“Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, separated unto the gospel of God, (Which he has promised afore by his prophets in the holy scriptures,) Concerning his Son Jesus Christ our Lord, which was made the seed of David according to the flesh; And declared to be the Son of God with power, according to the spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead; By whom we have received grace and apostleship, for obedience to the faith among all nations, for his name: Among who are ye also the called of Jesus Christ: To all that be in Rome, beloved of God, called to be saints: Grace to you and peace from God our Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ.”
I want to continue this series of sermons on Paul’s Epistle to the Romans by looking at his opening address and greeting. Whereas in our day informality tends to be thought of as a mark, if not the mark of a person’s inward authenticity and genuineness, back in Paul’s day fewer excursions were made into the other person’s potentially tricky soul, especially since style is easy to fake. It is best to take in what the person is saying, but allow his or her behavior to be the final test for authenticity. The old Latin proverb, Esse quam vederi – “To be, rather than to seem,” is enough proof. After all, a kiss may be, as St. Paul frequently urged, a holy greeting between Christians or it may be the betrayal of a double-crossing, so-called friend. At any rate what is my point? My point is that formality and convention, custom and procedure far from stifling authenticity and genuineness may actually free up the writer and his audience to be more exacting, trustworthy and authentic. St. Paul takes the conventional form of greeting in antiquity and he adapts it to his Christian audience. We end up with the first 7 verses of the Romans, 128 words give or take for most English translations. That is Paul’s greeting, his opening address to the Roman Christians; a string of 128 words, full of meaning and in the Greek text it is one very long sentence bordered by two bookends:
He begins by disclosing his identity by name:
“Paul, a slave of Jesus Christ…”
He ends with the formal greeting:
“Grace to you and peace from God our Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ.”
So let’s begin with the first verse:
“Paul…”
Romans 1:1
Paul begin his epistle to the Romans, Christians that for the most part he has never laid eyes on, by laying sole claim to the authorship of the letter. He did not claim to write on behalf of any other body of Christians, he does not claim to be delivering a message on behalf of the Apostles from the Church in Jerusalem, Peter and James, nor even Barnabas and Timothy; he writes as one man, one Apostles, to the Christians who are living in Rome. However he is not writing merely as one Christian to another, but as the select Apostle to the Gentiles and therefore as one with apostolic authority whose words were to be attended to and preserved. Paul fully expected his letter to be read out loud to the Christians who were meeting in the homes of some of the better off Romans. But Paul doesn’t begin by asserting his apostleship and authority; he begins by asserting his weakness:
“Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ…”
However softly the translation “servant” falls upon our ears, the Greek word is unmistakable blunt:
“Paul, the doulos, the slave of Jesus Christ…”
The first word in the Greek text is “Paulos” and the second word is “doulos” which means slave, not hired servant. A slave in the world of antiquity often held positions of great responsibility such as teachers and financial managers, but the relation that the word doulos signified was one of ownership and frankly titleholder and the holder of that title in the Gentile world may be designated by the word “Lord.” So, what is Paul saying by referring to himself as a slave to the Lord Jesus Christ? He is saying from the outset that he is absolutely submissive, compliant, dependent, and committed to Jesus Christ as his Lord and Master. St. Paul’s use of the word “Lord” as a designation of Jesus Christ is important; he uses the word two times in this greeting as a title for Christ. Whatever its use in the Gentile world, in the Old Testament the phrase “our Lord” was only applied to God and it was used as an equivalent for the word Adonai or even Yahweh. Paul easily applies that designation for divine sovereignty to Jesus because for Paul and for Christians generally the word “Lord” was meant to acknowledge Jesus as the very source of power and sovereignty. Whereas the old Saul would have happily refer to himself as the “slave of God,” Paul is keen to be known as the “slave of Christ Jesus,” the Messiah of Israel and the exalted Lord, the King of the Universe. So make no mistake about it – whatever legitimate authorities there are here on earth, whether they are kings or princes or magistrates, or even “we the people” – their legitimacy depends upon the Lord Jesus Christ. And so when Paul addresses the proper Christian stance toward the Prince in whatever form he may be manifested, a Christian’s national citizenship is defined first in light of the exalted Lordship of Christ Jesus. Our relation to the Prince is pragmatic and it must be a pragmatism that is shaped by our life under the sovereignty of Christ Jesus and in the Church. The point that I want to make is that nothing, “neither life nor death, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything in all creation” may claim our allegiance, our loyalty, our fidelity because we already belong to Jesus Christ and no one else.
