Romans 1:5-11

1:5 Through him ¹  we have received grace and our apostleship ²  to bring about the obedience ³  of faith ⁴  among all the Gentiles on behalf of his name. 1:6 You also are among them, ⁵  called to belong to Jesus Christ. ⁶  1:7 To all those loved by God in Rome, ⁷  called to be saints: ⁸  Grace and peace to you ⁹  from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ!

Paul’s Desire to Visit Rome

1:8 First of all, ¹⁰  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 ¹¹  of his Son, is my witness that ¹²  I continually remember you 1:10 and I always ask ¹³  in my prayers, if perhaps now at last I may succeed in visiting you according to the will of God. ¹⁴  1:11 For I long to see you, so that I may impart to you some spiritual gift ¹⁵  to strengthen you,

[1:5]  ¹ tn Grk “through whom.”

[1:5]  ² tn Some interpreters understand the phrase “grace and apostleship” as a hendiadys, translating “grace [i.e., gift] of apostleship.” The pronoun “our” is supplied in the translation to clarify the sense of the statement.

[1:5]  ³ tn Grk “and apostleship for obedience.”

[1:5]  ⁴ tn The phrase ὑπακοὴν πίστεως has been variously understood as (1) an objective genitive (a reference to the Christian faith, “obedience to [the] faith”); (2) a subjective genitive (“the obedience faith produces [or requires]”); (3) an attributive genitive (“believing obedience”); or (4) as a genitive of apposition (“obedience, [namely] faith”) in which “faith” further defines “obedience.” These options are discussed by C. E. B. Cranfield, Romans (ICC), 1:66. Others take the phrase as deliberately ambiguous; see D. B. Garlington, “The Obedience of Faith in the Letter to the Romans: Part I: The Meaning of ὑπακοὴ πίστεως (Rom 1:5; 16:26),” WTJ 52 (1990): 201-24.

[1:6]  ⁵ 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.

[1:6]  ⁶ tn Grk “called of Jesus Christ.”

[1:7]  ⁹ map For location see JP4 A1.

[1:7]  ¹⁰ 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.

[1:7]  ¹¹ tn Grk “Grace to you and peace.”

[1:8]  ¹³ tn Grk “First.” Paul never mentions a second point, so J. B. Phillips translated “I must begin by telling you….”

[1:9]  ¹⁷ tn Grk “whom I serve in my spirit in the gospel.”

[1:9]  ¹⁸ tn Grk “as.”

[1:10]  ²¹ tn Grk “remember you, always asking.”

[1:10]  ²² tn Grk “succeed in coming to you in the will of God.”

[1:11]  ²⁵ sn Paul does not mean here that he is going to bestow upon the Roman believers what is commonly known as a “spiritual gift,” that is, a special enabling for service given to believers by the Holy Spirit. Instead, this is either a metonymy of cause for effect (Paul will use his own spiritual gifts to edify the Romans), or it simply means something akin to a blessing or benefit in the spiritual realm. It is possible that Paul uses this phrase to connote specifically the broader purpose of his letter, which is for the Romans to understand his gospel, but this seems less likely.