Paul -- Apostle and Servant of Christ

From Season Five/Episode Three of the Blessed Hope Podcast

As a servant of Christ and an apostle, Paul has been set apart by God for God’s purposes. Since Jesus Christ is Lord, Paul is his servant—literally his “bond-servant.” This is an image his Roman audience would easily understand, but one about which they might miss the full biblical background and significance. “Those who spoke for the Lord, such as Moses and the prophets, were sometimes called `slaves’ of the Lord, and that is probably how Paul uses the term here. He is a slave of Christ because he speaks for Christ.”[1]

Paul was called to the office of Apostle to the Gentiles nearly twenty-five years before composing this letter, while traveling along the Damascus Road on his way to hunt down and arrest Christians (cf. Acts 9:1-19). As John Calvin describes Paul’s conversion, God took a cruel wolf [Saul] and not only made him one of his sheep [Paul], but then transformed Paul into a shepherd and assigned to him the office of apostle of the Gentile flock.[2] Paul was not a dissatisfied Jew seeking something better. Rather, Paul was an avowed enemy of Jesus Christ and was, at the point of his conversion, fully confident in his own righteousness due to law-keeping (cf. Phil. 3:4-6). But Jesus suddenly appeared to him, blinded him, called him to faith, and then transformed him into an apostle.

Paul’s calling to faith in Jesus and to his apostolic office originates in the will of God—not some foreseen good in the sinful human heart which God sees and to which he responds. The verb “to call” (καλειν – kalein) refers to God’s gracious call of sinners to faith, life, and salvation through the preaching of the gospel. In this case, Paul no doubt has in mind the prior calling of God’s servants to a divine purpose, such as that experienced by Abraham (Gen. 12:1-13), Moses (Ex. 3:10), and prophets such as Jeremiah (1:4-5) and Isaiah (49:1b), when the latter writes, “the Lord called me from the womb, from the body of my mother he named my name.” Paul stands in the line of divinely appointed prophets and servants of YHWH.

Elsewhere, Paul makes it clear that those called are said to be dead in sin at the time they are called to faith in Christ (e.g., Eph. 2:1, 5-6; Col. 2:13). But God’s call of those dead in sin to new life in Christ also entails a particular kind of obedience and service in Christ’s church. While all Christians are called to faith in Christ by God through the gospel, Paul’s point here is meant to remind the Romans that he did not obtain his office through personal ambition but through the will of God.[3] Since Christ has called him to his apostolic office, Paul writes with Christ’s authority. What he says, Christ says to the churches. The office of apostle no longer exists in the church today, since the apostles did not ordain new apostles but instead left behind ministers, elders, and deacons to rule the church in Christ’s name and to serve his people (e.g., 1 Tim. 3:1-13; Titus 1:5-10).

Christ’s call uniquely sets Paul apart to preach the gospel, the message which he defines in 1 Corinthians 15:1-8 as the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, according to the Scriptures.[4] The gospel has nothing whatsoever to do with any human action, nor with our response to God as called for by the gospel. Rather, the gospel has everything to do with God’s saving act in history in the person and work of Jesus Christ. Martin Luther was dead on when he told his struggling protégé Philip Melanchthon, “the gospel is wholly outside of us.”[5]

To proclaim the gospel is to focus upon those historical events through which God saves sinners, specifically the cross, our Lord’s burial, and the empty tomb. It is news proclaimed, which once heard changes the hearer’s reality. Picture an out-of-breath and panicked runner entering your village and crying out, “the enemy is just over the hill and they are headed this way.” That news changes everything and demands immediate action. In this case, the gospel, once heard, demands a response of faith. The ground has opened up beneath the hearer’s feet.

What Jesus does, he does in the place of sinners. James Ware points out that, “Paul transmitted these core beliefs in the context of a gospel whose epicenter is the incarnation. . . . This Christ died on our behalf, that is to deal with our sins.” He concludes, “the concept of substitution is woven into the very earliest of the Christian creeds.”[6] The proper response to the news that God saves sinners through the person and work of his Son, Jesus, who dies on a Roman cross in the place of sinners, is faith (trust) and repentance (turning from sin). But our response to the gospel is not the gospel! Nor should the preaching of the gospel be cluttered with the confusing language of pop evangelicalism, such as “asking Jesus into our hearts,” or “accepting Jesus as our personal savior.”

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[1] Thielman, Romans, ZEC, 58, Thielman lists the passages where “slave” is used in the Old Testament. “For Moses, see, e.g., Neh 9:14; Ps 105:26 (LXX 104:26); Mal 4:4 (LXX 3:24); and Dan 9:11. For the prophets, see, e.g., Ezra 9:11; Jer 7:25; 25:4; Ezek 38:17; Dan 9:6, 10; Amos 3:7; Zech 1:6. Cf. Josephus, Ant. 5.39; 11.90.”

[2] Calvin, The Acts of the Apostles, Vol.1, 256.

[3] Cranfield, Commentary on Romans, I.50-51.

[4] Paul is thinking of the sign of Jonah (cf. Matthew12:39-41 and perhaps to Isaiah 53:5-6; 11-12.

[5] Luther’s Works, Vol. 48. 277-282. Letter number 91.

[6] James P. Ware, The Final Triumph of God: Jesus, the Eyewitnesses, and the Resurrection of the Body in 1 Corinthians 15 (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 2025), 76, 78.