Separated from the Old Life

Galatians 1:13-17    
13 For you have heard of my former conduct in Judaism, how I persecuted the church of God beyond measure and tried to destroy it. 14 And I advanced in Judaism beyond many of my contemporaries in my own nation, being more exceedingly zealous for the traditions of my fathers.  15 But when it pleased God, who separated me from my mother's womb and called me through His grace, 16 to reveal His Son in me, that I might preach Him among the Gentiles, I did not immediately confer with flesh and blood, 17 nor did I go up to Jerusalem to those who were apostles before me; but I went to Arabia, and returned again to Damascus.

Paul was the chief of all sinners before his conversion as well as after.  He recounts before how he attacked the church as a good religious Pharisee, so eager for his old time religious traditions that he outdid all others in this attempt to exterminate the Messiah’s adherents.  But afterwards he recognized that God had chosen him to be born and called out in the grace of the one whose people he attacked, and who destined him to go to the nations his religious sect hated in their misplaced zeal.  Instead of hating the sin of the idolatrous nations, they (and Saul) hated those committing the sin God hated but loved as made in the image of God.  He was then called to reach those being called out of all nations as promised to Abraham with the same undeserved mercy and grace by the words of life in Jesus the Messiah.  We also are to see beyond the partiality of hate and prejudice to speak life to those He calls.