1:8 First of all, 6 I thank my God through Jesus Christ for all of you, because your faith is proclaimed throughout the whole world. 1:9 For God, whom I serve in my spirit by preaching the gospel 7 of his Son, is my witness that 8 I continually remember you 1:10 and I always ask 9 in my prayers, if perhaps now at last I may succeed in visiting you according to the will of God. 10
1 tn Grk “among whom you also are called.” Because of the length and complexity of the Greek sentence, a new sentence was started here in the translation. The NIV, with its translation “And you also are among those who are called,” takes the phrase ἐν οἳς ἐστε to refer to the following clause rather than the preceding, so that the addressees of the letter (“you also”) are not connected with “all the Gentiles” mentioned at the end of v. 5. It is more likely, however, that the relative pronoun οἳς has τοῖς ἔθνεσιν as its antecedent, which would indicate that the church at Rome was predominantly Gentile.
2 tn Grk “called of Jesus Christ.”
3 map For location see JP4-A1.
4 tn Although the first part of v. 7 is not a complete English sentence, it maintains the “From…to” pattern used in all the Pauline letters to indicate the sender and the recipients. Here, however, there are several intervening verses (vv. 2-6), which makes the first half of v. 7 appear as an isolated sentence fragment.
5 tn Grk “Grace to you and peace.”
5 tn Grk “First.” Paul never mentions a second point, so J. B. Phillips translated “I must begin by telling you….”
7 tn Grk “whom I serve in my spirit in the gospel.”
8 tn Grk “as.”
9 tn Grk “remember you, always asking.”
10 tn Grk “succeed in coming to you in the will of God.”