Not Ashamed

Not Ashamed

Sunita was the only Christian in her university department in India, and for months she said nothing about her faith. Then a colleague's father died and she found herself sitting with her grieving friend at midnight, words failing. She opened her phone and read aloud Psalm 23. Her colleague wept — not from politeness but from something touching something real. Afterward, other colleagues asked what she had read. More conversations opened. Later she reflected: 'I was afraid the gospel would make things awkward. I had forgotten it was power.' She had confused her embarrassment with the gospel's weakness. She discovered those are very different things. Her boldness from that night forward changed her department.

Paul writes Romans 1:16 from Rome — the cosmopolitan heart of a civilization that considered this Jewish sect an embarrassing superstition. 'Not ashamed' is a declaration of defiance, delivered with full awareness of the social cost. But Paul's confidence isn't in his own courage; it's in the gospel itself. He calls it 'the power of God' — dunamis, the word from which we get 'dynamite.' The gospel is not a persuasive argument or a cultural tradition or a self-improvement system. It is the active power of God that brings salvation. Paul's boldness was simply trusting that the gospel could do what it claimed. When we are timid in sharing our faith, we are often treating the gospel as if it needs our help to be credible. It doesn't. It is power. Our job is simply to not be ashamed of what God has already made powerful.