Bible Verses About Religious Zeal

or, to put it another way, so that by my being with you, we might, through the faith we share, encourage one another.

Brothers, I want you to know that although I have been prevented from visiting you until now, I have often planned to do so, in order that I might have some fruit among you, just as I have among the other Gentiles.

I owe a debt to both civilized Greeks and uncivilized people, to both the educated and the ignorant;

therefore I am eager to proclaim the Good News also to you who live in Rome.

For in my inner self I completely agree with God’s Torah;

I am speaking the truth — as one who belongs to the Messiah, I do not lie; and also bearing witness is my conscience, governed by the Ruach HaKodesh:

my grief is so great, the pain in my heart so constant,

that I could wish myself actually under God’s curse and separated from the Messiah, if it would help my brothers, my own flesh and blood,

Brothers, my heart’s deepest desire and my prayer to God for Isra’el is for their salvation;

for I can testify to their zeal for God. But it is not based on correct understanding;

for, since they are unaware of God’s way of making people righteous and instead seek to set up their own, they have not submitted themselves to God’s way of making people righteous.

However, to those of you who are Gentiles I say this: since I myself am an emissary sent to the Gentiles, I make known the importance of my work

in the hope that somehow I may provoke some of my own people to jealousy and save some of them!

Don’t be lazy when hard work is needed, but serve the Lord with spiritual fervor.

But on some points I have written you quite boldly by way of reminding you about them, because of the grace God has given me

to be a servant of the Messiah Yeshua for the Gentiles, with the priestly duty of presenting the Good News of God, so that the Gentiles may be an acceptable offering, made holy by the Ruach HaKodesh.

In union with the Messiah Yeshua, then, I have reason to be proud of my service to God;

for I will not dare speak of anything except what the Messiah has accomplished through me to bring the Gentiles to obedience by my words and deeds,

through the power of signs and miracles, through the power of the Spirit of God. So from Yerushalayim all the way to Illyricum I have fully proclaimed the Good News of the Messiah.

I have always made it my ambition to proclaim the Good News where the Messiah was not yet known, so that I would not be building on someone else’s foundation,

but rather, as the Tanakh puts it, “Those who have not been told about him will see, and those who have not heard will understand.”

This is also why I have so often been prevented from visiting you.

But now, since there is no longer a place in these regions that needs me, and since I have wanted for many years to come to you,

I hope to see you as I pass through on my way to Spain, and to have you help me travel there after I have enjoyed your company awhile.

But now I am going to Yerushalayim with aid for God’s people there.