Unashamed of the Gospel

Let’s pray as we ask for the Lord’s help.

The Lord reigns. Let the earth rejoice. Let the many coastlands be glad. Clouds and thick darkness are all around him. Righteousness and justice are the foundation of his throne. Fire goes before him and burns up his adversaries all around. His lightnings light up the world. The earth seizes and trembles. The mountains melt like wax before the Lord, before the Lord of all the earth. The heavens proclaim his righteousness, and all the people see his glory. So, our prayer, O Lord, is that we might see your glory as your word is proclaimed. Give grace to this poor, lisping, stammering tongue as I announce these glad tidings, and give grace to all who listen, that we might know in our lives – personally, affectionately, experientially, life-changingly – your power. We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.

Our text this morning is Romans chapter 1. When I said we were going to slow down a bit, I wasn’t joking. This morning, we will look at one verse. We could spend several weeks, but we will do this verse this week. Verse 17, I anticipate, Lord willing, next week. Just one verse – it happens to be one of the most important verses, not only in this book, but in the whole Bible. Romans chapter 1, verse 16:

“For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first, and also to the Greek.”

Now, we could point out, in one sense, that this verse is simply a continuation of the argument that has come before, in verses 8-15. You see that it begins in English with the word “for,” translating the Greek word gar. We’ll have occasion to learn a few Greek words in the study of Romans. That’s one that will be important, as it often indicates a connection or gives a reason. And so, verse 16, “for” is connecting with verse 15, namely where Paul explains that he is eager to preach the gospel to you who are in Rome. So, now he is explaining why he is so eager to preach the gospel. So, this is a continuation of that argument, but it’s more than that. Verse 16 and 17 are not simply an explanation of why Paul is eager to preach the gospel and come and visit the Romans, but it lays out the thesis statement. These two sentences in English give the thesis statement for the entire book of Romans. You just look at the words here, and these will be some of the most important words in this whole book. The great theme of the book of Romans – gospel, power, God, salvation, belief, Jew, Gentile (here it’s called Greek), righteousness, faith – these will be the themes over these months, Lord willing, likely some years, even, together in the book of Romans. There are hardly two more important sentences in this whole letter than the sentences in verse 16 and 17, and I can say without exaggeration, there are hardly two more important sentences in the whole world. So, you ought to pay attention. And what a great job I have, to announce and explain verse 16 this morning.

It begins – and we’ve already heard the choir sing this wonderful anthem with these words – it begins with a bold declaration. I am not ashamed of the gospel. Now, this is not simply a figure of speech. Sometimes in the book of Acts, Luke will write “and they stayed with him not a little while,” and you say with the negative what you mean in the positive. So, certainly Paul does mean to communicate with this language, “I have confidence in the gospel. I rejoice in the gospel.” But he gives the negative here for a reason. Now I just mentioned to you in English, you can see verse 16 begins with “for,” but in the Greek that’s not the first word. The first word in Greek is ou – not like “ew” but ou. Ou or ouk is the negation word in Greek. It means “not,” or it means “no,” so this begins Paul writing “not,” and then you have the verb “ashamed.” That’s what he announces with his thesis statement: not ashamed. And the negative here is important, because we’re all familiar with feelings of shame. Even shame, if we’re honest, over the gospel sometimes. We’ve all experienced shame if we live long enough, maybe shame over actual sins. We tend to think of shame as something that’s just bad, but Paul, in his letter, sometimes sees it as a very good thing, that if you have actually committed transgressions that are shameful, you ought to feel ashamed and then go to God, receive forgiveness, so that you need not be ashamed any longer.

