As always, Paul starts his letters declaring who and what he is. Above all, he is a servant of Jesus Christ. This, by the way, is tacit evidence of the centrality of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Paul could not be a servant of a dead person, only of the living Lord.
Paul was called to be an apostle, and was set apart by God. Who was he called by? Christ Himself, as we see in Acts 9 when it tells us about the Damascus road conversion. Apostles are called by God, not by the church, though the church can recognise people as apostles.
Some may think of Paul as being rather boastful here, but nothing is further from the truth, especially when we see the way the term apostle is sometimes used rather loosely in some parts of the church today. For Paul being an apostle meant being persecuted, beaten, falsely accused, in short he shared in Christ's sufferings. 1 and 2 Corinthians tells us most clearly about this side of things. Paul was set apart to spread the good news of Jesus Christ.
This is the good news foretold by the Old Testament prophets. Jesus is the fulfilment of the Old Testament, not a replacement for it. Humanly speaking Jesus was a descendant of David.
The NIV says Jesus was "appointed" as Son of God. This does not mean that He became the Son of God, meaning before this He was not the Son of God. NASB and ESV in some ways give the sense better when they say He was "declared" to be the Son of God. The resurrection was the definitive proof that Jesus is the Son of God. The resurrection makes the declaration that Jesus is the way of salvation that has been chosen by God. However, it is useful to look at more of the phrase in NIV, "He was appointed the Son of God in power ..", the key element being "in power". On the cross it looked as though Jesus had been defeated, but the resurrection proved that this was in no way true. Even death could not defeat Him.
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