1-1-Six

I was talking to a guy at work the other day when I noticed his tattoo. It said, “1-1-six”. I said, “Isn’t that Lecrae’s logo? You must really like him!” He laughed and said, “It’s more of a movement than a logo. It stands for Romans 1:16, my favorite verse in the Bible.” In my head I quickly went searched through verses I had memorized and remembered it said, “For I am not ashamed of the Gospel of Christ for it is the power of God unto salvation for the Jew first and also to the Greek.” I then replied, “Indeed, it is a great verse.”

The more I’ve thought about our quick conversation, the more I wanted to dig into that verse. Yes I had memorized it as a kid, but memorizing something only helps you to recall it, not to understand it. I read it in different versions and the Amplified stood out to me most. It had three main parts that I loved. It interprets that verse this way, “For I am not ashamed of the Gospel (good news) of Christ, for it is God’s power working unto salvation, for deliverance from eternal death, to everyone who believes with a personal trust and a confident surrender and a firm reliance, the Jew first and also to the Greek.”

The first thing that popped out at me was the phrase, “to everyone who believes with a personal trust.” The trust you have in God has to be personal. It can’t be vicariously through someone else’s faith. You have to experience God for yourself to fully trust Him. The more personal God is to you, the deeper your faith is. The way to get a personal faith is to spend time being honest with God. If your faith isn’t personal, it won’t survive hard times. It will be like the seed sown by the way side that quickly sprouted, but was burned by the sun because the soil wasn’t deep.

The next thing that I saw was the phrase, “a confident surrender”. It sounds like an oxymoron as first. How can you be confident in surrendering? God requires that we surrender our will for His. He wants us to let go of what we have for all that He is. Reading this reminded me of the cartoon you see below. We can confidently let go of what we have because He wants to give so much more. The only thing He asks is that we let go. We can confidently surrender when we have a personal trust.

The final thing that stands out is “a firm reliance”. When we’ve learned to personally trust God and have confidently surrendered, we can have a firm reliance that He will do what He said He will do. Andy Stanley defines faith as, “The confidence that God is who He says He is and that He’ll do everything He’s promised to do.” To know who God is and what He said He will do, you will need to know the Gospel of Christ. And when you know it, you will not be ashamed of it. You too will get caught up in the “1-1-six” movement that lives their lives with a personal trust, a confident surrender and a firm reliance.