But we also know there is misplaced shame. You may feel shame for things that have been done to you that made you feel dirty, but are not, in fact, anything guilty on your part. Or, very commonly, we all have moments of profound embarrassment, and you can look back and remember those moments poignantly, because they felt so shameful. Often they go back to middle school. We love you, middle schoolers. If you’re doing alright in middle school, the Lord’s been good to you, because I remember in a youth ministry class one time, we all had to say when was the time growing up when we felt the most – seemed to be the most painful. Everyone said middle school, middle school, middle school. God bless the middle school teachers. It is a time to shape and to form. I remember when I took up the courage to sign up for a summer basketball camp when I was in middle school. Now, you may think that I was a great basketball player, but I was not. Partly, I didn’t get tall until I was about a junior in high school is when I started growing, so there’s maybe hope for those of you who wish you could be taller. I was one of the shortest in my class growing up and then had the growth spurt at the end of high school, so I didn’t have that going for me. Also, just lacked a little thing called coordination, and a shot, and a lot of other things, but I loved basketball. I loved to play in my driveway. I loved whenever I could get my friends together, and we could find a park or go to the school and play basketball. So, I loved it, but I knew I wasn’t very good. I went to a big public school, and it was hard to make the team. I didn’t make the A team. I didn’t make the B team. I didn’t make the C team. I did intramurals, and I wasn’t really great there either. But I loved basketball. So, I didn’t grow up doing all the camps. So, I signed up one summer, and I was so nervous, and I was so excited, and I think it started at 9 in the morning, one June morning, for this summer basketball camp. And so, I rode my bike to the middle school, because I was in junior high, and I got there at 8:45. I was going to be on time. I was going to be early, and the place was just crickets. There was no one around. Just someone pushing a broom. Maybe the principal happened to be there, and I waited and saw the clock go to 9 and 9:05 and 9:10 and wondered, I must have got the time wrong, and you’re feeling awkward already. I’m the only person in school except for the janitor and the principal, just walking around with a basketball. Finally ask someone, and they said, “Well, I think the camp might be at the high school.” Now, it was a big, sort of, campus, but it was just a ride my bike to the other side of the campus. And so, I went to the high school. Now I’m about 45 minutes late. This is sort of worst nightmare middle schooler, already feeling unsure of myself. So, I go in; there’s about 100 boys. They’re all in their lineups for drills and going back and forth, and so, I went into the locker room. I had a very attractive pair of sweatpants on, no doubt, and put on some shorts and just got into a line and hoped not to be noticed.

But I was noticed, because the lines had all equal number of young boys, and so the coach – now this was the late 80s, early 90s. Coaches back then were not gifted with great gifts of encouragement, sensitivity. They did not see it as their work to try to just bring people along, and so the coach just barked out to me, “Why were you in?” Why were you in? I’m thinking, “Why were you in the locker room? Why were you late? Why were you in the locker room?” So, I just said, probably a screeching, cracking voice, I said, “I had to put my shorts on.” He said it again. This is in front of a hundred people – your laughter is bringing back a lot of the memories, actually. “Why were you in?” I said, “I had to put my shorts on.” Well, all of the boys are laughing, because that’s not what he said. He said, I later learned, “What line are you in?” So, as he kept asking “What line are you in?” I kept shouting, louder and louder, to change my shorts. Finally, he just said, “Well, that’s fine. Just stay in that line.” And I did the drills. I tell you, and it’s a funny story, and I’ve shared it different places before, and I can look back and say that was funny. But if any of you had moments like that, and most of us have, I did all – it was all I could do the rest of that morning not to cry. Not to cry, because that would have been just escalating. That would have been the worst of the worst. You’re already late, already not very good, already embarrassed. You don’t want to be the middle school boy who cries. If you did, middle school boy, maybe you were more secure than I was. So, no shame. But I felt absolute embarrassment and shame. Hardly wanted to talk to my parents about it. I had to get a nice pep talk to go back for the rest of the week. There’s no great story that then that was what, you know, inspired Michael Jordan, then I became – no, I never made the basketball team, but I look back, and we’ve all had moments like that, and some from middle school, and some of you would have much more serious and significant moments where you just felt like you wanted to crawl under the largest rock in the world and never be seen again. And sometimes those moments still deeply affect us. And one of the reasons why middle school can be hard is we’re growing and we’re learning who we are and it can be an awkward time, and you’re trying to figure out who you are. And as you get older and you become an adult, you get a little more comfortable, but if we’re honest, it’s not like we ever completely outgrow all of those sensitivities, the possibility of embarrassment or shame.

