Romans 1:16: God’s Power in the Message

For I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God that brings salvation to everyone who believes: first to the Jew, then to the Gentile.

Romans 1:16 (NIV)

God’s Power in the Message

Eight in the morning in a waiting room that isn’t open yet. Chairs bolted in rows, a water cooler with one paper cone left in the sleeve, a television mounted high with the sound off, and a rack of pamphlets by the door.

Paul writes to the church at Rome that he is “not ashamed of the gospel,” because it is “the power of God that brings salvation to everyone who believes.” His confidence rests on what he has in his mouth, so he can be eager to bring it to the capital without rehearsing a defense of it first.

God put his own power into the announcement, so the saying of it does work. Paul names an order in that work, first to the Jew, then to the Gentile, and he names a reach that takes in everyone who believes. A pamphlet describes a condition and leaves the work to whoever picks it up. Paul’s message carries the doing along with it, because God acts when it lands.

So say it. Say it in the words you already use, about the God you actually pray to, and let it come out shorter than you’d like. The power belongs to God, and he brings salvation to everyone who believes, so your part of it was never supposed to be a performance.

The power stays with him after the sentence leaves you, too. He saves everyone who believes, on his own clock, and sometimes a long way from the room where you said it. So the plain version counts, and so does the one that came out wrong.

At ten to nine the lights come up two rows at a time and the television starts in on weather in a city three states away. Somebody has taped a sheet of paper inside the glass of the front door, in ballpoint: “Open at ten today.” By nine there are four people out on the walk reading it, and the one nearest the glass turns around and tells the others what it says.