Romans 1:1–17
Paul begins his letter in a very personal way. The personal pronoun and possessive (I, me, my) occur more than twenty times in these opening verses. He is evidently anxious from the start to establish a close relationship with his readers. His introduction is in three parts, which I will call ‘Paul and the gospel’ (1–6), ‘Paul and the Romans’ (7–13) and ‘Paul and evangelism’ (14–17).