And if we’re really honest, no matter how long we have been a Christian, we can experience the temptation to be ashamed of the gospel. Now, maybe if you’re young, and you’ve been surrounded by Christian friends and a Christian family, and you have a good church, and you have a good Christian school – those are all really good things. That’s what we want for people, that you would have this Christian atmosphere surrounding you so that to believe the gospel would feel like a very ordinary, normal thing. That’s good. But we can count on it: as you get older, and as you meet different kinds of people, as we all travel in different places, have to work with different sorts of people, go to school with other kinds of people, we will all have the opportunity and feel that temptation to be ashamed of the gospel. I think that Paul was reminding himself of what he knew to be true, that Paul himself understood how easily we can feel ashamed of the gospel. Did not Paul face, wherever he preached, opposition from both Jews and Gentiles? And he met with rods and beatings and scourgings. He had people try to kill him. He knew what it was to proclaim this message and have some fear of the consequences. And the New Testament talks about this a lot: the possible consequences of holding fast to the gospel. It’s not for no reason that Jesus said to the disciples, “Take up your cross.” If you want to follow me, you carry a cross. Mark 8, “Whoever is ashamed of me and my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of him will the Son of Man also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.” That Jesus said that tells us he understood his disciples would have that battle within themselves, that they might be ashamed. Paul knew this. Some relationships that you have will be tested by your commitment to the gospel. Some jobs you may not get because of your commitment to the gospel. There may be schools or programs or initiatives that do not come your way because you are committed to the gospel, and you may may feel, in that moment, some embarrassment. Think about the negative associations that sometimes come to Christians, to the church, to the Christian religion. We see this, too, in the New Testament. Paul says in 2 Timothy 1, he was so grateful that this man named Onesiphorus refreshed him, and he says, “He was not ashamed of my chains.” Paul was in prison, and the world didn’t know. They didn’t care to realize why Paul was in prison. They just said, “Here’s a man who must have done some shameful thing. Look at what everybody’s saying about him.” The controversial Apostle Paul. Shame associated with Christians, with the church, legal shame, internet shame, false accusations. You’re associated with the wrong kinds of people. You can feel like “I just got to keep my distance.” And then you think of all the unpopular truths that are here in this book, and from age to age, different truths will be unpopular, and others will be more overlooked. It’s tempting, isn’t it, to say, “If only I could have been born in another century where they weren’t dealing with sexuality or marriage or gender or – those seem to be clear matters to people.” Well, you realize in another century it would have been something else. It would have been the two natures of Christ, or it would have been the trinity, or it would have been the sacraments or justification.

There are always certain truths that will be difficult, unpopular. That’s why Paul says to the Ephesian elders in Acts chapter 20, “I did not shrink back from declaring to you the whole counsel of God.” Now, he doesn’t say, “Every time I ever share my faith with someone, and every time I open my mouth, I have to tell everyone everything I know about everything in the Bible.” No, that’s not how you preach. You can be circumspect. You can be wise. You can lead people to an end. But he says, “The totality of my ministry is one where I did not shrink.” That impulse that we have with unpopular truths in the Bible to say, well I won’t deny it. I’m not going to sign something that says I don’t believe it, but I can maybe just shrink. Let me hide behind something else. Maybe just pull the punch on this one. Paul says, “I did not shrink from declaring to you the whole counsel of God.” As he was teaching through the Scriptures, if it was in the Scriptures, and it was there, he taught it to them. Think, too, about the willful misunderstandings that people have about Christian beliefs and sometimes about you, as Christians. They may be honest misconceptions, and sometimes they’re willful misunderstandings. 1 Peter 2:12 tells us, “Some people will speak against you as evildoers.” That’s right there in the first century. That’s not new. If you’re my age or older, you can remember when the apologetics edge about Christianity was really that Christians believed silly things. They believed dumb things. They believed unscientific things. How can you believe in miracles? How can you believe in a flood? How can you believe in the resurrection? And those are still apologetic issues. And yet increasingly, for everyone younger than me, and even Gen Z and whatever the next gen will be, it’s not simply that that message seems unscientific. It’s that Christians are bad, evil people, full of hate. Bigoted. The things that you believe. And you can try, sometimes till you’re blue in the face, to try to explain and give the caveats, and we should be as winsome and wise as we can, and yet sometimes people will simply speak against you as evildoers. That’s why Peter said, “Live such good lives among the pagans that though they accuse you of doing wrong, they will glorify God on the day that he visits us.” Do you see the logic there? That there will be some people – they don’t like you. They don’t like what you believe. They think you are an evildoer, and yet they will see in your life something – there will be a disconnect, even as they have these conclusions about what Christians are like. They will see your life, see how you work, see how you conduct yourselves, and they will see your good behavior, your godliness, and the connection, Peter says, is some of them, actually, that will be the instrument to leading them to Christ. They’ll say, “Maybe I’ve not given these Christians their due,” and they’ll glorify God. And it won’t be that they’re saved by your lifestyle evangelism per se, but something in your life put that little pebble in their shoe that they said, “Maybe I can’t write off this Christianity quite yet, because I can’t write off all the Christians that I know quite yet.”

