Romans 1:13,14

“ Now I would not have you ignorant, brethren, that oftentimes I purposed to come unto you (but was hindered hitherto), that I might gather some fruit among you also, even as among the other Gentiles. I am debtor both to the Greeks, and to the Barbarians; both to the wise, and to the ignorant. ”

His readers might ask with some reason how it happened that Paul, having been an apostle for more than twenty years, had not yet found time to come and preach the good news in the Capital of the world. The phrase: I would not have you ignorant, has something slightly mysterious about it, which will be explained presently. The δέ, now, expresses a gradation, but not one from the simple desire (Romans 1:11) to the fixed purpose (Romans 1:13). The right connection in this sense would have been: for indeed, and not now. Paul rather passes here from the spiritual good, which he has always desired to do among the believers of Rome, to the extension of their church, to which he hopes he may contribute. Let his work at Corinth and Ephesus be remembered; why should he not accomplish a similar work at Rome? He means, therefore: “ I shall confess to you my whole mind; my ambition aims at making some new conquests even in your city (at Rome).” This is what he calls gathering some fruit. The phrase is as modest as possible. At Corinth and Ephesus he gathered full harvests; at Rome, where the church already exists, he will merely add some handfuls of ears to the sheaves already reaped by others. Καρπὸν ἔχειν, literally, to have fruit, does not here signify: to bear fruit, as if Paul were comparing himself to a tree. The N. T. has other and more common terms for this idea: καρπὸν φέρειν, ποιεῖν, διδόναι. The meaning is rather to secure fruit, like a husbandman who garners a harvest. The two καί, also, of the Greek text, “ also among you, as also among the other Gentiles,” signify respectively: “among you quite as much as among them;” and “among them quite as much as among you.” St. Paul remembers what he has succeeded in doing elsewhere. No reader free from prepossession will fail to see here the evident proof of the Gentile origin of the great majority of the Christians of Rome. To understand by ἔθνη, nations in general, including the Jews as well, is not only contrary to the uniform sense of the word (see Romans 1:5), but also to the subdivision into Greeks and Barbarians given in the following verse: for the Jews, according to Paul's judgment, evidently did not belong to either of these two classes. If he had thought of the Jews in this place, he must have used the classification of Romans 1:16: to the Jews and Greeks.