Romans 15:31

That I may be delivered from them that do not believe in Judea,....

THE Apostle of the Gentiles held a very useful and glorious office, but he had by no means a smooth path in life. When we read the account of his sufferings, persecutions and labors, we wonder how a single individual could have gone through them all. He was a true hero. Though a Hebrew of the Hebrews, he stands in the very front of the whole Gentile Church as its founder and teacher under God. And we owe to him what we can never fully estimate.

THE Apostle of the Gentiles held a very useful and glorious office, but he had by no means a smooth path in life. When we read the account of his sufferings, persecutions and labors, we wonder how a single individual could have gone through them all. He was a true hero. Though a Hebrew of the Hebrews, he stands in the very front of the whole Gentile Church as its founder and teacher under God. And we owe to him what we can never fully estimate. When we consider the struggles of his life, we do not wonder that the Apostle was, sometimes, in great sorrow of heart and heavily burdened in spirit. He was so at the time when he wrote this Epistle to the Christian friends at Rome. It was a great delight to him to have to go to Jerusalem—it was a place which was much reverenced and loved by him. It was a greater privilege for him to go and exchange salutations with his brother Apostles and it was the most joyous privilege of all to be the bearer of a contribution from the Gentiles to relieve the necessities of the saints at Jerusalem. He rejoiced much more in that gift to Jewish Believers than if it had been anything for himself. But he was well aware that there were those in Judea who hated him with deadly hatred and would seek his life. He had been the rising hope of the Jewish party and he had become a Christian—therefore the bigoted Jews regarded him as an apostate from the faith of their fathers. They had, moreover, a special venom against him, since he was more bold than any other Christian teacher in going among the Gentiles and shaking off, altogether, the bonds of the Ceremonial Law. He also came out more clearly than any other man upon the Doctrines of Grace and salvation by the Cross of Christ— and this provoked the fiercest hostility. Paul had also the apprehension that he would not be well received even by the Brethren at Jerusalem.

That I may be delivered from them that do not believe - He knew that his countrymen, who had not received the Gospel, lay in wait for his life; and, no doubt, they thought they should do God service by destroying him, not only as an apostate, in their apprehension, from the Jewish religion, but as one who was labouring to subvert and entirely destroy it. And that my service - Διακονια. But several eminent MSS. read δωροφορια, the gift which I bear. This probably was a gloss, which in many MSS. subverted the word in the text; for διακονια, service, in its connection here, could refer to nothing else but the contribution which he was carrying to the poor saints at Jerusalem.