probably 15:30).19 It was customary to build rapport with one’s audience toward the beginning of one’s work, when possible,20 and clearly Paul shares this sensitivity.
Significantly, in 1:7 Paul adapts the conventional greeting of his day (as elsewhere in his and some other early Christian letters). Greek greetings were normally simply chairein (“greetings”);21 Paul and some other early Christian writers adapt this to charis (“grace”; divine “generosity”) and include the typical Judean (and Eastern) greeting “peace” (reflecting Hebrew shalom, which is analogous to the contemporary English greeting “God bless you”).22 Paul’s major adaptation, however, is more significant. Letters typically included prayers or wishes invoking deities on behalf of the recipients’ health or welfare. Paul here blesses the believers by invoking not only God the Father, but also the Lord Jesus Christ. Although post-Nicene readers might suppose that Paul envisions Jesus’s deity only where he uses the explicit title “God” (cf. perhaps 9:5), he actually assumes Jesus’s deity fairly often. In fact, for Paul, “Lord” can be a divine title no less than “God” is (cf. 1 Cor 8:5–6); Paul employs this title for Jesus, and sometimes the Father, roughly thirty-seven times in Romans.
Thanksgiving (1:8–15)
In what constitutes a single long sentence in Greek, Paul emphasizes his appreciation for the Roman believers. He explains that he would have eagerly visited them to serve them with his apostolic ministry, as he has been gifted to serve all the Gentiles, but that he has been detained so far (1:8–15). Toward the end of his letter he will indicate that he has been detained by spiritually needier destinations (15:19–22).
Paul starts by thanking God for them (1:8). Thanksgivings were common (though by no means pervasive) in ancient letters, and Paul nearly always thanks God for the churches to whom he writes (though this feature is conspicuously omitted in his opening rebuke to the Galatians).23 Paul not only thanks God for them, but regularly prays for them (1:9);24 calling a deity to “witness” underlined the veracity of one’s claim, since deities were expected to avenge false claims about them.25 Paul prays especially that he might visit them (1:10) so he can serve them the way God has gifted him to do (1:11).26 “In God’s will” (1:10) does not absolutely promise his coming, but acknowledges that, while he plans to come, only God knows whether future circumstances will fully permit it. This was a common enough caveat (cf. 1 Cor 4:19; 16:7),27 and Paul undoubtedly thinks also of dangers he may face (Rom 15:31–32).
Paul did not found the Roman church, so he writes more as a brother than as a father (contrast 1 Cor 4:15–16). Thus, he speaks unobtrusively of “some” Spirit-inspired gift (1:11) and even insists that he and they will be mutually “encouraged” by the other’s faith (1:12).28 Nevertheless, Paul knows that some are more gifted for “exhortation” or “encouragement” than others (12:8), and offers some such exhortations in this letter (12:1; 15:30; 16:17; all using a cognate of the verb for “encourage”). Certainly he has already set about to encourage their “faith,” a key theme in Romans (see comment on 1:17). His delay so far may have involved the temporary prohibition of Jews settling there (cf. Acts 18:2), but, as his audience will learn later, particularly involves the compelling priority of his mission to unevangelized regions (15:19–23).
Still, Paul’s desire to visit them and encourage their faith (1:11–12) flows, as apparently everything else in his life does, from his life’s mission and purpose to reach the nations (1:5, 13–15). Paul treats this mission as a divine obligation (Rom 1:14; cf. 1 Cor 9:16–17)29 to reach the entire range of “Gentiles” (1:13). These included both Greeks and “barbarians” (non-Greeks), both those whom Greeks considered wise and those they considered foolish.30 (Greeks usually divided humanity into Greek and “barbarian”; mentioning both together meant “everyone.”31 Romans and Jews sometimes adopted these conventional labels.)32 The dominant culture of the urban eastern Empire was Greek, and that culture also influenced the Greek-speaking eastern immigrant community in Rome (including most of its Jewish population) where the church had first taken root.
Good News of Salvation (1:16–17)
We must offer special, hence more detailed than usual, attention to 1:16–17. Ancient writers often (though not always) stated their themes and purpose in a proposition before their main argument,33 and most commentators of recent centuries believe that Paul does so here. Commentators differ over the central theme involved, though some proposals dominate only particular parts of the letter. Nevertheless, God’s righteousness (most explicitly through ch. 10), faith (most explicitly in chs. 1, 3–4, 10, and 14), and the Jewish-Gentile issue (most explicitly in chs. 9–11) seem to pervade it. Others offer the more general theme of the “gospel,” which integrates a number of these factors (and for which, in Romans, God’s righteousness is a key element).34 That all these themes reflect the language of prophetic promises to Israel (Ps 98:2–3; Isa 51:4–5; 52:10)35 reinforces Paul’s claim that Scripture is the source of his gospel (1:1–2).
The gospel is the object of faith, and its subject is God’s Son (1:9), Jesus Christ (15:19, 20; 16:25). Scholars propose various reasons why Paul claims to be “unashamed” of the gospel. Certainly, interest in honor and shame dominated ancient Mediterranean urban culture, including Rome, and Paul’s message involved folly and weakness to a status-conscious culture (1 Cor 1:18–23).36 The world’s hostility could provide temptation to be ashamed (cf. 2 Tim 1:8, 12, 16; 1 Pet 4:16), but God’s servants could trust that they would not be shamed eschatologically (Rom 5:5; 9:33; 10:11).37 “Unashamed” may also constitute litotes; Paul is positively eager to preach this message (cf. Phil 1:20; Heb 2:11; 11:16).38
God’s “power” for salvation might recall his “power” to create (1:20), act in history (9:17, 22), or provide miraculous attestation (15:19). But it especially recalls his power to raise the dead (1:4, including a central point of the gospel message; cf. Eph 1:19–20), hence to transform by providing new life (cf. Rom 15:13; 1 Cor 1:18). He may also think of the Spirit’s activity in the gospel to convince people of the truth of the message (1 Cor 2:4–5; 1 Thess 1:5).
In the context (Rom 1:5, 13–15), Paul certainly wants to emphasize that the gospel is for all peoples, Jew and Gentile alike.39 Yet there is also a sense in which the good news, rooted in promises to Israel, is “to the Jew first”; it will take Paul all of chapters 9–11 to resolve the tension between these emphases. Paul’s evangelistic prioritization of ethnic Israel fits Jesus’s teaching (Mark 7:27) and the portrayal of Paul’s own ministry in Acts (e.g., 13:5; 28:17), yet he will argue that God saves both Jew and Gentile by the same means.
