1.1-2
- Slave, not servant. "Modifying this to 'servant,' as though Paul were a free agent who happened to have a job as a cleaner or butler, misses the point."
- Wright prefers to translate Christos as "king," not merely transliterate.
- Calls himself "set apart," which may have some irony considering his former self description as "Pharisee," also meaning set apart.
- Gospel harkens back to Isaiah 40.9 and Isaiah 52.7
- Gospel - both fulfillment of prophecy and the announcement of one who would challenge any other Caesar, ruler, or emperor
- He is like one in charge of distributing royal bounty
1.3a
- Son of God
- Angels
- Israel, adopted as God's child
- The king, adopted as YHWH's firstborn son, specifically the seed of David
- In some Jewish though the Davidic king represents Israel
- "The earliest Christian incarnational theology known to us reamined deeply rooted in Jewish tradition, however much it was saying things no one had said before."
1.3b-4
- Important verse in terms of Christology
- Wright states that horizo — translated 'declared to be' — means something more like "marked out as." In his commentary he writes that "the resurrection declared to the world that he really was the Messiah and had been so all along."
- Jesus = Jesus’ humanity
- Christ = Messiahship, therefore king
- Lord = both superior position over all the world’s lords; as well as ascription of divinity, seen more clearly when Paul’s quoting from the LXX but ascribes it to Jesus (e.g., Romans 10:13)