Not Ashamed - Surrendering Fear of Judgement

Hello, my friends. Today we will start a brand-new series here on my blog where we will go through the book of Romans. The next 16 posts are dedicated to it and will be an adventure we will go on together. I’m excited to see where it leads. For sake of keeping these blogs relatively short, I will be summarizing some things. So, let’s start in chapter one, verse one:

Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle and set apart for the gospel of God – the gospel he promised beforehand through his prophets in the Holy Scriptures regarding his Son, who as to his earthly life was descendant of David, and who through the Spirit of holiness was appointed the Son of God in power by his resurrection from the dead: Jesus Christ our Lord. (Verse 1-4)

I wanted to make sure to add this sort of introduction of the apostle Paul. Next Paul writes to all in Rome who are loved by God and called to be his holy people.

Grace and peace to you from God our father and from the Lord Jesus Christ. First, I thank my God through Jesus Christ for all of you, because your faith is being reported all over the world. God whom I serve in my spirit in preaching the gospel of his Son, is my witness how constantly I remember you in my praying at all times; and I pray that now at last my God’s will the way may be opened for me to come to you. (verses 7-10)

Paul goes on to say that he has planned many times to come to the people in Rome – whom he calls brothers and sisters (I assume he means brothers and sisters in Christ) but he has been prevented from doing so.

I am obligated both to Greeks and non-Greeks, both to the wise and the foolish. That is why I am so eager to preach the gospel also to you who are in Rome. (Verses 14-15)

I love this. I think that this proves that Paul was not biased and knew that the love of God was for everyone. He wasn’t going to only share and teach the gospel to the wise or the Greek, but to everyone in Rome also.

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. For in the gospel the righteousness of God is revealed – a righteousness that is by faith from first to last, just as it is written: “The righteous will live by faith.” (verse 16-17)

The righteous will live by faith. I love how Paul adds that. Then, Paul talks about the serious - God’s wrath against sin. I don’t want to leave it all out, even if it means this blog is long, because I am not ashamed of the gospel either.

The wrath of God being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people, who suppress the truth by their wickedness, since that may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities – his eternal power and divine nature – have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so the people are without excuse. (verses 18-20)

I will summarize the rest:

Although they knew God, they didn’t glorify him or thank him, but their thinking was futile, and their foolish hearts darkened. They claimed to wise, but they were fools. (Verses 21 & 22) Therefore God gave them over to sinful desires. They exchanged truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served created things rather than the creator. (Verses 24 & 25)

They exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones. (Verse 26) They did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, so God gave them over to a depraved mind. They became filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed, depravity, and malice. They are gossipers, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant, and boastful. They invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents, they have no understanding, no fidelity, no love, no mercy. (Verse 28-31)

Well, that was hard to type and I’m not going to lie, I was going to skip over it. Now a days, I could be looked at negatively just from quoting this scripture (especially verse 26). But when I read Paul admitting that he is not ashamed of the gospel; I knew that I couldn’t. I’m not ashamed of it, so I should write about the hard things.

I love Paul. His books are my favorites in the Bible. I hope one day, in heaven, I get to meet this apostle Paul. My friends, the gospel is for everyone and I am not going to be ashamed to share it – all of it! My word for this year is surrender, so I will surrender fear of potential judgement of others to share the truth. Speaking of judgement; tomorrow we will continue in the next chapter - you will see what I mean then. Until then, friends, smile.