The second thing I want you to see has to do with St. Paul’s special calling:
“Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle…”
There are two kinds of Apostles: those who were companions of Christ and literally appointed by him and they number 12. They are frequently mentioned in the Acts of the Apostles, in the epistles, and in the Gospels where they are frequently spoken of, even after Judas’ treason, as “the Twelve.” When we think of the authority of the Jerusalem Church to speak on behalf of Jesus Christ we are going back to this designation of Apostle that carries the gravity of the first eyewitnesses who were hand picked and commissioned by our Lord himself. However, there is another meaning, a wider classification of Apostle that emerges quickly after the Ascension and Pentecost and that is the sort of order that Barnabas and James and others participated in. St. Paul is clearly of that second development of apostleship, but he is emphatic that he is an Apostle through the direct intervention of the risen Lord Jesus Christ and that his is a special calling to minister to the non-Jew, the Gentile. But we must be fair to Paul – these two characteristics – his direct calling by the resurrected and exalted Christ and his separation for the Gentile – were not for his personal glorification, but for the sake of Christ and his glory. Paul’s apostleship is completely at the service of the Gospel of God:
“Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, separated unto the gospel of God, (Which he has promised afore by his prophets in the holy scriptures,) Concerning his Son Jesus Christ our Lord… Among who are ye also the called of Jesus Christ…”
It is the Gospel of God concerning Jesus Christ that forms the center of Paul’s letter to the Romans. The body of this greeting is made up of a fragment of an early Christian liturgy. We saw some months back how Paul used portions of early Christian confessions and liturgies in his letters. For example he quote an early creed in the 15th chapter of I Corinthians:
“Christ died for our sins,
in accordance with the Scriptures,
He was buried,
He was raised on the third day,
In accordance with the Scriptures,
He appeared to Cephas,
Then to the Twelve.”
Here in Romans Paul has used portions of a liturgy that was likely universally recognized by Christians as Christian and orthodox:
“The gospel of God,
Which he has promised afore by his prophets
in the Holy Scriptures,
Concerning his Son Jesus Christ our Lord,
made the seed of David according to the flesh;
Declared to be the Son of God with power,
according to the spirit of holiness,
by the resurrection from the dead…”
That whole portion hangs together just like a snippet of an early Christian liturgy – those little affirmation that are sometimes called “a handed-down formula.” That is exactly what Paul writes in the I Corinthians:
“I handed down to you of first importance what was handed down to me: That Christ died for our sins…”
There are two points I wish to make: First of all Paul used this well-known formula in order to establish with the Roman Christians that he and they hold the same faith in the same Christ. He affirms and they affirm the content of the liturgies and confessions that true Christians affirm all over the world.
The second point that Paul makes is that Jesus Christ is the very center of Life. That he has a life “according to the flesh,” that is a human life and his human life is from the linage of King David and thus he is “the son of David” and a “son of man.” Furthermore, Jesus Christ is the Son of God made the Son of David not the Son of David made the Son of God. On this Paul is crystal clear. Jesus was not merely a good man who God raised from the dead and then adopted and declared the Son of God. It was the other way around. The Son of God became the son of man, Jesus, who died for our sins, was resurrected and reigns from Heaven and all this was promised by God through the prophets of Israel and recorded in the Jewish Bible, the Old Testament. The Gospel of Jesus Christ is not a new religion; it is the fulfillment of God’s promises to Israel. Christianity is not the promise of Hellenistic or Persian mystery religions – from Mithras or Athena or Hermes or even Plato. Jesus is the Son of God whom the Prophets of Israel preached as the hope of the world – his only connection to pagans was to bring them into the love of the God of Israel – the very thing St. Paul lived for. Through Jesus Christ, grace and salvation has been lavished upon the Roman Christians most of whom were pagans.
One last point is to see how Paul’s address to the Roman Christians differs from his addresses in other epistles and what it means:
“Paul, called to be an apostle of Jesus Christ through the will of God, and Sosthenes our brother, unto the Church of God which is at Corinth…”
“Paul, an apostle (not of men, neither by men, but by Jesus Christ…) to the Churches of Galatia…”
“Paul and Timotheus, the servants of Jesus Christ, to all the saints in Christ Jesus which are at Philippi, with the bishops and deacons…”
“Paul, and Silvanus, and Timotheus, unto the church of the Thessalonians which is in God the Father and in the Lord Jesus Christ…”
How does his Roman address differ from all the others in the New Testament? In Romans he does not address the Christians as “the Church of God in Rome” nor does he acknowledge anyone with apostolic orders. And what does that mean? It means that there was no apostolic founder for a Roman Church at the time Paul wrote his letter and in fact that is exactly why he wanted so much to go there: to establish all these Christian meetings in various homes as the Church in Rome and to impart spiritual gifts to them and bring godly order, holy order, apostolic order into their collective life. This order, this holy order was once the sole gift of Israel and here St. Paul has promised a life of holy order to Gentiles.