And maybe you’re here, and you’re ready to write off Christianity. Maybe you grew up in the church. Maybe you’ve never been to church, but you’re ready to write it off. And you may even have examples of rotten Christians. There’s always been a lot of those. Many of them prove not to really be Christians, but there’s lots of rotten people who have darkened the door of a church. But I bet if you’re honest, you also know some Christians who are some of the best people you’ve ever met. You think about what has taken place in their life. You know, in the first century, Christians were misunderstood. People thought they were atheists, because they didn’t have any statues of gods. There were all sorts of rumors and wild innuendo about these love feasts. One pagan philosopher said that during what we would call communion, their love feast, people would have incestuous relationships with one another, even that they would eat the flesh of a baby child and wrap that baby in flour – all sorts of wild stories. They said that they were cannibals. They called each other brothers and sisters. They had incestuous relationships. There have always been willful misunderstandings. And when you hear those going around, there’s a part of you that says, “Well, maybe I don’t want to be identified with these people. Maybe I’m not going to call myself a Christian.” You say, “I’m a Jesus follower.” Well, you can – it’s good to be a Jesus follower. Christians in the Bible, that’s a word. At some point, you’re going to have to own that these are your people.

And then there is the scandal of the message itself. 1 Corinthians 1:18, “The gospel is folly to those who are perishing.” This message that we have in verse 16, and really it’s the theme of the whole book of Romans, it is folly to those who are perishing. We ought not to expect that unbelievers would hear this and say, “Wow, I’m very impressed with this Christian gospel. You know, I don’t believe it, but it really is smart, really is such a good message.” No, it will be folly to those who are perishing, and they’ll either ignore it and just dismiss it because it’s all silly foolishness, or they will hate it or maybe even hate those who espouse it. 1 Corinthians 1:22, Jews demand signs, Paul says. Greeks seek wisdom, and we just have the gospel. He said the Jews wanted signs. Can you show us something? Is there a miracle? Can you give us some sign from heaven? They were used to, right? Moses threw down the staff, and it became a serpent. Or we have the cloud or the fire or the plagues. Can you give us some kind of sign? Then we’ll believe. If you would just do some miracles. Have you ever thought that to yourself? Well, I’ll believe in Jesus if I could see some miracles. Careful. There’s a lot of miracles in the gospel. How many people really believed in Jesus? Not many. The Jews will demand signs. Greeks will demand wisdom, meaning a philosophy. Want something that seems sophisticated, smart, has the good opinion of important, learned, smart people in the world. And then Paul says that’s not what the gospel is. It doesn’t come with pyrotechnics. It’s not a philosophy as the world understands philosophy. It’s a statement of facts. It was a shameful message for many in the first century, and it’s shameful today: a condemned criminal who died in the most humiliating way possible. There have always been these reasons why one might be ashamed of the gospel – what it says, who believes it, who’s associated with it, what it might cost you in your family, in your job, in your school.

