Romans 1:16 NASB95
For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.
Romans 1:16 TPT
I refuse to be ashamed of sharing the wonderful message of God’s liberating power unleashed in us through Christ! For I am thrilled to preach that everyone who believes is saved—the Jew first, and then people everywhere!
Religion is Man’s reach for God; the gospel is God’s reach for Man. I added the passion translations paraphrase because I believe in this particular instance, it gets it right. The word saved in the original language means to “be made whole.” Being saved is not just about getting a ticket out of hell and into heaven; instead, it is about God’s reach to make fallen humanity whole. It’s all about a “new creation.” Most people understand Romans 1:16 to mean that the message of the gospel is the power of God for salvation (wholeness), but what that verse is actually saying is this is what the gospel is, the power of God to make following humanity whole. That’s what the good news is; it is the message that in our absolute and total helplessness and hopelessness, the power of God alone saves us. That’s the good news; God in His power, reaching down to rescue us, without our adding one thing to the rescue other than to simply believe it. This is at the heart of Christianity from beginning until we see Him face-to-face. We start by believing in His power to make us righteous in His righteousness, and step-by-step, the rest of the journey, we continue to trust in His power to demonstrate His righteousness in and through our lives. His part is to do, and our part is to believe, because apart from Him, we can do nothing.
Why did Paul say that he was not ashamed of the gospel? If the gospel is that we can only be saved by the power of God and there is not one thing we can add to that, then Paul is rejecting the idea that people can be saved (transformed into wholeness) by trying to keep the law. Paul is saying that he is not ashamed to admit there was nothing he could do to save himself from himself, even by his own zealous self-effort to live a religious life. The only way he could be changed was by the grace of God’s power.