Righteousness shared with others
Therefore I glory in Christ Jesus in my service to God. 18 I will not venture to speak of anything except what Christ has accomplished through me in leading the Gentiles to obey God by what I have said and done—19 by the power of signs and miracles, through the power of the Spirit.
Paul was certainly aware that the Lord had permitted him to achieve extraordinary things in the church. In a sense, Paul “gloried” in the success of the gospel, but that success was never a personal victory for him or a feather in his cap. Before this letter, Paul had written to the Corinthians, “Not that we are competent in ourselves to claim anything for ourselves, but our competence comes from God. He has made us competent as ministers of a new covenant” (2 Corinthians 3:5,6). Now he says to the Romans, “I will not venture to speak of anything except what Christ has accomplished through me in leading the Gentiles to obey God by what I have said and done—by the power of signs and miracles, through the power of the Spirit.”
Unquestionably, Paul was empowered by God to do great things. Luke tells us in Acts that signs and miracles were not unusual phenomenon in Paul’s ministry, as evidenced by numerous miraculous healings and even raising Eutychus from the dead (Acts 20:9-12; see also Acts 14:8-10; 16:16-18; 16:25-28; 28:8,9).