always entreating God that somehow by His will I may some day at last succeed in getting to see you.

For I am longing to see you, to impart to you some spiritual gift, that you may be strengthened;

Furthermore, I want you to know, brothers, that I have often planned to come to see you (though until now I have been prevented), in order that I may gather some fruit among you too, as I have among the rest of the heathen.

What then, if some of them have proved unfaithful? Can their unfaithfulness make null and void God's faithfulness?

As Isaiah again has foretold, "Unless the Lord of hosts had left us some descendants, we would have fared as Sodom did and would have been like Gomorrah."

if I can make my fellow-countrymen jealous, and so save some of them.

If some of the branches have been broken off, and yet you, although you were wild olive suckers, have been grafted in among the native branches, and been made to share the rich sap of the native olive's root,

And yet, to refresh your memories, I have written you rather freely on some details, because of the unmerited favor shown me by God