God had chosen “to reveal his Son to me for the exact purpose that I might preach him among the gentiles.”54 When Paul saw the ritually defiled body of Jesus at God’s right hand, he understood exactly why he had received this mission. He had chosen to live in the Holy Land because the gentile world was unclean. Jews tended to regard the non-Jewish nations as impure and morally inferior. But in raising Jesus, God had shown that he did not judge by these earthly standards and that he stood by people who were despised and denigrated by the rules and laws of this world. God had no favorites. It
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