Paul's Letter to the Romans

Colin G. Kruse

• Publisher: Eerdmans
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9780802837431
• eBook ISBN: 9781467435758
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Commentary

Paul's Letter to the Romans may well be the most influential book in Christian history. In this Romans commentary Colin Kruse shows how Paul expounds the gospel against the background of God's sovereign action as creator, judge, and redeemer of the world. Valuable "additional notes" on important theological themes and difficult texts -- such as Paul's discussion of same-sex relationships, the salvation of "all Israel," and the woman Junia, who was "well known among the apostles" -- further connect Romans to contemporary issues. Throughout his commentary Kruse expertly guides readers through the plethora of interpretations of Romans, providing a reliable exposition of this foundational epistle.

Commentary

I. LETTER INTRODUCTION, 1:1-17

The introduction to Paul’s Letter to the Romans consists of two parts. The first part is the traditional greeting from the author to the recipients. In the case of Romans it is substantially longer than the greetings in Paul’s other letters. The second part is the traditional thanksgiving section in which the apostle informs his audience of his prayers for them and his longing to visit them, a visit he wants to make in order that he might have some ministry among them.

A. Greetings, 1:1-7

¹Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle and set apart for the gospel of God — ²the gospel he promised beforehand through his prophets in the Holy Scriptures ³regarding his Son, who as to his earthly life was a descendant of David, ⁴and who through the Spirit of holiness was appointed the Son of God in power by his resurrection from the dead: Jesus Christ our Lord. ⁵Through him we received grace and apostleship to call all the Gentiles to the obedience that comes from faith for his name’s sake. ⁶And you also are among those Gentiles who are called to belong to Jesus Christ.

⁷To all in Rome who are loved by God and called to be his holy people:

Grace and peace to you from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.

The format of the opening greeting of a Greek letter (as evidenced by the many letters found among the papyri recovered in Egypt in the first half of the twentieth century) was normally quite brief: ‘A to B, greeting’.¹ Appropriately, when writing for a largely Gentile audience, Paul adopts this Greek form for his greeting.² He employs the direct form of address (using the second person) in his greetings, which introduces a certain sense of intimacy. This is balanced, however, and especially so in Romans, by reference to his status (‘a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle’), indicating that the letter is a more official and serious communication.

The greeting formulae in Paul’s letters are generally enlarged and Christianized, as, for example, in 1 Thessalonians 1:1: ‘Paul, Silas and Timothy, to the church of the Thessalonians in God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ: Grace and peace to you’. Sometimes the content of the greeting provides hints of what might be expected in the body of the letter. For example, in his greeting in 1 Corinthians 1:1-3 Paul emphasizes that he was ‘called to be an apostle . . . by the will of God’ and addresses his letter ‘to the church of God in Corinth, to those sanctified in Christ Jesus and called to be his holy people, together with all those everywhere who call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ — their Lord and ours’. By doing so he foreshadows the fact that he will be defending his apostleship, while reminding the Corinthian believers that they are called to be holy and that they are but a part of a wider Christian community and therefore need to follow the rules Paul lays down for all his churches (cf. 1 Cor 7:17; 11:16; 14:33-34).

The greeting in Romans is much fuller than either that in 1 Thessalonians or 1 Corinthians and is unique among the greetings in Paul’s letters, in particular because of its length and theological density. The content of the greeting can be set out as follows:

A. Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus,

called to be an apostle

and set apart for the gospel of God —

the gospel he promised beforehand

through his prophets

in the Holy Scriptures

regarding his Son,

who was a descendant of David,

as to his earthly life

and who was appointed the Son of God in power

through the Spirit of holiness

by his resurrection from the dead:

Jesus Christ our Lord.

Through him we received grace and apostleship

to call to the obedience that comes from faith

all the Gentiles.

for his name’s sake,

And you also are among those Gentiles who are called to belong to

Jesus Christ.

B. To all in Rome who are loved by God and called to be his holy people:

C. Grace and peace to you

from God our Father

and from the Lord Jesus Christ.

