This is the first installment in a series exploring St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans with the help of St. Thomas Aquinas.
“Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, separated unto the Gospel of God.” — Romans 1:1
We often hurry through the opening words of a biblical letter. Names, titles, and greetings can seem like formalities standing between us and the “real” teaching.
St. Thomas Aquinas does not hurry.
For him, every word of Scripture deserves attention. Before Paul explains sin, grace, faith, justification, Israel, or life in Christ, he tells us who he is. Aquinas therefore finds in this single verse a portrait of the Apostle drawn with four features:
His name: Paul
His station: servant of Jesus Christ
His dignity: called to be an apostle
His office: set apart for the Gospel of God
These are not merely biographical details. Together, they reveal the spiritual shape of every Christian vocation.
---
1. His name: Paul
Aquinas first considers the Apostle’s name.
Paul was also known as Saul. Several explanations had been offered for this change. One connected the name Paul with the conversion of the Roman proconsul Sergius Paulus. Another saw it as a sign of Paul’s growth in virtue, much like the new names given to Abraham and Peter.
Aquinas favors a simpler explanation: Saul and Paul were probably two names belonging to the Apostle from the beginning. Saul was his Hebrew name, while Paul was the name he used in the Roman world. Acts itself speaks of “Saul, who is also called Paul” after his mission among the Gentiles had begun in earnest (Acts 13:9; Aquinas, Commentary on Romans 1:18–19).
This is significant. Paul does not cease to be the man born among Israel. His mission to the Gentiles does not erase his Jewish identity. Rather, the God of Israel sends him beyond Israel so that the nations may receive the promises given through Israel.
Chosen, quiet, and small
Aquinas also reflects upon several meanings traditionally associated with the name Paul. It can signify one who is chosen, quiet, or small.
Each meaning illuminates something true about the Apostle:
He is chosen by grace, for Christ calls him a chosen vessel (Acts 9:15).
He is quiet in contemplation, because his activity flows from an interior life with God.
He is small in humility, for Paul calls himself the least of the apostles (1 Corinthians 15:9).
Here we find the first great paradox of Christian discipleship: Paul is great because he knows that he is small.
Grace does not make him boastful. The more clearly he sees what God has accomplished through him, the more clearly he knows that everything began as gift. His apostleship rests not upon personal ambition but upon divine mercy.
This is true of every authentic Christian mission. God does not call us because we are already sufficient. He makes us sufficient for the work to which he calls us.
---
2. His station: a servant of Jesus Christ
Paul next identifies himself as a servant.
Servitude, considered in itself, appears degrading. A servant belongs to another and acts for another. Yet the dignity of service depends upon the one being served. Paul is not the slave of sin, fashion, political power, or human approval. He is the servant of Jesus Christ.
The name Jesus means Savior, recalling the angel’s declaration that he would save his people from their sins (Matthew 1:21). Christ means the Anointed One. In the Old Testament, priests and kings were anointed; prophets were also associated with a divine anointing for their mission. In Jesus, these realities reach their fullness. He is the Priest who offers himself, the King who reigns through truth and love, and the Prophet who is himself the eternal Word of God.
To serve Jesus Christ is therefore not degradation. It is liberation from everything beneath our true dignity.
Aquinas expresses the principle with striking simplicity: a thing is perfected when it is properly subjected to that which perfects it. The body finds life through the soul, and the air becomes luminous by receiving light. In a still higher way, the human person becomes free and whole by belonging to God (Aquinas, Commentary on Romans 1:20).
We do not lose ourselves by surrendering to Christ. We are rescued from the false selves produced by pride, fear, and sin.
---
3. Servants or friends?
But does Paul’s language contradict the words of Jesus?
Christ tells his disciples that he no longer calls them servants but friends (John 15:15). Paul nevertheless calls himself Christ’s servant. Aquinas resolves the difficulty by distinguishing two kinds of service.
The servitude of fear
The first is the service of fear. A person obeys unwillingly because he dreads punishment. His will remains opposed to the one commanding him. This is not the mature condition of the saints, for Christians have received the spirit of adopted children rather than a spirit that returns them to slavery and fear (Romans 8:15).
The servitude of love
The second is the service of humility and love. Here a person gives himself freely for the good of the beloved.
Aquinas writes that when someone acts for another unwillingly, under compulsion, his service is one of fear. But when he acts for another as his chosen end, his service becomes the service of love. A friend serves his friend for the friend’s own sake [Commentary on Romans (St. Thomas Aquinas) §1:22–23].
Christian freedom does not mean existing only for oneself. That would leave us enclosed within the prison of the ego. True freedom means possessing oneself sufficiently to give oneself in love.
Paul is both Christ’s servant and Christ’s friend. He belongs to Christ, not because he has been crushed, but because he has been conquered by love.
This is also why the Blessed Virgin Mary can call herself the handmaid of the Lord. Her obedience is not passive servility. It is the active, intelligent, and loving surrender of her whole person to God’s saving will (Luke 1:38).
---
4. His dignity: called to be an apostle
Paul is not merely a disciple. He has been called to be an apostle.
The word apostle means one who is sent. An apostle does not invent his own message or confer authority upon himself. He receives a mission from another. Paul’s authority therefore rests upon Christ’s call, just as Christ says to his apostles that he sends them as the Father sent him (John 20:21).
