<p>15:31 <i>That I may be delivered from those in Judea who do not believe</i>- He is asking them to pray the Lord's prayer for him: &quot;Deliver us from evil&quot; (Mt. 6:13). Paul realized he faced a real threat from the Jews who did not believe in Jesus. If he had focused upon his ministry to the Gentiles, he need not have run the risk of engaging with them. It could be argued that these prayers were not answered; Paul was not delivered from this element, who got him imprisoned for at least 2 years, and his plans to jet off to Spain from Jerusalem via Rome... simply didn't happen. I have argued that his appeal to Caesar was a way of trying to force the Lord's hand in letting him achieve his obsession with visiting Rome. </p><p><i>And that my service for Jerusalem may be acceptable to the saints</i>- He has just used this word about the Gentile converts being an acceptable sacrifice on the Christ altar (15:16). He uses the same priestly language about his 'service' of bringing an offering to Jerusalem, which he hoped would be acceptable <i>to the believers there</i>. He seems to be confusing acceptability to God, and acceptability to men. The idea of his Gentile-Jewish welfare project was that the Jewish Christians would accept the Gentiles and be deeply grateful to Paul personally, and accept him. His exclusion by the Jerusalem Jews, including it seems the Jewish Christians there, was painful beyond words for Paul. And he was trying to by all means find a way to end it, whilst at the same time being genuinely committed to producing unity between Jew and Gentile in Christ. In the end, there is no evidence that what offerings he did cobble together were accepted by the Jerusalem Jewish Christians. Rather have I suggested in my commentary on Acts that they in fact played a large part in his arrest and imprisonment. So these prayers and desires were not in fact answered, or at least not as Paul hoped.</p><p>After all his spiritual diplomacy in raising the fund, he had to ask the Romans to pray with him that the Jerusalem ecclesia would accept it (Rom. 15:31). Presumably they didn't want to accept help from Gentile converts whom they despised. And if they didn't accept it, then Paul would look as if he had got them to raise the money just to give to him. There must have been times when he thought of quitting the Christian community because of slander in the church. Paul was not a larger than life figure in the eyes of the early church. They didn't see him as we do. The harder he worked, the more he was slandered, and the more painfully.</p>