Established by the Gospel

After a year walking through Romans, it’s fitting that Paul ends not with an argument, a warning, or even a command — but with a declaration of God’s power. In Romans 16:25–27 Paul says, “Now to Him who is able to strengthen you…” And with those words he reminds the church of the truth that carries us into every new season: the gospel is God’s power to establish His people.

Paul isn’t talking about a shallow kind of strength — the kind we try to muster up through discipline, confidence, or personality. The word he uses means to fix, to anchor, to make solid, to set someone so firmly that storms cannot move them. After sixteen chapters of unfolding God’s righteousness, Paul wants the church to understand that only the gospel can do that kind of work in a believer.

Many of us try to establish ourselves by effort, by performance, by maturity, by knowledge, or by reputation. But Paul says the opposite: the gospel establishes us. Christ doesn’t simply forgive us; He roots us. He stabilizes our emotions, challenges our assumptions, transforms our desires, strengthens our resolve, and reshapes our identity. When everything else shakes — Christ holds.

This is why Paul says the gospel was a “mystery revealed.” God’s plan was not just to save sinners, but to create a people who could stand firm in a broken world — not in themselves, but in Him. Jew and Gentile, strong and weak, old and young, the confident and the fearful — all of them established by the same word of grace.

And church family, this is where the pastoral heart of the doxology meets us today. I know some of us feel unsteady — in our faith, in our families, in our decisions, in our identity, in our sense of belonging. Some of us quietly fear that one bad week, one major failure, one lingering doubt could knock us over.

But Paul ends Romans by reminding us that the strength of the Christian life does not come from the believer — it comes from the gospel itself.

To the God who establishes us, sustains us, and secures our future through Jesus Christ —
to Him be the glory.