Yea, so have I strived to preach the gospel, not where Christ was named, lest I should build upon another man's foundation:
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Ambrosiaster
AD 400
It was not without reason that Paul says that he tried to preach in places where Christ had not been named. For he knew that false apostles went about sharing Christ in ways which were wrong in order to ensnare the people by some other teaching under the name of Christ, which was then very difficult to put right afterward. Therefore he wanted to get there first, in order to preach the right message. Commentary on Paul’s Epistles.
The explanation as to why Paul had not yet managed to visit the Romans seems to be that he believed that Peter had already come to them as their teacher, so he went to places where as yet no one had preached the gospel of Christ. .
St. Paul does not mean to say, that he never preached where the gospel had before been announced; this would not have been true, for he preached at Damascus, where there were already Christians, whom he formerly wished to take in chains to Jerusalem; and again in this epistle he announces the truths of the gospel to the Romans already converted by the preaching of St. Peter. But he means to say, that on these occasions he acts not as an apostle, whose office it is to preach to infidels; but as one that waters, confirms, comforts, as he says in the beginning of this epistle: and this he did as occasion offered, as the subsequent verses shew, where he tells us his design in calling on the Romans, in his journey to Spain. (Estius)
Paul was preeminent in this also, in that he did not go to places where the gospel had already been preached. So far was he from forcing himself upon other men’s disciples that he even went to places where nobody had preached before…. He wrote all this to show that he was a stranger to vanity and to instruct them that it was not from any love of glory or of honor from them that he came to write but in order to fulfill his ministry, perfect his priestly service and love their salvation.
