Charles Ellicott Commentary Romans 1:1

"Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, called [to be] an apostle, separated unto the gospel of God," — Romans 1:1 (ASV)

In writing to the Romans, a Church to which he was personally unknown, and which might be supposed, so far as it was Jewish, to be prejudiced against him, the Apostle delivers with somewhat more than usual solemnity his credentials and commission. A divinely appointed minister of a system of things predicted by the prophets, and culminating in the revelation, divinely ordained and attested, of Jesus Christ, he greets the Roman Christians, themselves also divinely called.

Note the repetition of terms signifying “calling,” “selection,” “determination in the counsels and providence of God;” as if to say: “I and you alike are all members of one grand scheme, which is not of human invention, but determined and ordained of God—the divine clue, as it were, running through the history of the world.”

A solemn note is thus struck at the very commencement, and in what might have been regarded as the more formal part of the Epistle, by which the readers are prepared for the weighty issues that are to be set before them.

Servant.—More strictly, here as elsewhere in the New Testament, slave; and yet not wrongly translated “servant,” because the compulsory and degrading side of service is not put forward. The idea of “slavery” in the present day has altogether different associations.

Separated.—Compare especially Acts 13:2 (Separate me Barnabas and Saul), where human instruments—the leaders of the Church at Antioch—are employed to carry out the divine will. The reference here is to the historical fact of the selection of St. Paul to be an Apostle; in Galatians 1:15 (it pleased God, who separated me from my mother’s womb), it is rather to the more distant act of divine predestination.

To the gospel of God.—Singled out and set apart to convey the message of salvation from God to man. The ambiguous genitive, the gospel of God, seems to mean, “the gospel which proceeds from God,” “of which God is the author;” not “of which God is the object.”