Romans 1:1 - Servant, Apostle, Saint - by Scott Sperling

Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle and set apart for the gospel of God... -- Romans 1:1

The Author: Paul

We approach the threshold of this great Epistle. The inscription over the gate is brief, but every word is a volume. Paul follows the customs of the day and begins his letter to the Romans with his own name. He writes "Paul." He does not write "Saul." Saul was his name of nature; Paul is his name of grace. Saul was the name of the persecutor, the injurious, the tall and proud Pharisee. Paul -- Paulus in the Latin tongue -- signifies "little." He who was great in his own eyes has become little in the Kingdom of God. He is "less than the least of all saints" (Eph. 3:8), yet "not a whit behind the very chiefest apostles" (2 Cor. 11:5). It is a name that preaches humility. He does not come with the pomp of titles, nor the heraldry of ancestors. He comes with three designations, three badges of honor which he wears upon his soul: "a servant," "an Apostle," and "set apart."

The Title: A Servant of Christ Jesus

He identifies himself, first and foremost, as "a servant of Christ Jesus," just as we all should consider ourselves. This is his highest title. He places this before his apostleship. It is better to be a servant of Christ than to be the Emperor of Rome.

But let us examine this word. The translation of the word "servant" in our common Bibles is a bit weak. It conveys to our modern ears the idea of a hired man, an employee who gives his labor for wages and is free to come and go. But the Greek word here is doulos . It does not in any way denote an employee who is free to come and go. This word denotes ownership by a master, so "slave" or possibly "bondservant" are better translations.

A slave is one who is absolutely owned by another. He has no will of his own; no time of his own; no property of his own. His interests take a back seat to the interests of the owner. By using this word to describe himself, Paul is signaling to us that we also should consider ourselves to be "slaves of Christ Jesus," to be devoted to serve Him as our master, as the word "slave" denotes.

Now, in the ancient world, the word doulos could denote someone who is in involuntary servitude (such as someone who was conquered and made a slave, or was involuntarily put into slavery because of debt). Or, it could denote someone who voluntarily sold themselves into slavery. Which are we? Which is Paul? The question is more complicated than it sounds.

We naturally would say that we are voluntary "slaves" of Christ, that we chose to serve Him. We sing our hymns of surrender and say, "I have decided to follow Jesus." And this is true; we are a willing people in the day of His power. And yet, there is a sense that Christ has the absolute right to demand our servitude. We are involuntary slaves in this sense: that we were bought. Paul writes elsewhere: "... You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your bodies" (1 Cor. 6:19-20). We were captives to sin, bound in chains of iron, sold under the taskmaster of hell. Christ came, the stronger man, and paid the ransom -- not with silver and gold, but with His own precious blood. He bought us from the slave-market of sin. We owe our absolute allegiance to Christ because He redeemed us. We are His by right of purchase.

But in His grace, Christ has offered us the choice of whether or not we serve Him. He does not drag us in chains, but draws us with cords of love. Yet, let us not be deceived. There is no middle ground. As the poet of our own age has observed: "You gotta serve somebody... It may be the devil or it may be the Lord, but you gotta serve somebody." [1]

If we are not servants of Christ, then we are slaves to sin. We were all slaves to sin, and we would have all remained slaves to sin, if it were not for our redemption by Christ. But despite the fact that Christ, by His redemption, broke the shackles of sin, and opened the prison doors for us, yet we have to make that choice to walk away from those shackles and step through those prison doors into the freedom and glory of our risen Lord.

Paul indicates, by using the term "slave," that our service to Christ must be complete and total:

• Slavery denotes complete devotion -- always being at the disposal of our Master.
• It denotes an element of fear of disobedience -- true slaves fear their masters, at least to some extent. They fear the consequences of disobedience, the dissatisfaction of their master.
• It denotes a realization that we are bound for life. We are not Christ's one day, and then free to do what we want to do the next.

Is this a title of shame? By no means! Being a "slave" typically indicates membership in the lowest rank of society. If we were slaves to an ogre, who lived in a hovel, our servanthood would be a debasement. But when one is a slave, it makes all the difference in the world as to who your master is. To be the slave of a King is a high honor. And so, as a "slave of Christ Jesus," the absolute Lord of the Universe, we should consider our servanthood as the most honorable of professions. Paul rattles his chains as if they were bracelets of gold. He glories in his bonds.

The Office: Called to be an Apostle

Paul gives "slave of Christ Jesus" as his title, and then gives "apostle" as his calling: "...called to be an apostle."

The word "apostle" literally means messenger or representative or envoy . An "apostle" is one sent forth with a commission. In the Bible (in Luke 6:13), Jesus designated twelve to be His Apostles with a capital A, so to speak. These were His immediate messengers, whom He designated to give testimony as to what they saw and heard Christ do and say. They played a crucial role in founding the Christian Church and establishing the teachings and doctrines of the Church.

We know that Judas fell by transgression, and the eleven elected Matthias to take his place (Acts 1:15-26). But we know extraordinarily little about Matthias's work as an apostle. It seems though that, later, Jesus Himself chose Paul as the twelfth apostle, or at least as an apostle of equal rank. Christ specifically designated Paul to "proclaim [Christ's] name to the Gentiles" (Acts 9:15), making Paul the "apostle to the Gentiles." Many people think that Paul was actually Christ's choice to replace Judas (not Matthias), and certainly, one could make an argument for that, given Paul's later prominence. Paul considered himself to be an equal of the twelve apostles. He asked rhetorically, "Am I not an apostle? Have I not seen Jesus our Lord?" (1 Cor. 9:1).