From this layout it can be seen that the greeting has the three basic elements of standard Greek epistolary greetings (A: ‘Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ . . .’; B: ‘to all in Rome who are loved by God . . .’; C: Greeting: ‘grace and peace to you . . .’). The first element (‘Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ . . .’) is greatly expanded so that Paul can introduce himself as ‘called to be an apostle’ and ‘set apart for the gospel of God’. This gospel God promised beforehand through his prophets and it concerns his Son. The Son is then described as a descendant of David (his human lineage) and the Son of God with power (by divine appointment). It is from the Son of God that Paul has received his call and the grace enabling him to be an apostle, in particular an apostle to the Gentiles. His Roman Gentile audience, he insists, are included among those for whom he has been appointed an apostle.

The second element of the greeting (‘to all in Rome who are loved by God . . .’) is brief and contains no expressions of endearment or honor often found in Greek letters (as, e.g., in Titus 1:4; Philem 1-2), nor any veiled rebuke (as in the case of 1 Cor 1:2). This can be accounted for by the fact that Paul is addressing many people whom he had not met before (cf. 1:8-13). The third element (‘Grace and peace to you . . .’) is quite brief, as is the case in most of Paul’s letters (cf., e.g., 1 Cor 1:3; 2 Cor 1:2; Eph 1:2; Col 1:2; 1 Thess 1:1; 2 Thess 1:2; Philem 3), but not all (cf. Gal 1:3-5).

The original audience of Paul’s letter might have wondered why the opening greeting (prescript) was so extraordinarily long. Those who had some knowledge of epistolary conventions and rhetorical strategies would sense that Paul was going to great lengths to introduce himself so as to secure a good hearing for what he was to write in the rest of the letter.³ From the contents of the prescript an astute audience would also detect hints about what Paul intended to convey to them in his letter, but they would have to listen carefully to what was being read to discover exactly what that was.⁴

1:1 Paul was the apostle’s Roman name. It was common for Jews in NT times to have a Gentile name alongside their Jewish name (in the apostle’s case: Saul).⁵ Using his Roman name probably helped to facilitate his

travels around the empire.⁶

Unusually, Paul does not associate any of his colleagues with him in the authorship of this letter, even though Timothy was with him when he composed the final greetings (16:21). Dunn suggests ‘that Paul wanted to present himself in his own person to these largely unknown congregations, as (the) apostle to the Gentiles (cf. 11:13), and with the subsequent exposition of the gospel understood very much as his. . . . It was on their reaction to this very personal statement that the success or failure of this letter would hang’.⁷

Paul further introduces himself to his audience as a servant of Christ Jesus,⁸ literally ‘a slave of Christ Jesus’. He introduces himself in this way in only one other letter (Phil 1:1),⁹ but he does speak of himself as a slave of Christ in Galatians 1:10. Elsewhere he refers to believers as ‘slaves of Christ’ (1 Cor 7:22; Eph 6:6; Col 4:12). In the LXX the title ‘a servant/slave of the Lord’ is used of Joshua (Josh 24:30; Judg 2:8), Moses (2 Kgs 18:12), and Jonah (Jon 1:9), and the title ‘child/slave of God’ is used of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego (Dan 3:26, LXX 3:93) and Moses (Dan 9:11). In referring to himself as a servant/slave of the Lord, Paul may have had in mind, in particular, the servant passage in Isaiah 49:1-7. In all these LXX references the expression appears to have honorific connotations: To be a servant/slave of the Lord is to have high status.¹⁰ However, as Moo notes, ‘the connotations of humility, devotion, and obedience are never absent from the OT phrase and are surely primary here [in 1:1] also’.¹¹

For the first-century audience of Paul’s letter the word ‘slave’ would have other connotations as well as connotations related to the institution of slavery. For them, a slave was someone who belonged entirely to another and from whom absolute obedience could be expected. Paul would have been quite happy for his reference to himself as a slave of Christ Jesus to be understood in this way because he thought of himself, and in fact of all believers (1 Cor 7:22; Eph 6:6; Col 4:12), as slaves of Christ — people who belonged to Christ and owed him their full obedience (1 Cor 6:20).¹²

