“Now to him that is of power to stablish you according to my gospel, and the preaching of Jesus Christ” (Romans 16:25, KJV 1900)
Paul concludes the letter to the Romans with a doxology. The word doxology comes from two words in the Greek. The first is the noun, doxa, which means praise or glory and logia, which meanssaying. The doxology is literally glory and praise-saying. Since God is the one to be glorified, a doxology is an expression of worship. In this aspect of worship, we lift our thoughts to God of how great He is because of who He is and the great things He has done.
So, the doxology is all about God. Yet, while the doxology is truly about God, there are truths in it that should move our hearts in response. In this doxology there are several of these truths. The first one we see here is that God “is of power to stablish” us. In this phrase, the word, “power,” is dunamai, which can also be translated as “able to do.” In this case, I prefer the KJV’s rendering it as “power.” The thought is that God is powerfully able to do. This means more than power as we consider it from a human perspective. God is omnipotent, infinitely powerful. He has the power to make anything happen exactly as He chooses.
The word used in the KJV, “stablish,” is not one that we often use in our modern vocabulary. It is the word, sterizo, which means to strengthen, to place firmly. The thought is that God has the infinite power to place us with strength in accordance with the gospel. Might I say that it takes the infinite power of God to take the heart of us fallen and sinful creatures and set us firmly in the faith.
The heart of fallen man is hard like the hardest of stones. Nothing short of God’s power can take the stony heart and soften it to faith and repentance (Ezek 36:26-27; Eph 4:18). In Romans, Paul writes the following regarding the condition of the hardened heart. “As it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one: There is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God.” (Romans 3:10–11, KJV 1900)
Apart from the infinite power of God to crush the stony heart of man, not one of us would have understood the things of God, sought him and turned from our former way of life. Oh, how we should praise and glorify Him for the merciful working of His power in our lives to firmly establish us in Christ.
Renewing the Heart 