Sermon Bible Commentary
Romans 1:16
I. St. Paul rests the glory and the power of the gospel on its influence on every one who believeth: that is, on its persuasion of and acceptance by the heart and mind of each individual man. You see what great results such an admission brings in its train. At once the individual responsibility of man assumes a sacred and inviolable character. If it be so, all attempts to coerce and subjugate men's consciences in the matter of religious belief are not only as we know futile and vain, but are sins against that liberty of reception of His gospel which God has made our common inheritance. The acceptance of the gospel, and of all that belongs to the gospel, must be free and unforced, the resignation of the heart, with its desires and affections, to God.
II. Let us remember that not St. Paul only, nor every Christian minister only, but every Christian man and woman among us, is set for the declaration and promulgation of the gospel. Some are called upon to preach its truths; all to proclaim their power by the example of a holy life. The gospel of Christ is still the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth. This is the reason why we are not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: not ashamed, though the track of the Church has been marked out not with peace but with the sword; not ashamed, though two-thirds of this fair world still lie in outer darkness; because we find that in the midst of all this the gospel has not lost one atom of its life-giving power, that wherever a soul lays hold on the Redeemer by faith, whether in the corrupt Church of Rome, or in the Reformed Church of England, or in any of the endless varieties of religious opinion and communion, or apart from all visible companies of Christians, there enters a new life unto God, a change into the Lord's image, a glorious progress in holiness here, tending to perfection hereafter.
H. Alford, Quebec Chapel Sermons,vol. ii., p. 176.
Note:
I. Some grounds for sympathising with the Apostle's statement. (1) We are not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, because it vindicates the abandonment of our crucified Lord by God. The death of Jesus is seen to be at once a sublime satisfaction and an illustrious vindication of the justice of God. (2) We are not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, because it reveals the love of God. (3) We are not ashamed of the doctrines of the gospel, for they vindicate the justice and they glorify the love of God. We are not ashamed of them, because they bear the stamp and have the ring of heavenly wisdom.
II. Experience has vindicated the Apostle's reason. "It is the power of God unto salvation." The testimony of individuals in this matter is endorsed and sustained by the general testimony of history.
W. J. Woods, Christian World Pulpit,vol. x., p. 211.
I. In Paul's day the world was grown very weary of words which had in them no power at all, or, if power, at least not power to save. Weary of words which promised life, but had no power to give it; brain-spun speculations about God and man which made nothing clear, which had no influence whatever over the bad passions of the individual, which brought no hope to the poor or the slave; in these Greek theories there was no gospel of power unto salvation. Weary too of words which had behind them the terrific and sometimes brutal strength of Roman legions, but used it not to elevate subject races, but only to bind the yoke firmer on the degenerate peoples.
II. In the midst of all this St. Paul carried what he knew to be a Divine message of help God's own miraculous word, charged with a loftier wisdom than that of Greece, backed by a mightier authority than that of Rome, and instinct with spiritual life and everlasting salvation for men of every land. It was the revelation of God's righteousness in His Son, and of God's life by His Spirit.
III. The power which resides in a word, or which operates through a word, requires one, and no more than one, condition for its operation it must be believed. Faith is no exceptional demand on the gospel's part. It is the condition of all power which comes by word, whether it be a word that teaches or a word that commands. Salvation must come by faith, because faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God. It is therefore to him only who believes its message, but to every one who does believe it, that the gospel proves to be God's power unto salvation. Faith on the part of the hearer is that which must liberate the Divine might, which resides in the word ready to operate. Before you call the gospel weak, ask how you have received it. The faith which has to be exercised about any word varies with the nature of the word. This word from God is spiritual, and it asks not an intellectual but a spiritual faith, a moral submission, a religious surrender of the whole being to the influence of the truth told and the authority of the Person speaking. The gospel is the power of God unto salvation only you must do it the justice to believe it.
J. Oswald Dykes, The Gospel according to St. Paul,p. 1.
The Power of God in the Gospel.
I. The first element of the power of the gospel which we meet with in the most complete treatise which inspired men have delivered to us on the subject is the gospel doctrine of sin. The sense of sin is among the most real and deep of human experiences. Men were groaning in spirit over the question, when the gospel offered its solution and cast a flood of light upon the nature and the genesis of sin. The Bible declares what man's heart has ever felt to be a truth, that sin is the independent self-originated act of the free will of the creature in opposition to the known mind and will of God. It declares also what man feels in his heart to be true, and has struggled in vain to realise, that sin does not fully belong to man, though it is in him and is his own work. Through the gospel sin was felt and known in its dread reality as it had never been known before; but men learned, too, that it was as essentially weaker than righteousness, as flesh is weaker than spirit, as Satan is weaker than Christ. They learnt that it might be conquered, that it ought to be conquered, and they believed that it would be conquered.
II. The second element of the power of the gospel lies in the atonement offered for the sins of the world, which it proclaims. Man seeks to know God as He is; and man only rests and hopes when he sees that not a promise only, but the nature, the name of God is on his side. The name of God was manifest in Christ and wrought redemption. All the attributes of the Divine character are here seen in their essence the radiant colours blended in one white beam of love. And this is the glory of the gospel, this is the power of that salvation which is by faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.
III. The third element of the power of the gospel is the doctrine of the incarnation. The world whose air the incarnate God had breathed, whose paths He had trodden, whose load He had borne, whose form He had put on and carried up with Him visibly to celestial zones, could not be a dying world, could not be a devil's world; it must live to be a Divine world and a kingdom of heaven.
IV. The gospel was a power unto salvation, because it opened heaven to man's spirit, and brought down the power of the world to come to govern his will and purify his heart.
J. Baldwin Brown, The Divine Life in Man,p. 92.
References: Romans 1:16. Sermons for Boys and Girls,p. 86; Homilist,new series, vol. i., p. 529; Church of England Pulpit,vol. xviii., p. 61; Clergyman's Magazine,vol. iii., p. 159; T. Arnold, Sermons,vol. ii., p. 54; H. P. Liddon, Church of England Pulpit,vol. iii., p. 297; S. W. Winter, Christian World Pulpit,vol. ii., p. 200; T. Gasquoine, Ibid.,vol. iv., p. 364; H. W. Beecher, Ibid.,vol. viii., p. 267; W. Woods, Ibid.,vol. i., p. 211; R. W. Dale, Ibid.,vol. xxix., p. 305; Homiletic Quarterly,vol. i., p. 96; H. P. Liddon, University Sermons,2nd series, p. 242; J. Vaughan, Fifty Sermons,10th series, p. 272; Bishop Simpson, Sermons,p. 97; Saturday Evening,pp. 22-43.