A trait of Christ's Apostles (with a capital A) was that they were all personally discipled by Christ. The other Apostles were followers of Christ before His resurrection. Paul was not. He was "born out of due time" (1 Cor. 15:8). Paul became a follower of Christ in an unusual way, through his remarkable conversion on the road to Damascus. Through that conversion, Paul was "called" in a very direct way "to be an apostle." Jesus said to him: "I have appeared to you to appoint you as a servant and as a witness of what you have seen of me and what I will show you" (Acts 26:16).

Paul later testifies that he was taught directly by Christ. He tells the Galatians: "I want you to know, brothers and sisters, that the gospel I preached is not of human origin. I did not receive it from any man, nor was I taught it; rather, I received it by revelation from Jesus Christ" (Gal. 1:11-12). When did this happen? We're not sure when or how this happened, but it seems to have happened in Arabia, right after the time of Paul's conversion. Paul tells us that after his conversion, he did not go to Jerusalem to get instruction from the other Apostles, but he retreated to Arabia (see Gal. 1:17). He spent about three years there. So, many scholars think that, at that time, Paul was somehow receiving direction and instruction directly from Christ. Whether through a vision, or a physical appearance, we know not; but Paul asserts that he was instructed by Christ. He received his theology from the lips of the Lord. Therefore, Paul had the same qualifications that the other Apostles had, in that he was taught directly by Christ.

This "calling" as an "apostle" gave Paul the authority to write boldly and teach authoritatively. It was as an "apostle" that Paul had the right teach the believers at Rome as he did: With a tone of authority; not as an ordinary teacher, but speaking as a messenger of Christ.

Note again that Paul writes that he was "called." It was not his own doing. And Paul's calling was sudden, dramatic, totally transformative, and complete. Before his "calling," he was an ardent and bigoted supporter of the traditions of his fathers, a cruel persecutor of the Church, and violently opposed to the humbling doctrines of Christianity. After his "calling," Paul was the most ardent of preachers of the Gospel of Christ.

Given the scope of Paul's dramatic transformation, his calling is a sign to us that God can change the heart of absolutely anyone. Do you know someone who curses God and Christ continually? God can change their hearts. Do you know someone in captivity to an addiction to drugs or alcohol, or any other self-abusive behavior? God can transform them. Do you know someone full of hatred, and in slavery to sin? God can rescue them. The message of Paul's conversion is that God can change anyone and can do so in an instant. We should never write off anyone to permanent slavery to sin, but ever keep them in our prayers.

And behold the wisdom of God in "calling" Paul. Having been trained as a Pharisee, Paul had unique qualifications to bridge and connect the teachings of the Old Testament to the teachings and work of Christ. Having extensive schooling and being a Roman citizen, Paul also had unique qualifications to reach out and connect to people who lived in a world dominated by Roman politics and Greek philosophy. He could interact with governmental leaders and scholastic philosophers. He held his own before Agrippa, and he held his own before the philosophers in Athens. Certainly, God was wise to call Paul into His service as an "apostle."

The Separation: Set Apart for the Gospel

Finally, Paul adds this third description: "set apart for the gospel of God" (vs. 1).

The common Christian term for the process of being "set apart" is sanctification . Saints are those who are sanctified, who are "set apart" as Christians. Followers of Christ are, by the nature of Christianity, "set apart" from those of the world, from the ways of the world, and from the values of the world. Those of the world should look at you and see that there is something different about you: they should sense your sanctified state.

And regarding Paul, there is a bit of a play on words here, by Paul, in saying that he was "set apart." Paul was trained as a Pharisee, and the word Pharisee comes from the Aramaic for "separated," or "set apart." The Pharisees would go to extremes to separate themselves from others for fear of becoming "unclean." If a Pharisee saw someone on one side of the road, and he feared contamination, he would go to the other side, because even if the robe of the Pharisee touched someone who was "unclean," the Pharisee would consider himself contaminated.

So Paul, by saying that he was "set apart for the Gospel of God," both looks backward and looks forward. He is effectively saying that he is no longer "set apart" as a Pharisee (separated by pride and legalism), but now is "set apart" as a follower of Christ, with the goal of being sanctified.

From this comparison of the way that the Pharisees were "set apart," and the way that Paul was "set apart," we learn that there is an inappropriate way to be set apart, and an appropriate way to be set apart, as Christians. The way of the Pharisees was to be set apart in the sense that they despised everyone, and they thought everyone was unclean and impure, and they hated to be around them. That's not a Christian attitude. Jesus showed us the true way. He dove into crowds of sinners, and lepers, and the downtrodden, and reached out and touched them all, with the desire to show love for them. This is why Mother Teresa is such a paradigm of Christian behavior. Rather than striving to be physically set apart from the poor and downtrodden, she sought them out and touched them. So then, the Pharisaical physical set-apartedness is not what we are to strive for. As Christians, we are to set ourselves apart from sin and the temptation to sin, not our neighbors. We are to set ourselves apart to live a life in the way of Christ and not the ways of the world. We are to be, as Paul says, "set apart for the gospel of God."

And what is this "gospel of God" ? The word "gospel" literally means good news . In a nutshell, the "gospel" message, the good news, is the fact that sinners can be saved through faith in Christ. Note well, the "gospel" is good news. "When ministers so present religious truth as to make it appear sad tidings to meek and penitent souls, they mightily distort and pervert it; for they are sent to preach the gospel, glad news, good tidings unto the meek, to bind up the broken-hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound." [2]

After his calling, Paul preached, explained, expounded, and lived the "gospel of God." Paul was set apart for this. His life, his breath, his energy, his blood was all consecrated to this one end -- preaching "gospel of God." And now, through Paul's writings, primarily the writings in this epistle, we too can know and understand the plan of God, who through the ages has worked out his divine purpose and brought us to this time and place in history, in order that we too may be "set apart for the gospel of God."

Footnotes:

[1] Bob Dylan.

[2] William S. Plumer, p. 40.