So, it’s for good reason that Paul begins here, not ashamed. And if you attend to your own heart, you will likely find some of those reasons. In fact, you might be concerned if you’ve never, ever struggled with any of those reasons. Maybe you really haven’t thought about all that the gospel entails. And notice the word is, I am not ashamed of the gospel. It would be easier, wouldn’t it, to say, well, I believe in God. There’s still what, 80% of Americans say yes to that question – not as high as it used to be, but that’s fairly simple. Do you believe in God? Yes. It’s not hard to say, “I’m a spiritual person,” or “Religion is important to me,” or even, especially in a place like Charlotte, to say “I go to church” or to sing a song, Jesus Take the Wheel. There’s a lot of Jesus songs. But then we have this word “gospel.” We can’t simply say, “I’m not ashamed to be spiritual.” There’s almost never been, unless maybe you’re in a communist country, there’s never hardly been in any place a shame with being spiritual or believing in God or a spirit world or an afterlife. Almost everyone everywhere has always held to these things. But Paul says, “I am not ashamed of the gospel.” Paul likely knows, as well, that some in Rome may view his gospel with suspicion. He’s going to get into some hard things that not everyone is going to understand or like, as he talks about the place of the law, about election, reprobation, the depravity of the world, the wrath of God. So, Paul understands even for this message to Christians in Rome that some of them may be taken aback by some of the things that he says. So, he begins by saying, “I’m not ashamed.” And he doesn’t leave us there. It’s not a bare assertion to just give you a positive pep talk, just self-talk – it’s good, it’s good, I’m not ashamed, not ashamed. He gives you reasons, and you ought to ask yourself, “Why would I not be ashamed of the gospel?” It’s possible you’re not and that you have reasons that are either lesser reasons or at least not as good as these reasons. You may think, well my family believes it, and that’s a good thing if your family does. That helps. You may say, “Well, I’m not ashamed of the gospel. It’s really helped me.” Well, there are other things in life that help other people. You may say, “I’m not ashamed of the gospel. Listen to this beautiful music.” Or, “I’m not ashamed of the gospel. Have you seen what it’s done for Western civilization, the cathedrals of Europe, the literature that it spawned, the artwork?” And you may look at all of that and say, “Oh, how could I be ashamed of the gospel?” Well, I want my kids to behave, and I want them to go to church, or I want to find purpose in life. Or maybe, even, you have this false idea that if I simply believe in the gospel, then I’ll have my best life now, and I’ll be healthy and wealthy, and I’ll have the prosperity that’s coming to me. It’s possible that you may not be embarrassed by the gospel, but you’re not embarrassed for the wrong reasons, or at least not the best reasons. Look at the reasons that Paul gives: four reasons.

I’m not ashamed of the gospel, number one, for it is the power of God. Now, notice very carefully what it doesn’t say. You might expect him to say, and even if you’re not reading carefully, hear him saying that the gospel is about the power of God. Well, that’s true. It does tell us things about the power of God to raise Jesus from the dead, create the world, come again. But notice, he doesn’t say that. It’s not simply that the gospel is about the power of God, but the gospel is the power of God. Not just the content of it, but the very declaration of this message comes with divine power. The Greek word is dunamis. Now, it doesn’t mean dynamite. There was no dynamite when Paul was writing, but if it helps you remember, it is where our English word comes from. It is the power of God. Now, when I say the words themselves have power, I don’t mean magic or a spell or an incantation – abracadabra, hocus pocus, wingardium, leviosa. I don’t mean you just say the words, and something happens. But on the other hand, let’s not be too reticent to ascribe to words a supernatural power. Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me. And then you realize, well, actually, words sometimes hurt a lot worse, even, than sticks and stones. Think about how powerful a few simple words can be. Someone says three words, “I hate you.” Or, all I have to do is change that middle word, another four-letter word, “I love you.” Someone, at some point, women, if you’re married, a man got down on one knee and said, “Will you marry me?” Just four words and absolutely changed your life. Words move armies. So let us not discount the power in words.

And these words come with supernatural, divine power. The gospel is the power of God, meaning it is not merely a power, and it’s not a power that comes from man, but it is a divine power. Think of it. Some of you can remember the very moment the gospel became real to you. Many of us will have a story of having grown up in a Christian home, and we won’t have a particular moment, and Jesus was always a part of our life. But even those stories, you may remember. I remember hearing a traveling evangelist when I was in third or fourth grade. No idea what his name was. Probably if I would, I would think of all the things that were wrong about his theology, but he preached the gospel, and I’d been around it my whole life. Yet there was something in that moment, even as an eight-year-old, that gripped me in a new way, and I went home and talked to my parents about that. Maybe that’s happening in your life, eight-year-old. Or maybe you can remember when you were in high school or a college student. Maybe the things that you had heard your whole life, you had read, you went to a Christian school, and you went to Bible study, and then one sermon, one time, in the text, and it became real. Or maybe you have a very dramatic conversion. When I was in seminary, we had to introduce ourselves in one of our classes by filling in the sentence, “I became a Christian when ____,” and most of us said, “I became a Christian when, you know, I prayed the prayer with my parents,” “I grew up in a Christian home,” and one man, I’ll never forget, said, “I became a Christian when someone I had never met shared the gospel with me in 7-Eleven.” That works! Sometimes God uses that! Those words came with great power, and you can think of it, that suddenly, though it was human language, and you had maybe even heard it before, with a new force you knew that God himself was speaking to you. This is what preaching is meant to be – a heralding, a declaring, not a mere explaining, though there’s explanation. It’s not a secret revelation. But this message comes with power when it is spoken and anointed by the Holy Spirit, because it’s a divine message, and it comes with a power that we don’t have. This is why – remember, Paul is saying why he’s not ashamed. How could you be ashamed of the gospel when it has the very power of God himself? You may underestimate the message. It may seem like a very simple, foolish, silly message without signs and without pyrotechnics and some lesser philosophy. And Paul says, “No, no, no. You don’t understand what kind of message it is. It comes with such great power. Don’t underestimate it.” If I were to tell you that my cat had superpowers, now, you would not believe me, nor should you. But some of you have been to our house, and you’ve seen our orange cat – lovely and as fat a cat as you could ever see. That’s the first thing – I hope he’s got good self-esteem, because it’s the first thing everyone says when they see him: “My, what a fat cat you have.” What if I were to tell you that yes, he’s very fat, but he’s a talking cat. Or what if you were showing your little dog, and you said, “Well, it’s a flying dog.” Or you had a hen that did calculus. This was my dad joke one time: what do you call a hen that does calculus? A mathemachicken. There you go. If you had one of those, you say, “Don’t underestimate this little chicken, this big, fat cat, this little dog. There’s a power here that you know nothing of. It’s an extraordinary power.” This message, which comes with simple words from frail human instrument, or even black marks on a white page, yet it is God’s message, attended with God’s power, and it has literally changed hundreds of millions, billions of people throughout history, and the entire planet by this message.

