The Unashamed Engine of the World Text: Romans 1:16-17
Introduction: A Skirmish Over Shame
We live in an age that is drunk on shame. Our cultural elites, our tastemakers in the media, the universities, and the halls of government, have weaponized shame and wield it like a club. They have their designated victim classes and their designated villain classes, and the whole rickety system is held together by manipulating who feels ashamed of what. You are to be ashamed of your history, ashamed of your ancestors, ashamed of your skin color if it is the wrong one, ashamed of your faith, and ashamed of the Book that faith is based upon. The one thing you are never to be ashamed of is your sin. In fact, you are to celebrate your sin, parade it down the street, and demand that everyone applaud. This is the great inversion.
Into this toxic environment, the Apostle Paul speaks a word of glorious, liberating defiance. He says, "I am not ashamed." This is not a quiet, personal sentiment. This is a public declaration of war against the shame tactics of a fallen world. Paul is writing to the Christians in Rome, the very epicenter of global power, the capital of worldly pomp, military might, and pagan sophistication. And he tells them that he is not intimidated. He is not embarrassed by the gospel of a crucified Nazarene. Why? Because he knows what the gospel is. It is not a self-help program. It is not a list of moral improvements. It is not a spiritual hobby. It is the very power of God Almighty breaking into history to save the world.
These two verses, Romans 1:16-17, are the thesis statement for the entire epistle. Martin Luther called this passage "the main point, and the very center of the epistle, and of the whole Bible." Everything that Paul will unpack for the next fifteen chapters is contained right here in seed form. This is the engine room of the book of Romans. It is the declaration of what the gospel does, who it is for, and how it works. And if we are to stand as Christians in our own crumbling Rome, we must have this same unashamed, iron-clad confidence in the explosive power of the gospel.
The Text
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.
For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith; as it is written, “BUT THE RIGHTEOUS WILL LIVE BY FAITH.”
(Romans 1:16-17 LSB)
No Cause for Blushing (v. 16)
We begin with Paul's bold declaration in 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." (Romans 1:16)
The very fact that Paul has to say he is "not ashamed" implies that the gospel is something the world will try to make you ashamed of. If you discovered the cure for cancer, you wouldn't feel the need to announce that you weren't ashamed of it. But the gospel is different. It is an offense. It strikes at the very root of human pride. It tells the sophisticated philosopher that his wisdom is foolishness. It tells the powerful emperor that he is a slave to sin. It tells the religious moralist that his good works are filthy rags. It centers on a bloody cross, an instrument of torture and humiliation for criminals. The world looks at this and sees weakness, foolishness, and scandal. And so the world's primary weapon against the church has always been mockery, scorn, and the threat of social ostracism. They want to make us blush.
But Paul refuses to blush. Why? Because he knows the gospel's true nature. He gives the reason immediately: "for it is the power of God for salvation." The word for power is dunamis, from which we get our word dynamite. The gospel is not good advice; it is divine dynamite. It is the omnipotent energy of God Himself, unleashed to accomplish a particular task: salvation. This is not the power of human persuasion, or emotional manipulation, or clever marketing. It is the raw, creative, resurrecting power of God. The same power that said "Let there be light" and light exploded into existence is the power at work in the gospel.
And what does this power accomplish? Salvation. This is a comprehensive word. It means deliverance, rescue, healing, and restoration. It is salvation from the penalty of sin, which is God's wrath. It is salvation from the power of sin in our daily lives. And it is salvation from the very presence of sin in the new heavens and new earth. This power is effective "to everyone who believes." The power is in the gospel itself, but it is appropriated, it is received, through the instrument of faith. Faith is the hand that reaches out and takes the gift. It is not a work we do to earn salvation; it is the renunciation of all our works. It is ceasing from our own efforts and trusting entirely in the work of another, Jesus Christ.