Aquinas emphasizes the word called.
Paul did not seize the apostolic office. It was given to him. As Hebrews teaches, no one takes such an honor upon himself; one must be called by God, as Aaron was (Hebrews 5:4).
The call also reveals Paul’s humility. Despite the extraordinary fruit of his ministry, he remembers that he once persecuted the Church. He regards himself as unworthy to be called an apostle (1 Corinthians 15:9). His authority is real, but it is received authority.
This provides a necessary principle for all ministry in the Church: mission comes from vocation, not self-appointment.
A person may possess intelligence, zeal, eloquence, and organizational talent. These gifts are valuable, but they do not by themselves constitute an apostolic mission. The servant of the Gospel must first be called and sent.
Paul’s greatness, then, lies not in acting independently but in faithfully representing the One who sent him.
---
5. His office: set apart for the Gospel of God
Finally, Paul describes himself as set apart for the Gospel.
He was set apart through conversion, leaving behind unbelief and his persecution of Christ’s followers. He was also set apart for a particular mission when the Holy Spirit commanded the Church at Antioch to dedicate Barnabas and Saul to the work prepared for them (Acts 13:2).
To be set apart does not mean despising others or fleeing from the world. Paul is set apart precisely so that he may be sent into the world. His consecration is missionary.
He does not belong to himself because he belongs to the Gospel.
What is the Gospel?
The word Gospel means good news. But what exactly is the good news?
Aquinas gives a beautiful and comprehensive answer: the Gospel announces the union of man with God. This union is our supreme good, because the human person finds fulfillment by cleaving to God [Commentary on Romans (St. Thomas Aquinas) §1:23–24].
The Gospel is therefore more than moral advice. It is more than encouragement to become a better person. It is more than information about religious events.
The Gospel announces that God has acted to unite humanity to himself.
Aquinas identifies three dimensions of this union.
---
6. The threefold union announced by the Gospel
First: union in the Incarnation
The first is the union of the divine and human natures in the one Person of Jesus Christ.
“The Word was made flesh.” — John 1:14
In Christ, God has not merely sent instructions from afar. The eternal Son has assumed our human nature. God and humanity are united in him without confusion and without separation.
The Gospel begins not with our ascent toward God but with God’s descent toward us.
Second: union through adoption
The second is our union with God through the grace of adoption.
By grace, we do not merely receive divine assistance. We are made adopted sons and daughters of God. We are given a real participation in the divine life—not by becoming God by nature, but by sharing in his life through grace.
The Son of God became man so that human beings might become children of God.
This adoption is accomplished in Christ and communicated to us through the Holy Spirit. It is sacramentally begun in Baptism and nourished through the life of the Church.
Third: union in glory
The third is the final union of the blessed with God in eternal life.
Christ identifies eternal life with knowing the Father and the Son whom he has sent (John 17:3). This is not merely knowledge about God. It is personal communion with him, brought to perfection in the vision of God.
Grace begins in us what glory will complete.
The Gospel thus stretches from the manger to heaven:
God unites humanity to himself in Christ.
God adopts us as his children by grace.
God brings his children into the glory of eternal communion with him.
This is why the Gospel is truly good news.
---
7. The Gospel belongs to God
Paul calls it the Gospel of God.
The message is not a human invention. Paul did not devise it, and the Church does not own it as though she were free to alter its substance. The Gospel comes from God, concerns the saving work of God, and leads us back to God.
Paul is its servant, not its master.
This places every preacher, theologian, catechist, and Christian writer under judgment. We are not sent to make the Gospel fashionable by transforming it into something else. Nor are we permitted to reduce it to politics, self-help, cultural identity, or vague spirituality.
We receive what comes from God, guard it faithfully, and hand it on.
As Aquinas explains, the good news announces three forms of union with God: the union of divinity and humanity in Christ, the union of adopted children with the Father through grace, and the final union of the saints with God in glory [Commentary on Romans (St. Thomas Aquinas) §1:23–24].
---
The shape of a Christian life
Romans begins with Paul’s identity, but his words also describe the pattern of Christian discipleship.
Like Paul, the Christian is:
named and personally known by God;
made small through humility;
freed to serve Jesus Christ in love;
called, rather than self-appointed;
sent according to his or her vocation;
set apart, not from love of the world, but for its salvation;
entrusted with the Gospel of God.
Before Paul tells us what he teaches, he tells us whose he is.
That order matters. Christian action must flow from Christian identity. Mission becomes distorted when it is separated from belonging. We can speak truthfully for Christ only when we have first surrendered ourselves to Christ.
The Apostle’s first word is his name: Paul.
But everything that follows tells us that this man no longer belongs to himself. He is small before grace, a servant through love, an apostle by calling, and a herald of the good news that God desires to unite humanity to himself.
That is the doorway into Romans.
And, in a certain sense, it is the doorway into the whole Christian life.
---
Principal source
St. Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on the Letter of Saint Paul to the Romans, chapter 1, lecture 1, §§15–24.
This article was written with the assistance of Catholic AI and is based principally on St. Thomas Aquinas’ Commentary on the Letter of Saint Paul to the Romans.