It’s the power of God unto salvation. That’s the next thing Paul says. Well, what is salvation? Well, the whole book will be about salvation. It’s salvation from our guilt, from our pollution. It’s to have a new life, so that we are no longer unable to do what is pleasing to God but can live a life unto holiness. There is a vertical dimension to this salvation. For the wages of sin is death. There’s no longer any condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. And it is, first and foremost, in Paul’s mind, when he means salvation, he’s thinking about salvation and deliverance from the wrath to come. Verse 18: “For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men.” Or chapter 2, verse 5: “But because of your hard and impenitent heart, you are storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath.” Romans 5, verse 9: “Since therefore we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved from the wrath of God.” So, most prominently, and most simply in this book, salvation is – right there – it is deliverance from the coming wrath of God. The implication is that this message – this gospel, which we’ve already seen in the first opening verses, and we’ll see in the remainder of this book, this gospel of the son of God, descendant of David, raised up, coming again, this savior on the cross for our sins – this message by itself is sufficient to save you. Now, we believe in the sacraments. Celebrate the Lord’s Supper this morning. Christ gave to his church two ordinances. We call them sacraments. Baptism and the Lord’s Supper. There’s nothing that says that this – this is not what saves you. It is this good news, this word that comes with power. It’s not some genuflection. It’s not some anointing of chrism on your forehead. It’s not some sign of the cross. It’s nothing like that. And it’s not your parents. It is this message that by itself is sufficient to save. It also reminds us, what is the problem that Jesus came to save? Well, told everywhere. Told right at the beginning of the Christmas story. You shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins. What is the message the church has that no one else in the world has? I think it would be an entailment of Christian discipleship that we might be engaged in the political process. We ought to be. That you would be engaged in arts and education and government and industry and all sorts of spheres of human activity. And you do those things as a Christian, and you bring your Christian discipleship as salt and light. What Paul reminds us, however, the business of the church here – this gospel message – is salvation from sins. And people say, “Well, your church is too focused on the salvation of sins. It’s too focused on deliverance from the wrath to come. You’re not focused on the real things that are plaguing our world.” I would say with the authority of God’s word, you’re mistaken as to the real things that are plaguing our world. This gospel is the power of God unto salvation. You think about it. We’re so familiar with it that we lose the scandal of it. What is God’s plan for saving sinful people? It’s a message, and the world may find it utter folly, and we would find it folly, too, except if you’re a Christian, you have received this message, and it has come to you with divine, supernatural power. It’s the message of salvation for everyone who believes. That’s the third reason he’s not ashamed.

