The Power for Salvation

Our Sunday adult Bible class at church was going through a series on Romans. One of the Sundays I had Romans 1:16-17. The words I focused on where these:
For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation.
The word I particularly wanted to focus on was "power." My father-in-law Pat pointed out to me that the Greek word for "power" in this text is the root of the word "dynamite."

The point I made to the class was that, by and large, we don't think of the gospel as a "power." We mostly think of the gospel as a legal verdict, the proclamation that we've been forgiven.

But salvation doesn't mean "forgiveness." Salvation means rescue, liberation, and emancipation.

Salvation means Exodus.

And if that's the case, I asked the class, what does it mean that the gospel is a power for salvation, an explosive force in the world that sets people free?

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