach that if a person is good enough, religious enough, keeps all the rules, they can be saved. But don’t forget what Jesus told the disciples: “With man it is impossible …” Paul reminds us that salvation is …

a divine achievement 

We are not saved by merit. It is not our righteousness that justified us, transforms us into a right relationship with God.

Isaiah 64:6 CSB

All of us have become like something unclean, and all our righteous acts are like a polluted garment; all of us wither like a leaf, and our iniquities carry us away like the wind.

2 Corinthians 5:21 CSB

He made the one who did not know sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

Philippians 3:8–9 CSB

More than that, I also consider everything to be a loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. Because of him I have suffered the loss of all things and consider them as dung, so that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own from the law, but one that is through faith in Christ—the righteousness from God based on faith.

It is the power of the gospel, achieved by Christ’s divine work on the cross.

Isaiah said it well when he became aware of God’s holy presence in the temple:

Isaiah 6:5 CSB

Then I said: Woe is me for I am ruined because I am a man of unclean lips and live among a people of unclean lips, and because my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of Armies.

We see our unrighteousness and God’s righteous. His righteousness becomes ours only when it is …

received by faith

But again, as Paul asked in

Romans 10:14–15 CSB

How, then, can they call on him they have not believed in? And how can they believe without hearing about him? And how can they hear without a preacher? And how can they preach unless they are sent? As it is written: How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news.

People of God, it is time for us to be proud of the gospel.

Application

Share the gospel.

Nurture your personal relationship with Jesus. 

Engage in the lives of lost people. 

Live a righteous life by faith.