1 Paul, a servant[a] of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God, 2 which he promised beforehand through his prophets in the holy Scriptures, 3 concerning his Son, who was descended from David[b] 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, 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,

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.

Introduction

Before we move forward with interpretation, let’s take a minute to consider the method that we’ll use to conduct our study. To start us off in interpretation, we will be primarily focusing on two questions: 1) Who is God? 2) Who are we? And 3) What has he done for us? We will next shift our attention to the application, answering the question: What are we to do in response?

Who is God?

Jesus is the Christ, i.e. the “savior.”

God is the author of the good news, the Gospel.

He also fulfills his promises. He promised the Gospel to his people, and he delivered it.

Christ is the son of God, and he is powerful. One of the most comprehensive attributes of God is that he has ultimate power.

Jesus is not only our Christ, our savior, but our Lord. We cannot have Christ as a savior, and not our Lord. His presence and commands must be ever-present, and we must be made more and more like him with every passing day. If you do not have Christ as Lord, there is reason to doubt that he is your savior.

God is our father.

Who are We?

We may be called as servants of Christ.

We may also be called as his own (vs 6), however, this is not addressed to everyone, but to the church in Rome.

Finally, we are all loved by God to an extent, namely by way of his general benevolence toward us, but only those who belong to Christ have been shown God’s special love, his special grace, and the promise of salvation.

What has God Done?

God is the one who does the calling and the sanctifying. He has “called” and “set apart” Paul for his Gospel. He has also “called” all of those who belong to himself. (vs 6) Those who belong to Him, who are saved, have not called themselves into grace, but have instead been called.

He also fulfills his promises. He promised the Gospel to his people, and he delivered it.

God has loved us.

What are We to Do?

We are to be servants of Christ.

We are to answer the call of apostleship, of acting—to some extent—on Christ’s behalf.

We are to acknowledge Jesus Christ as our Lord.

We are to obey Christ. He saved us in order to bring about this. (vs 5)