These verses constitute the opening paragraph typical of letters in Roman times, which always open with the identification of the writer of the letter, followed by his/her greetings and salutations, before ending with the name/s of the recipient. But Paul is hardly ever typical and here his salutation has become highly expanded to become a terse but compact discourse into the fundamentals of the faith, i.e., the gospel, that drive him as a disciple of Christ and an apostle to the Gentiles. Those who already know Paul knows, of course, of how the gospel which he first came to know as a result of his encounter with the risen Christ on the Damascus Road, had transform him and his entire outlook on life as well as the path of his life since. This gospel, Paul affirms emphatically is "the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes." For Paul to say that he is "not ashame of the gospel" is, of course, an understatement, for he delights in it as nothing else and has devoted his life to its proclamation. He naturally feels "bound," as he says, "to both Greeks and non-Greeks . . . the wise and the foolish."" He is, therefore, "eager to preach" it even to the readers of the letter he is now drafting. For Paul, the gospel is, apart from every other historical fact he has noted about in vv2-6, ultimately the solution to all of humankind's greatest problem: righteousness with God, i.e., how can we, sinners, be put right with God? "For in the gospel a righteousness from God is revealed, a righteousness that is by faith from first to last." This becomes the central theme of which the rest of the letter is essentially an extended exposition. So C. E. B. Cranfield:
It is generally agreed that 1:1-17 includes not only the epistolary opening formula and a paragraph concerned with Paul's relation with the Roman church but also a statement . . . of the theological theme to be worked out in the main body of the epistle . . . (The Epistle to the Romans, I.27
©ALBERITH
310321lch