Who is Paul?  What is the gospel?  And what is our role in it all?  From the opening Paul answers these 3 important questions.

1) Who is Paul?

Hi identity is two-fold.  He is a servant/slave of Jesus Christ.  A slave does what his master tells him.  And second he is a sent-one, an apostle.  God has called him, and God has called him to go.  Where?  We read later on it is to the Gentiles, the non-Jews.  Which is interesting as he was the most Jewish trained person ever, yet God calls him to a different people group.

Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God,

So Paul is writing with a God-given authority. Not one of his own. But one given by God.

2) What is the gospel?

The Gospel is simply this:  Jesus is the Son of God.  This was confirmed by his fulfilling the Scriptures, that he was one descended from David.  AND also that he rose from the dead.

There were many descendents of David.  But only Jesus rose from the dead.

² which he promised beforehand through his prophets in the holy Scriptures, ³ concerning his Son, who was descended from David according to the flesh ⁴ and was declared to be the Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord,

The fulfillment of the Scriptures is alluded to twice here.  It is the gospel “promised beforehand” and Jesus was a descendant of David.

This is not a new gospel.  It is the fulfillment of the good news that was promised throughout history.  Jesus is the fulfillment.

In fact, if someone wants to know why the gospel of Jesus Christ is true, the most strong witnesses are these two witnesses – Fulfilled Prophecy and the Resurrection from the Dead.

3) What is our part?

Paul had a mission.  That is that he was a receive of grace, and now he was on a mission to preach grace to the nations, especially the Gentiles.

⁵ through whom we have received grace and apostleship to bring about the obedience of faith for the sake of his name among all the nations, ⁶ including you who are called to belong to Jesus Christ,

In this we are also “called to belong.”  What does this mean?  It’s not just the warm connection we receive from being adopted into the family of God.  But there’s also an adoption into the way the family does things.  In this case it is called, “the obedience of faith.”

As part of our new culture and family, we obey the rules of the family.  That’s part of what being a family is about.  We respect the new authority and way of doing things.

We are called to belong.  Not to live a rebel life within a family.

So we have Paul writing a message from authority.  He comes not with a new message but one that was promised for centuries in the Torah, Psalms and Prophets and is now fulfilled.  This fulfillment was declared to be true through Jesus’ resurrection from the dead.  And now we are called to be a part of it through our obedience that comes from faith.  We belong now to a new family.

BONUS:  We are also loved by God, just as the believers in Rome were.

⁷ To all those in Rome who are loved by God and called to be saints:  Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

For Christians, the knowledge that we are loved by God is as familiar as the air we breathe.  But this is not the case of some other faiths in the world.  There are faiths that believe God is unloving, we are just his slaves, and he is forever threatening with Hell-fire.  Other faiths believe that love is impossible based on their social status of their birth.

So be grateful we serve a God who looks upon us with a love far beyond what we understand.  It’s the gift that never stops giving.