Romans 15:12-20

¹²Again, Isaiah says — ‘There will be a Scion of the house of Jesse, One who is to arise to rule the Gentiles; on him will the Gentiles rest their hopes.’

¹³May God, who inspires our hope, grant you perfect happiness and peace in your faith, until you are filled with this hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.

¹⁴I am persuaded, my friends — yes, I Paul, with regard to you — that you are yourselves full of kindness, furnished with all Christian learning, and well able to give advice to one another.

¹⁵But in parts of this letter I have expressed myself somewhat boldly — by way of refreshing your memories —

¹⁶because of the charge with which God has entrusted me, that I should be an assistant of Christ Jesus to go to the Gentiles — that I should act as a priest of God's good news, so that the offering up of the Gentiles may be an acceptable sacrifice, consecrated by the Holy Spirit.

¹⁷It is, then, through my union with Christ Jesus that I have a proud confidence in my work for God.

¹⁸For I will not dare to speak of anything but what Christ has done through me to win the obedience of the Gentiles —

¹⁹by my words and actions, through the power displayed in signs and marvels, and through the power of the Holy Spirit. And so, starting from Jerusalem and going as far as Illyria, I have told in full the good news of the Christ;

²⁰yet always with the ambition to tell the good news where Christ's name had not previously been heard, so as to avoid building on another's foundations.