Scripture Alone

Romans Chapter 1

¹⁶ For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek.

¹⁷ For therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith: as it is written, The just shall live by faith.

Dear reader, we would like to put this question to you; why should anyone ever be ashamed of the gospel? Do you know anything about this particular temptation? Take a moment to contemplate this question thoroughly. If your answer is that you’ve never been tempted to be ashamed of the gospel then we suggest that the reason for this is not that you are a very good Christian, but that your understanding of the Christian message has never been clear.

It is never an impressive thing to hear a professing Christian say that “ever since I have believed, I’ve never been tempted to doubt, I’ve never been tempted to shame.” It’s not a good thing to say! Timothy was certainly tempted to doubt, and, if you read the lives of the saints throughout the ages you will discover that they have been attacked most grievously along this line. So, how does this arise? Here are some reasons.

First, there is the fact that the world always ridicules the gospel, “it’s utter folly” they say. We know this to be true in the early church, Paul tells the Corinthians “we preach Christ crucified, to the Jews a stumbling block and to the Greeks foolishness”, stupidity is what that means. And, when accomplished academics, to whom the world turns in full admiration as though they are gods themselves, ridicule the gospel openly and publicly to the majority of living souls, and that majority ridicule the gospel also, then a believer might find the temptation to be ashamed of the gospel of Christ quite overwhelming. 

Imagine having to deal with an unbeliever in the first century who quotes Epicurus to you as you are trying to present the truth of Christ to him. Epicurus is of course one of the most influential of the ancient Greek philosophers, he founded his own school of thought, the Epicurean school; a school of philosophy that was very prominent in the first century and was a common tool of the devil against the Christians, and still to this day it follows that Epicurean philosophy has permeated into modern philosophies. That first century Epicurean might well have said to you “You say that your God is all powerful and that he cares for this creation that you attribute to His deity, well then” he says, ” answer me on these questions then. Is God willing to prevent evil, but is not able? Then He is not omnipotent. Is He able, but not willing? Then He is malevolent. Is He both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is He neither able nor willing? Then why call Him God?”. Does this not sound exactly as the argument put forth by so many a self proclaiming atheist of 2023? What would you say to a man who attacks your faith like this to your face? This gospel is foolishness to a man that thinks this way. He puts his own reason above and beyond God; so, we see that he is clearly a fool. This is exactly the type of man that the apostle Paul was up against in Athens. 

This man is no different than former Oxford Professor Richard Dawkins, who famously wrote in his book called The God Delusion that “The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all of fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully”. These are the words of one of someone who genuinely hates God, Christ, and Spirit with such a fervent vigour that he prides himself on how vehemently that he can blaspheme. Have you ever encountered someone like this, what would you say to this man? He is loved and admired by millions of people who believe that his opinion about the Gospel of Christ is the correct view. Or how about Albert Einstein? Richard Dawkins once at an auction tried to purchase a letter that Einstein wrote to a philosopher by the name of Eric Gutkind that has been called The God Letter . An excerpt of this letter reads as thus, “The word God is for me is nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honourable, but still primitive, legends which are nevertheless pretty childish.”, again, this eminent man of scientific influence is a fool, he truly believes that his own intellect is above and beyond God Himself! And, just as a side, to show the value that followers of these philosophers put on the character and person of these men, in 2008 Dawkins lost in the bidding process to purchase this letter that he coveted at auction, the highest bidder paid over 170,000 British Pounds; the letter then came up for auction again in 2018 and fetched 2.9 million US Dollars, which was double of what the auction house had expected it to sell for. 

What a desperate fraternity these men have formed, we know that they have a consciousness of the fact that God is, for the scripture shows that they do. (Romans 1:18-20) Yet, the magnitude of ungodliness, sin and pride in these men, have led them to profess themselves to be wise and God to be mans invention. Which in turn has caused them to become the most foolish and ridiculous of all men on earth; they are evil in their reasonings and they have no way to reconcile their positions in light of God’s creation alone. The irony is that these foolish men of science and philosophy are entirely dependent on all that God has created, both the physical and the metaphysical; they have no science without creation and they have no thought without consciousness, yet they continue in their vain efforts to explain these facts whilst denying the very deity that is evidenced by these facts. (Romans 1:20-22)

Dear reader, have you ever been placed by God in a position where you were faced by such an enemy of Christ as any of these godless, hateful, prideful, heathen men, that having been asked about the “…reason of the hope that is in you”, that you then found yourself in the position of being called to give an answer “with meekness and fear”? 

