“T he monumental Introduction of the Epistle to the Romans” - it is thus that W. Bousset speaks of the seven opening verses of the Epistle - is, from the formal point of view, merely the Address of the Epistle. In primary purpose and fundamental structure it does not differ from the Addresses of Paul’s other Epistles. But even in the Addresses of his Epistles Paul does not confine himself to the simple repetition of a formula. Here too he writes at his ease and shows himself very much the master of his form.
It is Paul’s custom to expand one or another of the essential elements of the Address of his Epistles as circumstances suggested, and thus to impart to it in each several instance a specific character. The Address of the Epistle to the Romans is the extreme example of this expansion. Paul is approaching in it a church which he had not visited, and to which he apparently felt himself somewhat of a stranger. He naturally begins with some words adapted to justify his writing to it, especially as an authoritative teacher of Christian truth. In doing this he is led to describe briefly the Gospel which had been committed to him, and that particularly with regard to its contents.
There is very strikingly illustrated here a peculiarity of Paul’s style, which has been called “going off at a word.” His particular purpose is to represent himself as one authoritatively appointed to teach the Gospel of God. But he is more interested in the Gospel than he is in himself; and he no sooner mentions the Gospel than off he goes on a tangent to describe it. In describing it, he naturally tells us particularly what its contents are. Its contents, however, were for him summed up in Christ. No sooner does he mention Christ than off he goes again on a tangent to describe Christ. Thus it comes about that this passage, formally only the Address of the Epistle, becomes actually a great Christological deliverance, one of the chief sources of our knowledge of Paul’s conception of Christ. It presents itself to our view like one of those nests of Chinese boxes; the outer encasement is the Address of the Epistle; within that fits neatly Paul’s justification of his addressing the Romans as an authoritative teacher of the Gospel; within that a description of the Gospel committed to him; and within that a great declaration of who and what Jesus Christ is, as the contents of this Gospel.
The manner in which Paul approaches this great declaration concerning Christ lends it a very special interest. What we are given is not merely how Paul thought of Christ, but how Paul preached Christ. It is the content of “the Gospel of God,” the Gospel to which he as “a called apostle” had been “separated,” which he outlines in these pregnant words. This is how Paul preached Christ to the faith of men as he went up and down the world “serving God in his spirit in the Gospel of His Son.” We have no abstract theologoumena here, categories of speculative thought appropriate only to the closet. We have the great facts about Jesus which made the Gospel that Paul preached the power of God unto salvation to every one that believed. Nowhere else do we get a more direct description of specifically the Christ that Paul preached.
The direct description of the Christ that Paul preached is given us, of course, in the third and fourth verses. But the wider setting in which these verses are embedded cannot be neglected in seeking to get at their significance. In this wider setting the particular aspect in which Christ is presented is that of “Lord.” It is as “Lord” that Paul is thinking of Jesus when he describes himself in the opening words of the Address - in the very first item of his commendation of himself to the Romans - as “the slave of Christ Jesus.” “Slave” is the correlate of “Lord,” and the relation must be taken at its height. When Paul calls himself the slave of Christ Jesus, he is calling Christ Jesus his Lord in the most complete sense which can be ascribed to that word (cf. Rom. 1:1, Col. 3:4). He is declaring that he recognises in Christ Jesus one over against whom he has no rights, whose property he is, body and soul, to be disposed of as He will. This is not because he abases himself. It is because he exalts Christ. It is because Christ is thought of by him as one whose right it is to rule, and to rule with no limit to His right.
How Paul thought of Christ as Lord comes out, however, with most startling clearness in the closing words of the Address. There he couples “the Lord Jesus Christ” with “God our Father” as the common source from which he seeks in prayer the divine gifts of grace and peace for the Romans. We must renounce, enervating glossing here too. Paul is not thinking of the Lord Jesus Christ as only the channel through which grace and peace come from God our Father to men; nor is he thinking of the Lord Jesus Christ as only the channel through which his prayer finds its way to God our Father. His prayer for these blessings for the Romans is offered up to God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ together, as the conjoint object addressed in his petition. So far as this Bousset’s remark is just: “Prayer to God in Christ is for Pauline Christianity, too, a false formula; adoration of the Kyrios stands in the Pauline communities side by side with adoration of God in unreconciled reality.”