This salvation is offered universally, but not in a squishy, modern sense. It is for "the Jew first and also to the Greek." The gospel came first to the Jewish people, through whom God prepared the way for the Messiah. They were the custodians of the covenants and the prophets. But the gospel was never intended to be an ethnic, tribal religion. It shatters those boundaries. "Greek" here is shorthand for the entire Gentile world. The ground is level at the foot of the cross. There is no VIP section in the kingdom of God. Whether you are a Jew with a long religious pedigree or a pagan Gentile steeped in idolatry, the entrance requirement is the same: believe.
The Great Unveiling (v. 17)
Verse 17 explains how the gospel unleashes this power. It is because the gospel is a revelation.
"For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith; as it is written, 'BUT THE RIGHTEOUS WILL LIVE BY FAITH.'" (Romans 1:17)
This is the heart of the matter. The gospel's power lies in what it reveals. And what it reveals is "the righteousness of God." Now, for Martin Luther, this phrase was initially terrifying. He thought it meant God's punitive righteousness, the perfect standard by which God righteously condemns sinners. And if that's what the gospel revealed, it would be the worst news imaginable. It would just be a divine confirmation of our damnation.
But as Luther studied, the Spirit opened his eyes. He realized that the "righteousness of God" here is not the righteousness God demands from us, but the righteousness God gives to us as a free gift. It is a righteousness that comes from God. It is the perfect righteousness of Jesus Christ Himself, lived out in His perfect life of obedience and credited to our account. This is the great exchange, the doctrine of imputation. On the cross, our sin was imputed to Christ, and He bore the wrath we deserved. In salvation, His perfect righteousness is imputed to us, and we are declared righteous in the sight of God. God the judge slams down the gavel and declares us "Not Guilty," not because we are innocent, but because someone else has paid our penalty and gifted us His perfect record.
This righteousness is revealed "from faith to faith." This phrase can be understood in a few ways that complement each other. It means that this entire reality, from start to finish, is apprehended by faith. You begin the Christian life by faith, you continue by faith, and you will finish by faith. It's not faith at the beginning and then works for the rest of the way. It is faith that leads to more faith. As we trust God, our capacity to trust Him grows. It is a dynamic, living reality. The whole Christian life is a life of faith.
To anchor this revolutionary truth, Paul does what he always does. He grounds it in the Old Testament Scriptures, quoting Habakkuk 2:4: "BUT THE RIGHTEOUS WILL LIVE BY FAITH." This is not a New Testament novelty. This has always been God's way. The righteous man, the one who has been declared righteous by God, does not live by the perfection of his law-keeping, or by his religious observances, but by his steadfast, trusting reliance upon the God who saves. Faith is the very principle of spiritual life. It is the air the righteous breathe.
Conclusion: The Only Power That Saves
So what does this mean for us, here and now? It means that we have been entrusted with the most powerful force in the universe. The gospel is not one option among many. It is not a message that needs to be updated, rebranded, or made more palatable to a hostile culture. To tamper with the gospel is to drain it of its power.
Our task is not to make the gospel respectable, but to proclaim it faithfully. Our world is dying, not from a lack of information or education, but from a lack of righteousness. Men and women are alienated from God, under His just wrath, and they are utterly powerless to fix their situation. They are trying everything else. They are trying politics, activism, therapy, spirituality, self-improvement, and every kind of distraction. But none of it can solve the fundamental problem. None of it can provide the righteousness that God requires.
Only the gospel can do that. Only the gospel reveals the gift-righteousness of God in Christ. It is the only message that has the dunamis, the divine dynamite, to shatter the chains of sin, to raise the spiritually dead, and to make sinners right with a holy God. Therefore, we must not be ashamed. We must not hedge or apologize. We must speak this message with boldness and with love, knowing that it, and it alone, is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes. When the world tries to shame you, remember what you hold in your hands. You are not holding a firecracker. You are holding the atom bomb of God's grace, and it is the only thing that can level the strongholds of sin and unbelief and build a new world on the ruins.