Week 35: Memory Verse

Romans 1:16-17 is the thesis statement of the most influential letter ever written. Every chapter of Romans is an elaboration of what these two verses announce. The gospel is not advice, not philosophy, not moral instruction. It is power — the dynamite (dynamis) of God unleashed for the rescue of everyone who believes.

“I am not ashamed” is more than personal conviction. Paul is writing to Rome, the capital of the most powerful empire on earth, where the gospel of a crucified Jewish carpenter would be dismissed as absurd. Against that backdrop, Paul declares that this foolish-sounding message is the very power that holds the universe together. The phrase “from faith for faith” suggests a journey: faith at the beginning, faith at the end, and faith all the way through. The Christian life does not begin by faith and continue by effort. It is faith from start to finish, as Habakkuk 2:4 already proclaimed: “The righteous shall live by faith.”