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Each day this month we’re looking closely at one of the 1:1 verses of the Bible – exploring what we can learn from chapter one / verse one of various Old and New Testament books.
“Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle and set apart for the gospel of God.”
Years ago, I came across this statement from a little girl who grew up on the East coast:
“My name is Martha Bowers Taft. My great-grandfather was President of the United States. My grandfather was a United States Senator. My daddy is ambassador to Ireland. And I am a Brownie.”
She was blessed. She knew exactly who she was.
If life’s most important question is, “Who’s in charge?” then life’s second most important question is, “What’s my relationship to the one who’s in charge?” The apostle Paul knew exactly how to answer that question, and his response is embedded in the opening line of his letter to the church at Rome.
It’s striking how many different affirmations he makes. There are at least seven of them.
First, Paul identifies himself as a servant, which is a translation of the Greek word doulos. What’s interesting is that the very same word is routinely translated as “slave.” In Scripture, every slave is a servant, and every servant is a slave. Jesus invites us to choose a voluntary enslavement to him as our permanent way of life.
What kind of choice is that? Slavery is one of the most reprehensible concepts in human history. Slavery is what we wish had never been part of our nation’s history.
It’s important to note, however, that there are significant differences between chattel slavery as it came to be practiced in the New World and the slavery that existed in the Mediterranean world of the first century. Within the Roman Empire, approximately one third of the population was slaves. Another third of the population was freed slaves. As Brian J. Dodd observes in The Problem with Paul, we don’t know of a single freed slave who ever championed the cause of eradicating slavery itself. One of the reasons for such silence is that slavery had actually become a relatively good thing for many people.
Nonetheless, we may be confident that Paul would have taken little delight in saying, “I am a slave. Period.”
What filled his heart with joy was being able to declare, “I know who I am. I am a slave – a slave of Christ Jesus.” That’s his second affirmation in Romans 1:1. As Christ’s servant/slave, he was affiliated with the most important person in the cosmos – an over-the-top honor.
Third, Paul tells us that he has been called. He somehow found his way through life without taking a standardized vocational survey in high school, changing majors three times in college, and experimenting with various jobs throughout his 20s.
Paul’s call was famously more dramatic than that.
His first step to becoming Paul the missionary required a blinding, spiritual knock-down on the road to Damascus. Paul never got over that moment. Even at the end of life he was still amazed that God was willing to redirect a misguided, murderous zealot.
Prior to conversion, Paul had sported impeccable spiritual credentials and had the perfect Sabbath attendance pins to prove it. In Philippians 3:4 he writes, “If anyone else thinks he has reasons to put confidence in the flesh, I have more.” In Acts 22:3 Paul adds, “under Gamaliel I was thoroughly trained in the law of our fathers…” This would be like a physicist recalling that he was Albert Einstein’s graduate assistant. Paul was everything a first century Jewish mother could ever hope.
Meeting Christ – or rather, being met by Christ in mid-step – turned everything on its head.
“But whatever was to my profit I now consider loss for the sake of Christ…I consider them rubbish” (a gracious translation, since the Greek clearly means “excrement”) “that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ…”(Philippians 3:7-9).
In short, Paul’s identity changed from spiritual super-achiever to “doulos of Christ.” And he never looked back.
Fourth, Paul was an apostolos, a Greek term that meant “one who is sent.” His was not a three-year, five-year, or seven-year “assignment,” but a lifelong commission to introduce a religiously pluralistic society to the message of Jesus.
Paul understood, fifth, that he had been set apart for this work. He – like the prophet Jeremiah – lived with a keen sense that even before his birth, God had marked him out for a special task.
That task, sixth and seventh, was to articulate the gospel, or good news, of God. To us, that may seem like just another drab religious statement. But in Paul’s time, those were fighting words.
There was already a “gospel” circulating throughout the ancient world. It was the Good News of Rome – the exciting announcement that a semi-divine figure known as Caesar was in the process of bringing peace and joy to all of humanity (if, that is, you were willing to let Rome dominate every aspect of your life).
By proclaiming a rival gospel, Paul was taking a direct shot at Rome – and doing so, of all things, in the opening sentence of his letter to that very city.
Paul was blessed. He knew exactly who he was: “Paul, a (1) servant (2) of Christ Jesus, (3) called to be (4) an apostle and (5) set apart for (6) the gospel of (7) God.
Before “Wild Bill” Wellman became one of the legendary film directors in Hollywood’s earliest days, he was essentially a nobody hanging around studio sets trying to get noticed. Few people even realized he was there.
One day, “Black Jack” Pershing, America’s most celebrated World War I general, dropped by the outdoor film set where Wellman was running errands. The young man had fought in the trenches with Pershing, and the general recognized and admired him. “Bill,” he said, “let me know if there’s anything I can ever do for you.”
“General,” said Wellman, “would you be willing to walk with me over to that tree, and then just stand there with me for a while so that I could look important?” The very next day Bill Wellman, who was now The Friend of General Pershing, got the Hollywood job that launched his career.
Who are you standing next to? Who are you standing for?
Paul chose to be known as The Friend of a Crucified Carpenter.
We, too, can be blessed. We can know exactly who we are.
By surrendering ourselves to Jesus, we immediately become the loved, chosen, forgiven, called, and cherished children of God.