It is significant that here Paul refers to himself as a slave of ‘Christ Jesus’, not ‘Jesus Christ’. In the latter ‘Christ’ might be regarded as a proper name, but in the former it clearly functions as a description of Jesus’ status — he is the Messiah (Christos being the Greek equivalent of the Hebrew word for Messiah).¹³

Paul describes himself further as one called to be an apostle (lit. ‘a called apostle’).¹⁴ This is the normal way he introduces himself in his letters (cf. 1 Cor 1:1; 2 Cor 1:1; Gal 1:1; Eph 1:1; Col 1:1; 1 Tim 1:1; 2 Tim 1:1; Tit 1:1). Paul’s calling as an apostle was according to the purpose of God (1 Cor 1:1) and involved being set apart for, or wholly dedicated to, the preaching of the gospel (1:1). The key text for understanding Paul’s calling is Galatians 1:15-16 (NRSV: ‘But when God, who had set me apart before I was born and called me through his grace, was pleased to reveal his Son to me, so that I might proclaim him among the Gentiles, I did not confer with any human being’). This text reflects Paul’s conviction that he was chosen by God for the task before he was born; that his calling came to him by revelation at a time determined by God himself; that it rested entirely upon God’s grace, not upon anything deserving on Paul’s part; that it involved a direct revelation of Jesus Christ to him involving no human mediation; and that the scope of his ministry was to be primarily among Gentile peoples.¹⁵ Two things were fundamental to Paul’s apostleship: he had seen the risen Lord (1 Cor 15:3-8), and he had been commissioned by him to preach the gospel to the Gentiles (1:1-5; 15:15-16; Gal 1:1, 15). By introducing himself as an apostle to his Roman audience, most of whom did not know him, Paul provides them with a good reason to give their attention to the contents of his letter: he writes as one who has been called and commissioned by God. See ‘Additional Note: Paul’s Apostleship’, 56-57.

Paul further describes himself as one set apart for the gospel of God. The word translated ‘set apart’ is often used to mean separating people from contact with others (as in Matt 25:32; Luke 6:22; 2 Cor 6:17; Gal 2:12), but here it means setting apart for a purpose (the proclamation of the gospel), something that was inherent in Paul’s conversion/commissioning experience on the Damascus Road. Paul uses the same word in Galatians 1:15-16, where he says that he was ‘set apart’ from birth by God to preach Christ among the Gentiles. It is also used in Acts 13:2, where the Holy Spirit tells the prophets and teachers in Antioch to ‘set apart’ Paul and Barnabas for the work to which he has called them. Barrett comments: ‘Paul had been a Pharisee (Phil. iii.5), supposing himself to be set apart from other men for the service of God; he now truly was what he had supposed himself to be — separated, not, however, by human exclusiveness but by God’s grace and election’.¹⁶

As an apostle, Paul’s primary function was to proclaim the gospel (cf. 1 Cor 1:17), one that he calls here ‘the gospel of God’, as he does frequently in his letters (Rom 15:16; 2 Cor 11:7; 1 Thess 2:2, 8, 9; 1 Tim 1:11).¹⁷ The essential background to the word ‘gospel’ is found in the LXX. Although the noun ‘gospel’ itself (euangelion) is found there only once (in 2 Sam 4:10, where it means the reward given for good news), the cognate verb (euangelizō) is found twenty-three times, and uniformly means to bring or proclaim good news. Particularly relevant are passages where it is used in relation to proclaiming news of God’s salvation (e.g., Ps 96:2 [LXX 95:2]; Nah 1:15 [LXX 2:1]; Isa 40:9; 52:7; 61:1). Euangelion was also used in the emperor cult to refer to important announcements (e.g., the birth of an heir, or the emper...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Editor’s Preface
• Author’s Preface
• Abbreviations
• Bibliography
• Introduction
• Commentary
• Index of Subjects
• Index of Authors
• Index of Scripture References
• Index of Early Extrabiblical Literature