For everyone who believes. So, notice this gospel does not work its effect in everyone. Now there is a potentiality for everyone, but it is not efficacious in all. Paul doesn’t say, “Well, this gospel is the power of God for salvation to everyone” period, as if now everyone will be saved. No, it is to everyone who believes. So, it is a proclamation that is made and announced to all. It is a salvation available for all. But the efficacy of this salvation will be experienced only in those who believe. But I don’t want you to focus there on that distinction. I want you to focus on what Paul means to tell us, that this is an amazing message. Think about it. To be saved, to live forever, to escape the wrath of God, to have a clean conscience, to be made into a new person, to live forever. There are no prior qualifications, no necessary educational attainments, no language requirements, no GPA, no mysterious admissions board to review your application and defer and defer and defer. No test scores you have to submit, no athletic abilities necessary, no financial considerations, no historical lineage. It is not a matter of geography or cultural literacy or family connections. It is the power of God unto salvation for everyone who believes. If Jelly Roll believes, he can be saved by Jesus. I don’t think that there would be any reason that President Trump would hear this sermon. He has many Christians around him, I’m quite confident, who can explain to him more clearly the way of salvation. “I really think I should probably make it,” he said this week. “I mean, I’m not a perfect candidate for heaven, but I did a heck of a lot of good for perfect people.” And I would just say, if the President ever happened to listen to this, Mr. President, there are no perfect people, except for one. But here’s the good news: if you, in humility, would turn from your sin, would repent and believe and trust in him alone as your only comfort in life and in death, you don’t have to be perfect. You will not be perfect. If you, or any of us, come to heaven thinking that we have something to offer for our own sakes, even what we think we have done for other people, the only thing that makes us a good candidate for heaven is that we realize our candidacy is doomed to fail unless we have Jesus. And you too, Mr. President, could find that eternal life and not have to wonder what will happen and if you’ll make it into heaven, but find the assurance that only comes from absolute trust and dependence upon Christ. This is a message for everyone who believes. If you were born in this country, if you were born in another country, if you speak English as your first language or you speak another language. If your family heritage has been in this country for centuries, or you just came here. If you work for ICE, or you wish to protest ICE, salvation comes the same way. It is for everyone who believes. The same way, and it’s the only way – everyone who is saved is saved in exactly the same way, because this gospel is the power of God unto salvation, not just for some, or for certain kinds of people, or for people like us, with our background or look like us, but it is – praise God – the power of God for every single person who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.

Here’s the final point in why Paul is not ashamed. There’ll be much more of this later in the book. To the Jew first: why is the Jew first? First, in terms of history, because the gospel first came, and God’s dealings were first with the Jews, most narrowly, though it was always a message and others could come and attach themselves to Israel. So, the Jews were first in history. They were also first in Paul’s strategy. Wherever he went, it was to first preach in the synagogues, often kicked out there, and preached to the Gentiles. And first in terms of redemptive privilege, for to the Jews belong the covenants, the law, the promises, the exodus, the deliverance from captivity, and most notably, the Messiah is a Jew. This is not a statement about American foreign policy or a blanket assertion about what the nation of Israel does or does not do, but it is a personal statement. If anyone hates the Jews, they hate the people God chose. They hate the people from whom the Christ came and the people who will always have something of a priority in God’s plan of redemption. To the Jew first. Jesus said salvation is from the Jews, or there in that discourse with the woman at the well, the promises are first of all made to the Jews. And so it is for the Jew first, but here’s good news for most of the rest of us who are not Jewish – also to the Greek. Here it’s just a synonym for Gentile, the non-Jewish world, because apart from Christ, Jews and Gentiles are equally lost. You’re not more lost because you’re a Gentile. You’re not more lost because you’re a Jew, and the Jews in Jerusalem rejected Jesus, but all are equally lost. That’s what the rest of Romans 1 and Romans 2 and Romans 3 will be about. That’s the predicament, but it’s also the glory. Lloyd Jones says, “Herein is the glory of the gospel: there is as much hope for the most desperate, the most violent, the blackest sinner as there is for the nicest and most respectable person.” It is a message to the Jew first and also to the Greek, not a message to be ashamed of. There is no other news like it in all the world. No other news so powerful, so eternally important, so gracious, so universal, not for one ethnic group, not for one people group, not for one color, not for one language, not for one sex, but for all. Ours is the most wonderful, magnificent, extraordinary good news in all the world. Let us own it, share it, rest in it, and rejoice in it. Let’s pray.

Father in heaven, we thank you for your manifold grace to us. May your word go forth, this word of the gospel, with great power, even today, that it might be the day of salvation for everyone who believes, even some in in this room, perhaps for the first time putting their faith in you. We ask for this grace in Christ’s name. Amen.