I spoke recently at the GAFCON Australasia gathering in Brisbane. GAFCON is the “mission arm” of the movement of orthodox global Anglicans. Hundreds had eagerly put aside time and paid to travel there from every Australian state and territory, as well as New Zealand, PNG and Myanmar.
We looked at Romans 1, full of Paul’s personality and emotion. This is a little surprising because Paul didn’t plant the church and hadn’t visited it yet. Yet it drips with authentic affection and concern.
In v15 the apostle says, “I am so eager to preach the gospel also to you who are in Rome”. And that’s what we hear in the whole passage – eagerness. Away from a conference atmosphere and going about our daily lives, I wonder if ‘eagerness’ is a word you would use to describe your spiritual temperature?
Sometimes I wonder if our times are not characterised more by reluctance, hesitancy, uncertainty and anxiety than eagerness. There are many reasons why it might be so – the personal circumstances in which you currently find yourself, perhaps challenges at work, in family relationships, or with health. Some of you may experience little encouragement in your ministry or Christian discipleship. Yet these verses from Romans offer a picture of apostolic eagerness that is surely intended to be a pattern and an encouragement to us, as it must have been for its first readers.
Shame silences gospel preaching
The Christians in Rome were utterly marginal. In a city of perhaps close to a million people, Paul mentions just a handful of house churches. The Christians had already been expelled under Claudius, and were only now regrouping under Nero. And little did they know, nor Paul, that when they finally did meet, Paul would be in chains. So, the letter must have been a great spiritual lift for them.
Paul is eager to preach the gospel because he is not ashamed (v16). The imperative made explicit elsewhere in Paul’s writings is that shame silences gospel preaching. If you never hear the gospel, there’s a good chance the preacher is ashamed of Jesus.
As the influence of Christianity has declined in Western culture, one of the impacts has been the replacement of virtue culture – “right-wrong” culture – with “honour-shame” culture. When the majority had a cultural awareness and acceptance of Jesus’ teaching – say, in the Sermon on the Mount, the parable of the good Samaritan and his commandment to love your neighbour - it was generally understood that people should do the right thing even if it cost them. Now, it is less important to do what is right and more important to do what is accepted.
In honour-shame cultures, honour is more important than virtue or truth; avoiding shame is more important than doing the right thing. The opinion of the group or the mob is key. In the world of social media, shame is instantaneous, global and irreversible. So while we pride ourselves as a culture on individual freedom and autonomy, in fact, only a few opinions are acceptable.
To be a follower of the crucified “King of the Jews”, and an associate of former Pharisee Paul, was hardly a pathway to influence. And this is no less true today than it was then. The gospel of the crucified Saviour and the teaching of his apostle are hardly consistent with many of today’s views considered worthy of honour.
But, if you are tempted to be ashamed of the gospel, it is not a recent phenomenon. We’ve been fighting this temptation from the beginning!
The gospel remains as powerful today as it was 2000 years ago
The God of the Bible is a God of immense power. From the Bible’s first page we learn he is able to bring worlds into existence merely by speaking. The gospel is an announcement, a message concerning God’s Son, declared King by his life, death and resurrection. The apostle tells us this gospel is the place where we can experience God’s power to save. No wonder Paul is eager to preach the gospel, and is not ashamed of the gospel – it is God’s power to bring salvation, and is available to everyone equally. The gospel is not a weak thing, not an optional thing. It’s the “no-shame” gospel, liberating us from fear, guilt and shame, filling us with life, love and hope. The gospel remains as powerful today as it was 2000 years ago.
The impact of Jesus
A friend of mine works for a major retailer. One day a colleague said to him, “I have a successful job I enjoy, I am happily married and my kids bring me joy; at 40 years of age I have everything I have wanted and worked for, but I feel like something is missing. I’ve watched you for as long as we have worked here and you have a way about you I can’t understand. I think it’s because you’re religious. Can you take me to your church?” My friend agreed, and this lady started coming to church with her family. She joined a group reading the Bible, and she has now become a disciple of Jesus.
I visited a church in our western suburbs recently that had leafletted the suburb during lockdown. A man had gone to the local railway station intending to throw himself in the way of an oncoming train – the sun got into his eyes and, mercifully, he pulled back. When he got home, he found a leaflet from the church in his mailbox. He went to the church, talked to the minister and has been back every week since. He is reading the Bible with the minister. He’s found a reason to live.
In virtually every church I visit the minister will introduce me to people saying, “We baptised him last month”, “She brought her friend to youth group and now her mum is coming to church”, “Six, 10, 15 people have signed up for our Christianity Explored/Life course/Alpha”. On the surface it often doesn’t look like much but, from the perspective of eternity, it will be revealed that the gospel was the power of salvation for everyone who believes.
Let us seek God’s help by all means possible to be eager to preach the gospel
Every Christian has a story of coming to Jesus and coming to know how his gospel is God’s power to bring salvation and transform our lives. The gospel is personal but it is not a matter of merely private opinion. It is objective, historical reality. It is not a philosophy of life, it is a relationship with Jesus. It is not bland moralism or spiritual advice – it is good, good news. The power of God that brings salvation.
So – here’s my point – since we have a no-shame gospel that is God’s power for salvation for everyone who believes, let us seek God’s help by all means possible to be eager to preach the gospel.
Let’s ask the Lord to make us eager to preach the gospel to one another so we may be mutually encouraged in each other’s faith – to speak to the world and to one another all the more of Jesus. Not ashamed, but rejoicing in the power of his grace, the beauty of his truth, the tenderness of his love, the gentleness of his correction and the joy of his forgiveness.
If God answers this prayer then surely it will be ever more true of us that we will be people of prayer. Would it not be wonderful if the faith of Sydney, and Australian, Anglicans was like the faith of the Romans in chapter 1, verse 8: “reported all over the world”? If you think that’s unlikely, then we ought to repent of such prayerlessness!
I am praying that we may so experience the power of the gospel that we would know a fresh spiritual eagerness to declare the praises of him who called us out of darkness into his wonderful light, and all of us might say – humbly, gladly, gratefully and boldly – “I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God that brings salvation to everyone who believes”.
