Romans Chapter 1The Great Theme - Part 1

The Power of the Gospel

Romans 1:16-17 For I am not ashamed of the gospel: it is the power of God for salvation to every one who has faith, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed through faith for faith; as it is written, "He who through faith is righteous shall live."


Paul, having greeted the Romans and given the context for his epistle to them, comes immediately to his summary of the gospel, before launching into a fuller explanation of it all.

The power to save and to effect changes in sinful people is not in people themselves, but in the gospel. It is the God-ordained means by which those who believe are saved. Not every one gets this. The world doesn’t, for God says this about the world:

For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. {1Co 1:18}

Many Christians get this when it comes to their personal salvation, but are somehow thrown completely off track when it comes to what the world needs. No one was ever saved apart from hearing the gospel, because that is how faith in Christ comes.

So faith comes from what is heard, and what is heard comes by the preaching of Christ. {Romans 10:17}

Cornelius (Acts 10) – a Gentile, and a just man – though he was marked for salvation by God, still had to actually hear the gospel before he received Christ. As God was drawing him to Christ, God was also preparing the messenger through whom the Word of Life would come. Peter did not show up at Cornelius’ home and talk politics, social reform or to try to discover Cornelius’ “felt needs”. He gave him the gospel, as God had commanded him to do. (see Acts 10: 34-43 and verse 44 for the actual moment when, upon hearing the gospel, Cornelius received Christ) As a part of the delivery of the gospel, Peter said in verse 42:

…and He (Jesus) commanded us to preach to the people, and to testify that He is the One ordained by God…

The power is in the gospel – not in the messenger, nor in the methods the messenger uses. Today many Christians, especially Christian leaders, have lost faith in the power of the gospel. They have substituted for trust in the power of the gospel mere methodologies calculated by their human reason to “set the mood”, to prepare the way or otherwise manipulate the circumstances.

Much more could be said about the historical rise of this way of thinking, and of its devastating effect upon the faith. This is neither the time nor the place. Suffice it to say that, when we preach the gospel to sinners, the power of God Almighty is brought to bear – not because we preach it, but because God said it is so. If that is not enough for us then what would be? Contrary to the preaching in liberal and postmodern pulpits, Christ never catered to any “felt need” in his hearers. He addressed their actual need, which was the need to repent of their sin. All of the sermons in Acts are clear in addressing the problem facing the hearers. The problem is sin. {Acts 2:23, 36; 3:19, 26; 7:51-53; 10:43; 13:40; 17:30-31}