There is so much in Romans 1:16-32 and my mind is so flooded with thoughts as I study this that I decided to break it down into chunks.
16 For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek.
This is an oft-quoted scripture for an inherently good reason. We should not be ashamed of the gospel of Christ. And yet, reading about Paul and the great lengths to which he went to preach that gospel can be very self-incriminating. It has been for me recently. What was it that motivated Paul to do what he did? What is it about us that prevents us from doing the same? And I’m not talking about the specifics of what he did. I’m talking about the amount of effort we exert in trying to share the gospel of Christ with others.
In the past, the Lord has taught me that, as we grow in our knowledge of and love for him, our desires and motivations change, but I will be honest and say that I didn’t know the extent to which that could happen. It was impossible for me to know. As I write this, I can’t help but roll my eyes at myself. This is such a “well, duh” moment, it’s embarrassing. When I had my first child, God gave me a tangible endowment of love that enabled me to care for that child in a way that I wouldn’t have been able to without it. I didn’t know that that level of love existed before I experienced it and it is difficult to explain that love to some of my children who are still at an age where they don’t yet know that that level of love exists.
Why did Paul do what he did? Because he knew that the gospel of Christ was “the power of God unto salvation to everyone that believeth.” Do you think that we understand these things like Paul did? Are we as motivated as he was? Even if you believe that you will never be like Christ in this life, what makes you think you have it in you to be like Paul or Moses or Nephi or any other person in the scriptures? I’ve had to ask myself what demonstrable things about my life lead me to believe such a thing. It’s a painful endeavor. Because he loves us, the Lord shows us what we lack and most people don’t like that. We think that an unabashed declaration of our belief is enough to save us. We think we know what belief is. We think that we know what salvation means and what it takes to obtain it. We think we know what we need to be saved from. We think that we know how his power operates. But we don’t, and even when he reveals portions of these things to you that you previously did not understand, very few people will recognize how much they still do not yet know. What he reveals to us can be so great in quantity that it is easy to fall into the trap of mistakenly thinking that he has revealed all there is to know on that particular subject.
17 For therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith: as it is written, The just shall live by faith.
It is within the gospel of Christ that we have revealed to us the righteousness of God. How? “From faith to faith.” It’s progressive and it continues. A human lives as long as the heart is beating. The heart is continuously filled and refilled. This is how the just live. Those who are justified continuously receive truth and live according to it, in faith, always searching for and expecting more. This is the only way to “live.”