There’s nothing different today as opposed to two thousand years ago! So, what can we possibly say to men who think in this manner? These men are quick with their worldly wit and intellect to assert as to where God stands in relation to them and their understanding. Well, we should grasp their situation as scripture places them in relation to God for the benefit of our understanding of who these people really are; objectively, as defined by the holy scripture and not by their own subjective pigmy brain and intellect. The apostle tells us of their situation, in 1Corinthians 1:25 through 29, the apostle says “…the foolishness of God is wiser than men; and the weakness of God is stronger than men… But God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty; And base things of the world, and things which are despised, hath God chosen, yea, and things which are not, to bring to nought things that are: That no flesh should glory in his presence.” What does the apostle mean by this foolishness? 

“…the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness… For it is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and will bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent. Where is the wise? where is the scribe? where is the disputer of this world? hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world?For after that in the wisdom of God the world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe.”(1 Cor 1:18-21)

The better translation in the last verse here, is “it pleased God by the foolishness of the thing preached to save them that believe.” What is this foolish thing we preach? We preach someone born of a virgin in a grotto amongst animals, no room at the Inn, completely man and completely God, wrapped in swaddling clothes, brought up in abject poverty, raised in a village, a carpenter, the Son of God, crucified in weakness, taken in helplessness, nailed to a tree, who dies while the mob is jeering at Him and saying “He saved others; himself he cannot save. If he be the King of Israel, let him come down from the cross, and we will believe him. He trusted in God; let him deliver him now, if he will have him: for he said, I am the Son of God. The thieves also, which were crucified with him, cast the same in his teeth.” This is what we proclaim: a carpenter, impoverished, who died upon a cross, who is the Saviour of the world and the Son of God “we preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumblingblock, and unto the Greeks foolishness;” The very character of the message produces ridicule.

These things may bring the temptation of shame, especially when talking to learned people. But, the apostle comes into the mightiest city in all the empire, Rome herself, where all the great men of power, politics, and mighty intellect have their seats of establishment and pronounces that he “is not ashamed of the Gospel of Christ”, the carpenter from Nazareth that he is preaching. He uses a figure of speech here called litotes. Litotes is a figure of speech which lays forth an assertion in which an affirmative is expressed by the negative of the contrary. 

He uses this figure of speech deliberately, to encourage the Christians in Rome. There were Christians there that were ashamed of the Gospel, even Timothy was guilty of this “Be not thou therefore ashamed of the (Gospel) testimony of our Lord, nor of me his prisoner: but be thou partaker of the afflictions of the gospel according to the power of God;”. in saying “he is not ashamed” really means that he is very proud and that he glories in the preaching of this Gospel of Christ. We know that he gloried in it, he said so, “God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ” (Gal 6:14) He did glory in it, the preaching of the cross.  But here he says he’s not ashamed.  He used this figure of speech on another occasion when the Captain of the Roman legion sent down troops to save Paul from a mob.  Paul in a conversation with the Captain said “(I am) a citizen of no mean city” referring to Tarsus.  Instead of saying he was the citizen of a very important city he says  “(I am) a citizen of no mean city”.  That’s the same way he speaks here.  He tells them he’s ready to preach the Gospel in Rome, he’s ready to preach it anywhere, and he’s not going to apologize.  

And, the greatest thing the apostle had to say about Onesiphorus was that he “was not ashamed of my chain: But, when he was in Rome, he sought me out very diligently, and found me.”  There were many who knew Paul was there in Rome, but they didn’t want to be associated with him, for, he was in bonds, a prisoner; they were ashamed of the Gospel.  Undoubtedly there were those in Rome taken to that shame themselves, so the apostle puts it this way in order to help them and in order to strengthen them and deliver them out of this spirit of fear.  Like what he said to Timothy, “God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind(discipline).” Essentially, the apostle is encouraging those holy coals of faith to be raked within the soul that they might burst into a mighty flame of courage concerning the preaching of this message. Perhaps the great apostle himself at times was tempted of the devil to be ashamed of the gospel! Not that he ever was, but perhaps this is why the apostle puts it in this way; perhaps he knew something of the devils’s attack on the preachers of this Gospel. Therefore, “I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ and neither should you be”, this is the sense of his proclamation, this is why he uses this particular figure of speech, litotes.

Are we ashamed of the gospel of Christ? This is a most pressing question for us, especially in this day and age when there are so very many versions of the Gospel , which are not gospels, for, there is only one gospel, as the apostle Paul emphasizes in Galatians 1:7. Yet, as we survey these professing Christians and measure the crookedness of the gospel that they have bent, we see them seemingly unashamed and most pleased with themselves as they present their fraudulent gospels to the unbelieving and believing worlds alike! We should now like to examine some of these non gospels to see whether those that proclaim them are not ashamed; or if, indeed, they truly are the most ashamed of all.