Ashamed of the Gospel?

"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 man SHALL LIVE BY FAITH.' " - Romans 1:16-17

This is such a well-known passage... I'm not even really sure how to approach it!

Let me tell you what I don't think is seen as often as it should be... "For I am not ashamed..." I think that we tend to check out on that part of the verse, most of the time... We are quite prepared to see where Paul tells us that the gospel is the power of God... but we are less ready to be ridiculed and mocked by people. We are less prepared to be as vocal as Paul was about Christ, to the complete stranger... Why?

Are we ashamed? Are we still held back by fear of rejection from others? I know I've had problems with wondering what a person might think if I were to talk to them about Christ. But we must begin, if we have not already begun, to grasp the frailty of human life and the urgency that comes from knowing that the person you are talking with might not live past tomorrow. Tragedies happen every day... people die way before they ever expected to... and if your co-workers or friends do not hear the gospel from you... who's going to tell them? Who else is going to be that light? We CANNOT be ashamed!

There is no shame in knocking on someone's door and warning them that their house is on fire... why should warning them that their soul is headed for destruction be any different? If we could begin to have a genuine affection for the souls of others... we would feel no shame in preaching the gospel to them. If we could love people's souls like Jesus loved them... we wouldn't hesitate to be ridiculed for the sake of them hearing the message of salvation! There's just no way!

Paul was not ashamed of the gospel! In fact, he was beaten, stoned, left for dead, imprisoned numerous times, shipwrecked, and then kept under house arrest, until the day that he was beheaded... all for the sake of the gospel. Does this sound like a man who cared about what people thought of him? No! This was a man who cared that people took the time to think about Jesus! He sacrificed his personal image so that he might reflect the image of Christ.

So what are we going to do? Can we continue to learn these things about our faith and then sit back and say, "Wow! That was powerful!" but do nothing about it??? Can we continue to be the very hypocrites that we are so tired of seeing around us? We CANNOT, MUST NOT live life for the sake of our own image... this is the way of the world! The world has nothing better to live for than their own image... but we have Christ! He is so much greater than we are! We could never hope (not to mention "should never hope") to be greater than He is! So, instead, we mirror Him to all people. We must unashamedly proclaim His name to our generation.

There is no glory for ourselves in preaching Christ to those who do not want to hear... there is only hatred and retaliation... but this alone is a fulfillment of Scripture! Christ said, in Matthew 5, "Blessed are you when people insult you and persecute you, and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of Me." He told us it was coming, and now we can be a part of Scripture being fulfilled!

Now... here's the good part of the verse, that everyone likes to hear! When we unashamedly preach the gospel, it is going to wreck out the lives of some people! They're going to see Christ in us and be so amazed at the love and joy that they see, they won't even know what to do about it! at this point that we fulfill the other part of this verse! We can show them the power of God through His plan of salvation for those who believe!

That's the good part about preaching unashamedly... that person who says, "Tell me more about this Jesus person..." and you get to tell them the rest of the story!

Friends, we are commanded to preach the Gospel. It's who we are as Christians! We are ambassadors for Christ (2 Cor. 5:20), and we must be a faithful and true witness of the One who sent us.

We'll probably get back into these two verses tomorrow, but for now...

Grace and Peace!

Questions or Comments? E-mail me at afflquestions@yahoo.com .