Romans 11:28-29 : As touching the gospel, they are enemies for your sake: but as touching the election, they are beloved for the fathers' sake. For the gifts and the calling of God are not repented of. The Jews considered the Gentiles so far beneath them, that they considered themselves unclean if they touched a Gen-tile. From the start the Jews opposed the gospel, because it did not meet their expectations, and because it condemned them as sinners and as murderers. To be told that they were no better than Gentiles intensified their enmity. When Paul told the Jews in Jerusalem that the Lord had told him to depart from them and go and preach to the Gentiles, they said, "Away with such a fellow from the earth: for it is not fit that he should live" (Acts 22:17-22). The preaching of the gospel to Gentiles, and their acceptance into the church further hardened them from giving it any consideration. Of course no proud Pharisee would think of be-coming a member of a body made up largely of Gentiles. And so, because of the Gentile Christians, the Jews were enemies of the gospel. God had selected the fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and their descend-ants as the line through which the Christ would come, and he had not repented of that selection; and even though these descendants had so sinned as to be broken off from his favor, they were beloved on account of the fathers, and not on their own account.