Is this passage in any degree an exception? No; for it contains its own full inner evidence of its metaphorical cast. The "_priest-working_" here has regard, we find, not to a ritual, but to "_the Gospel_." "_The oblation_" is--the Nations. The hallowing Element, shed as it were upon the victims, is the Holy Ghost. Not in a material temple, and serving at no tangible altar, the Apostle brings his multitudinous _converts_ as his holocaust to the Lord. The Spirit, at his preaching and on their believing, descends upon them; and they lay themselves "a living sacrifice" where the fire of love shall consume them, to His glory.
[Sidenote: Ver. 17.] =I have therefore my= (read τὴν) right to =exultation, in Christ Jesus,= as His member and implement, =as to what regards God;= not in any respect as regards myself, apart from Him. And then he proceeds as if about to say, in evidence of that assertion, that he always declines to intrude on a brother Apostle's ground, and to claim as his own experience what was in the least degree another's; but that indeed through him, in sovereign grace, God _has_ done great things, far and wide. This he expresses thus, in energetic compressions of diction:
[Sidenote: Ver. 18.] =For I will not dare to talk at all of things which Christ did not work out through me,= (there is an emphasis on "_me_,") =to effect obedience of (the) Nations= to His Gospel, =by word and deed,= [Sidenote: Ver. 19.] =in power of signs and wonders, in power of God's Spirit;= a reference, strangely impressive by its very passingness, to the exercise of miracle-working gifts by the writer. This man, so strong in thought, so practical in counsel, so extremely unlikely to have been under an illusion about a large factor in his adult and intensely conscious experience, speaks direct from himself of his wonder-works. And the allusion, thus dropped by the way and left behind, is itself an evidence to the perfect mental balance of the witness; this was no enthusiast, intoxicated with ambitious spiritual visions, but a man put in trust with a mysterious yet sober treasure. =So that from Jerusalem, and round about= it (Acts xxvi. 20), =as far as the Illyrian= region, the highland seabord which looks across the Adriatic to the long eastern side of Italy, =I have fulfilled the Gospel of Christ,= carried it practically everywhere, _satisfied the idea_ of so distributing it that it shall be accessible everywhere to the native races.
[Sidenote: Ver. 20.] =But= this I have done =with this ambition, to preach the Gospel not where Christ was already named, that I might not build on another man's foundation;= [Sidenote: Ver. 21.] =but= to act on the divine word, =as it stands written= (Isai. lii. 15), ="They to whom no news was carried about Him, shall see; and those who have not heard, shall understand."= Here was an "_ambition_" as far-sighted as it was noble. Would that the principle of it could have been better remembered in the history of Christendom, and not least in our own age; a wasteful over-lapping of effort on effort, system on system, would not need now to be so much deplored. [Sidenote: Ver. 22.] =Thus as a fact (καὶ) I was hindered for the most part=--hindrances were the rule, signals of opportunity the exception--=in coming to you;= you, whose City is no untrodden ground to messengers of Christ, and therefore not the ground which had _a first_ claim on me. [Sidenote: Ver. 23.] =But now, as no longer having place in these regions,= eastern Roman Europe yielding him no longer an unattempted and accessible district to enter, =and having a home-sick feeling= (ἐπιποθίαν: see above, i. 11) =for coming to you, these many years= [Sidenote: Ver. 24.] =whenever I may be journeying to Spain, [I will come to you[253]]. For I hope, on my journey through, to see the sight of you= (θεάσασθαι, as if the view of so important a Church would be a _spectacle_ indeed), =and by you[254] to be escorted there, if first I may have my fill of you, however imperfectly (ἀπὸ μέρους).=