Imperfect tense

Paul often gets a bad rap for seeming to be too caustic and judgmental. It’s too bad that this opinion is not more often balanced by Paul’s other statements of love and concern for his churches. But I think a proper translation of Romans 9:3 might help a little.

Imperfects can be tricky to translate. Do you let the meaning of the word carry the aspect, is it a plain continuous idea, or one of the specialized uses of the imperfect such as the inceptive? Such is the challenge of translating imperfects.

Sometimes the meaning of a verb is sufficiently imperfective (continuous) that you don't need to make it explicit in your translation, although at times you still should. Is there a difference between Jesus "continuing to grow" and Jesus "grew up"?