Some have objected to this idea. God, some will say, loves us just because he loves us, not because he wants to use us for a purpose. But biblically speaking that’s a false either/or. God’s loving purpose for Israel always involved God’s loving purpose through Israel. Paul’s own awareness that the son of God ‘loved me and gave himself for me’ is fully at one with Paul’s equal awareness that God had called him to be the apostle to the nations;
