Romans 1:9

“ For God is my witness, whom I serve with my spirit in the gospel of His Son, how without ceasing I make mention of you, making request in all my prayers, if perhaps now at length I might have a prosperous journey by the will of God to come unto you. ”

This thanksgiving of the apostle was an inward action of which none but God could have knowledge; and as the words, Romans 1:8, might seem chargeable with exaggeration, he appeals to the one witness of his inner life. Paul thinks of those times of intimate intercourse which he has daily with his God in the exercise of his ministry; for it is at His feet, as it were, that he discharges this task. He says: “ in my spirit, that is to say, in the most intimate part of his being, where is the organ by which his soul communicates with the divine world. The spirit is therefore here one of the clements of his human nature (1Th 5:23); only it is evidently thought of as penetrated with the Divine Spirit. When Paul says: in the gospel of His Son, it is clear that he is not thinking of the matter, but of the act of evangelical preaching. This is for him a continual act of worship which he performs only on his knees. The words: of His Son, bring out the supreme gravity of the act. How, in fact, can one take part in a work which concerns the Son, otherwise than in concert with God Himself! The ὡς need be translated neither by that (the fact), which expresses too little, nor by how much (the degree), which is too strong, but by how. The word refers to the mode of this inward worship, as it is developed in what follows. The expression: without ceasing, explains the: “I give thanks for you all,” which had preceded (Romans 1:8). Hence the for at the beginning of the verse.