προέχω ((from Homer down)): present middle 1 person plural προεχόμεθα; to have before or in advance of another, to have pre-eminence over another, to excel, to surpass; often so in secular authors from (Sophocles and) Herodotus down; middle to excel to one’s advantage (cf. Kühner, § 375, 1); to surpass in excellences which can be passed to one’s credit: Rom 3:9; it does not make against this force of the middle in the present passage that the use is nowhere else met with, nor is there any objection to an interpretation which has commended itself to a great many and which the context plainly demands. (But on this difficult word see especially James Morison, Critical Expos. of the Third Chap. of Romans, p. 93ff; Gifford in the ’Speaker’s Commentary,’ p. 96; Winer’s Grammar, § 38, 6; § 39 at the end, cf. p. 554 (516).)