Romans 15:20

Romans 15:20. Yet making it my ambition. The participle here used means, ‘to make it a point of honor,' but this exact sense need not be pressed here.

So to preach the gospel, ‘to evangelize,' not the same word as in Romans 15:19. ‘So,' i.e., in this manner (as afterwards defined), may qualify the participle, but the sense is better expressed in English by the above rendering.

Not where Christ was already named. ‘Already' is properly supplied; ‘named, as the object of faith and the Person to be confessed, by other laborers, as appears from the next clause: that I might not, etc. This principle, here negatively stated, was not adopted to avoid opposition, or in consequence of differences with the other Apostles, nor yet of an arrangement to divide geographically the mission field, but resulted from the high sense of his duty as an Apostle, to lay the foundation of a universal Church. His writing to Rome was not contrary to this principle, which concerned his labor in person, not his intercourse by letter with churches he had not founded.