Not Ashamed

“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 for faith, as it is written, ‘The righteous shall live by faith.’” (Romans 1:16-17)

I love and “hate” the Scriptures. I know that may be a shocking statement to read, but let me explain myself. I love the Scriptures because they tell me the truth. And in a world that is increasingly running to what is false, we need the truth. But, the Scriptures don’t discriminate; they tell me all the truth—including the truth about myself.

If you are ever in a bookstore and you look through the “Christian” section, likely you will find some decent books that are worth reading. But you will undoubtedly find many books (maybe even most books?) that might be found in the “Christian living” section, but are little more than self-help opinions. These books are not truly “biblical”, because they are not ultimately based on the truth.

Ultimately, as I see it, the problem with those “Christian” self-help books is that they falsely communicate that we can help ourselves. Many of those books convince many professing believers that we can just pick ourselves up by our bootstraps, keep chugging forward, and we will do just fine. In fact, many of those books seem to communicate that you can live a godly life, if you try hard enough. But the Scriptures say differently.

“And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience—among whom we all once lived in the passions of the flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved…” (Ephesians 2:1-5)

The Bible tells the truth about me. Apart from Jesus Christ, I am dead in my sin. And dead things don’t do anything besides stay dead; apart from outside stimuli. The fact of the matter is, left to myself, no matter how hard I may try to pull up on those bootstraps, I am dead in my sin, and I can’t actually help myself. This is our dire reality.

When the Apostle Paul wrote those words in Romans 1, he was declaring his absolute trust in God’s ability to take a dead heart and bring life to it. But he was also declaring the only solution where this could be possible. This is why right after he wrote those words, he then began to describe how every person is dead in our sin (Romans 1:18-3:20). Paul was declaring that apart from the Gospel, without Christ, we all stay dead.

One of the reasons why the Apostle Paul stated that he was “not ashamed” of the Gospel wasn’t simply because he loved Jesus so much (though that is true!), but it was also because Paul understood that the Gospel of Jesus Christ was the only way that we could be helped from our dead, spiritual condition. He was essentially saying, “I am not ashamed of the Gospel, because I know that I deserve Hell, but in Christ, and only in Christ, God has given me life.”

What about us? Do we believe this? Do we live like we are unashamed of what we say we believe? Or do we live like there is another way to be made righteous? We need to see the truth of our sin and then be reminded that in Christ our sin has been forgiven, our lives have been changed, all by the power of God.

We don’t need self-help, but we do need help. And this is one reason why we are unashamed about the Gospel; because we are unashamed about Jesus.

“I lift up my eyes to the hills. From where does my help come? My help comes from the LORD, who made heaven and earth.” –Psalm 121:1-2