Paul's theme in writing: righteousness from God
I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile. 17 For in the gospel a righteousness from God is revealed, a righteousness that is by faith from first to last, just as it is written: “The righteous will live by faith.”
Although the text of Romans is inspired by God, the chapter and verse divisions are not. Division into chapters seems to date back to the 12th century, while numbered verses did not appear until the 16th century, when printed editions of the Bible became common. The point is that Paul did not intend for a division between what we have come to designate as verses 15 and 16. In fact, in the Greek text, verses 15 to 21 are all connected with causal conjunctions such as our because, since, and for. These causal conjunctions regularly connect a key concept from the preceding statement with a following reason or rationale.
Therefore, verse 16 provides the rationale for what was said in verse 15. There Paul said, “I am so eager to preach the gospel also to you who are at Rome.” Verse 16 adds the reason: because “I am not ashamed of the gospel.”
Being ashamed of the gospel would imply that Paul was hesitant about proclaiming it, that he was afraid of making claims and promises from it that might go unfulfilled. If such unreliability was the case, when all is said and done, Paul would end up embarrassed and discredited for making false claims and promises that he couldn’t keep.
But Paul isn’t hesitant at all about proclaiming the gospel, because “it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes.” When Paul calls the gospel a power, he uses the Greek word dynamis, a basis for the English word dynamite. The gospel has that kind of power not because it originated with Paul—remember, he’s just a “servant” (1:1)—but because it is the power of God. It brings the greatest possible blessing, eternal salvation. Even more amazing, that salvation is for everyone.
When Paul says the gospel is “the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes” (verse 16), he is not limiting the power of the gospel, as though salvation were intended only for some and not for others. When he speaks of the salvation “of everyone who believes,” he’s talking about the how of salvation, not the who. Paul will be saying more about this shortly.
In verse 14 Paul had indicated that as a gospel preacher, he was obligated “both to Greeks and non-Greeks,” in other words, to everyone. Here in verse 16 he uses a slightly different designation in speaking of the universal scope of the gospel. The gospel is the power of God for everyone, “first for the Jew, then for the Gentile.”
Historically and chronologically, one could make a case for the priority of the Jewish nation in God’s plan of salvation. God chose Abraham from all the families of the earth and made of him a special nation from whom the Savior was born. Jesus’ earthly ministry was largely limited to his Jewish compatriots, as he explained to the Canaanite woman (Matthew 15:24). To the Samaritan woman at Jacob’s well, Jesus said, “Salvation is from the Jews” (John 4:22). One could therefore say that God’s plan of salvation was “first for the Jew.”
But salvation was never intended only for the Jewish nation. Inclusion of Gentiles was always in God’s plan (Isaiah 60:1-9; Acts 15:13-18). Wholesale conversion of Gentiles, however, did not happen until the arrival of the New Testament Christian church and the apostles’ carrying out Christ’s commission to preach the gospel to all nations (Mark 16:15). The gospel was “first for the Jew,” but then also “for the Gentile.” The same gospel works for all.
Why can it work for all? Because “in the gospel a righteousness from God is revealed, a righteousness that is by faith from first to last, just as it is written: ‘The righteous will live by faith’” (1:17).
In the original Greek, the expression translated “a righteousness from God” has simply the possessive form of God. It might therefore be translated “God’s righteousness.” But that translation is ambiguous. It could allow for two meanings: the righteousness God has whereby he himself is holy, or the righteousness he demands from every person. It was this second understanding of God’s righteousness that caused Luther so much trouble early in his life. He became angry with God for demanding a righteousness that even the best human effort could not provide.
Only when Luther learned another meaning of “God’s righteousness” did his troubled soul find peace. That other meaning is the righteousness that God gives. The NIV is interpretive but correct when it translates the phrase as “a righteousness from God.”
The gospel can bring salvation for everybody who believes because God is the one providing the righteousness everybody needs. Sinful human beings produce nothing useful. God in Christ has done it all! By his perfect life as the sinner’s substitute, Christ earned the righteousness that all people owe to a just and holy God. By his innocent death on the cross, Christ paid for the many things we and a world of sinners have done wrong.
In the gospel God now invites the sinner to accept Christ’s righteousness as his own. And when sinners in faith accept Christ’s merit, God looks at them as though they were just and holy. God declares the sinner innocent of all wrongdoing. It’s like a judge in a courtroom pardoning a convicted offender. This marvelous exchange whereby Christ takes our sin on himself and gives us his righteousness is called justification. As Paul tells us, this way of receiving righteousness from God is “by faith from first to last.” It’s purely by grace, without any merit on the sinner’s part. The prophet Habakkuk indicated this already centuries earlier when he said, “The righteous will live by his faith” (2:4).