“Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle and set apart for the gospel of God—”
Romans 1:1 NIV
Hardly anyone writes letters these days. It’s no wonder our postal service has collapsed. Gone are the days when a familiar figure, carrying a heavy bag, tramped the streets of our neighbourhoods, dropping letters into post boxes, with a friendly greeting, or a good-natured kick at an unfriendly dog.
E-mails and WhatsApp have filled the gap with sterile efficiency. Gone are the paragraphs of handwritten information, family news, etc., whatever it took to make an interesting communication and to keep friends and family bonds strong.
This letter to the Roman congregation was Paul’s way of making contact with a church he didn’t found. He began with the usual style of his time…first his name and credentials.
Who was this Paul? He was the one whom Jesus had confronted on the road outside Damascus…the notorious hater of Christians who had tried ti exterminate them one by one. He had become one of them through a divine encounter. His life had been turned right side up after years of believing that he was “doing God’s work!”
How did he identify himself to his readers? He had never been to Rome. His time in Rome in the future would be very different from what he anticipated. He was writing to a congregation of relative strangers and yet, somehow, he knew many of them.
In the Roman Empire, Christians were a suspect category. The Jews were tolerated because they were no threat to the emperor. Christians were suspect because they refused to confess and bow to Caesar as Lord. They were rumoured to be cannibals because they “ate the body and drank the blood of Jesus”! They were to be exterminated like vermin.
And so, much through Paul’s efforts, the Christians in the empire stuck together, bonded through the movement of travelling preachers and other believers. They offered accommodation and fellowship to one another, and forged connections across provinces and even countries. It was not unusual, then, for Paul to greet his readers as one who knew them although he had not yet been with them.
In the case of the Roman church, the church had probably begun through visiting Christians who had won people in Rome to faith in Jesus through their witness.
Paul took it upon himself to ensure that these believers who had a mostly pagan background, would be taught the great truths of the gospel. So, he wrote this letter, a thorough explanation of what God had done through His Son, Jesus Christ, to reconcile the world to Himself.
Paul’s credentials were important. He was not just any old self-appointed apostle as some are today. He was Paul…the one who was appointed and called by God Himself to carry the message of Jesus to the world.
“Through him we received grace and apostleship to call all the Gentiles to the obedience that comes from faith for his name’s sake.”
Romans 1:5 NIV
Paul’s credentials included two important facets…grace and apostleship. They were gifts from God…not anything Paul had merited or earned. It was by God’s grace that he was rescued from his life of self-righteousness, and it was by God’s choice that he was an apostle…it had nothing to do with him. He carried the authority of Jesus from the moment he had met Him outside Damascus. He had ditched all his self-effort and clung to the righteousness Jesus had given him by grace…the same grace that had protected and provided for him over hundreds of miles, through hostile territory, and despite constant threats from his enemies.
Since Paul had not yet been released by the Holy Spirit to go to Rome, he wrote his magnificent teaching in a letter preserved for posterity. Having established his apostleship as a calling and appointment from God, he was compelled to carry out his mandate to pass on the body of truth he had received from the Lord to every believer in Jesus across the empire. He did this in person where he could and by letter when he was unable to go in person.
Hence, some of his letters were written from inside prison walls, dictated to faithful associates who helped him whenever they could. Prison, to Paul, was not a hindrance. In fact, his happiest letter…to the Philippian church…originated from a prison cell. He taught and wrote wherever he was.
So begins the prince of letters, the pinnacle of theology…not the theology of a far-away God who sits up in heaven demanding allegiance but the story of a God who came here…to us on earth…to do what we could never do…to bridge the gap between a holy God and a broken world. He did it through His own Son…that one…Jesus, the Son of God.
To be continued