exhortation to the saints at Rome quoted at the beginning of this introduction. There are several things about this exhortation which should be noted. First, the Apostle is clearly speaking in terms of personal relationships. The context of the chapter concerns the relationship of individual believers to spiritual gifts (vs. 3–8), to inward character qualities (vs. 9–13), to those who persecute them (v. 14), to fellow believers (vs. 15, 16) and to those who offend them (vs. 17–21). Second, Paul understood