QUOTE : APOSTLE AMONG THE GENTILES (NATIONS) As we have seen, Paul’s encounter with the resurrected Jesus led him to the deep conviction that he had been called by God to be an apostle among the nations. Having experienced an appearance of the Lord, and having been commissioned, he, no less than Peter and those who had been with the earthly Jesus, was now the authoritative messenger of God (1 Cor 9: 1; 15: 7–11; Gal 1). Such is the basic meaning of ‘apostle’(Gk. apostolos)—one sent with the message and authority of the sender, and in the sender’s stead—an ‘emissary,’‘agent,’or ‘ambassador.’Paul believed himself to be sent because he himself had been ‘apprehended’(Phil 3: 12) by the Messiah Jesus and thus caught up in a divine mission—a mission not everyone appreciated, to put it mildly. This mission was to spread a gracious, powerful word of good news that would establish an ‘international’(empire-wide) network of transformed, multicultural communities obeying, glorifying, and bearing public witness to the one true God of Israel by conformity to God’s Son in the power of the Spirit.