Romans 1:1-7

First Passage (1:1-7). The Address.

The form of address usual among the ancients contained three terms: “N. to N. greeting. ” Comp. Acts 23:26: “Claudius Lysias unto the most excellent governor Felix greeting.” Such is the type we have here, but modified in execution to suit the particular intention of the apostle. The subject, Paul, is developed in the first six verses; the persons addressed, to the Christians in Rome, in the first half of Romans 1:7, and the object, greeting, in the second.

One is surprised at the altogether extraordinary extension bestowed on the development of the first term. It is very much the same in the Epistle to the Galatians. The fact is accounted for in the latter writing by the need which Paul felt to give the lie at once to the calumnies of his Judaizing adversaries, who denied his divine call to the apostleship. His object in our Epistle is wholly different. His concern is to justify the exceptional step he is taking at the moment, in addressing a letter of instruction like that which follows, to a church on which he seemed to have no claim.

In these six verses, 1-6, Paul introduces himself; first, as an apostle in the general sense of the word, as called directly by God to the task of publishing the message of salvation, Romans 1:1-2; then he indulges in an apparent digression regarding the object of his message, the person of Jesus Christ, who had appeared as the Messiah of Israel, but was raised by His resurrection to the state of the Son of God, Romans 1:3-4; finally, from the person of the Lord he returns to the apostleship, which he has received from this glorified Lord, and which he describes as a special apostleship to the Gentile world, Romans 1:5-6.