[Prayer]
Today’s message is from Galatians 1:11-24. The HCSB translators gave this passage the title Paul Defends His Apostleship. The apostle Paul is going to tell us by what authority he’s teaching what he has been teaching. (It’s by the authority of Jesus Christ, just as was in the case of the other apostles.)
I talked about the first part of Galatians chapter 1 (verses 1 –10) three weeks ago. Today I’m going to talk about the rest of chapter 1. But first, before we read today’s passage, I’m going to review what I said three weeks ago—just the highlights.
In the very first verse of Galatians, chapter 1, verse1, the apostle Paul says, “Paul, an apostle—not from men or by man, but by Jesus Christ and God the Father who raised Him from the dead...” The fact that God raised Jesus from the dead is the foundation of everything else that we believe. If you take away the fact that Jesus rose from the dead, everything else collapses. We believe that Jesus Christ died for our sin and was raised from the dead. The apostle Paul says in Romans, “This is the message of faith that we proclaim: if you confess with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. With the heart one believes, resulting in righteousness, and with the mouth one confesses, resulting in salvation.” (Rom. 10:8b-10)
It’s not natural to believe that the dead can be raised back to life. It’s not something we normally see happen. Even when someone is resuscitated from physical death, that person eventually dies—apparently permanently. When I was a little kid—five or six years old—I assumed that when you died you would simply go out of existence. What else could you think if you only believed that there was a material world? And I was terrified at the thought that if I died, I would be no more. I thought it would be better to die in your sleep so that you would just never know what had happened. (Later I realized it could be much worse. You could go to hell!) But in any case, there’s certainly the need to believe that Jesus was raised from the dead. And not only that, there is the need to understand why Jesus died and rose from the dead.
Here’s why Jesus died and rose from the dead: Chapter 1, verses 3 and 4 say, “Grace to you and peace from God the Father and our Lord Jesus Christ, who gave Himself for our sins to rescue us from this present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father...” The people of this present age is going to hell. Jesus died to rescue us from hell.
Jesus died to rescue us from hell and he rose from the dead. Only through Jesus can we be rescued from hell.
Verse 6 says, “I am amazed that you are so quickly turning away from Him who called you by the grace of Christ, and are turning to a different gospel...” All of Galatians is the apostle Paul’s warning (really, God’s warning) to the Galatian churches against false teachers that were teaching that you had to do something in addition to believing in Jesus to be saved—that you had to be circumcised—in order to be saved. (I’m not sure what they thought about women. Maybe they didn’t think about women at all.) But this belief that you have to do something else besides believing in Jesus is a serious thing. In chapter 5, Paul calls it a yoke of slavery. “Therefore stand firm and don't submit again to a yoke of slavery,” and “Take note! I, Paul, tell you that if you get circumcised, Christ will not benefit you at all.” (Gal.~5:1-2) But this is not a warning about circumcision. (If it was, Christ would have been no benefit to Paul, either.) And this is not just God’s warning to the Galatian churches. It’s also God’s warning to us—his warning that if we believe that we have to keep the right rules to be saved, or anything else over and above the fact that Jesus died for our sins and rose from the dead, Christ will be of no benefit to us at all. In other words, we will be lost. (And I will be repeating these things over and over as we go through Galatians. We are not saved by observing the proper rituals. We are not saved by “being good”. We are saved by believing in Jesus. Whatever good we do is the result of our faith and not the means of our salvation.
Now let’s look at today’s passage, Galatians 1:11-24. As we read the passage, remember that we are reading the word of God. It’s God speaking to us through what he led the apostles and prophets and various other people to write down for us to read thousands of years later. Times have changed, but really, men’s hearts have not changed. And the meaning and application of God’s word has not changed. In verse 6 Paul says that he is amazed that they are turning to a different gospel. In verse 8 he says that if anyone preaches to them a gospel contrary to what they had received from him, a curse should be on him! Anything that is preached as a way of salvation other than the true and only way of salvation, the way of salvation that is through Jesus Christ, leads to destruction. It is cursed!
As always, I encourage you to read your Bibles every day. The more of the word of God that you have in your heart, the more all these things we are talking about will fit together and fall into place. The more you understand, the more you will be able to understand!
Let’s read the passage—Galatians 1:11-24:
11Now I want you to know, brothers, that the gospel preached by me is not based on a human point of view. 12For I did not receive it from a human source and I was not taught it, but it came by a revelation from Jesus Christ.
13For you have heard about my former way of life in Judaism: I persecuted God’s church to an extreme degree and tried to destroy it; 14and I advanced in Judaism beyond many contemporaries among my people, because I was extremely zealous for the traditions of my ancestors. 15But when God, who from my mother’s womb set me apart and called me by His grace, was pleased 16to reveal His Son in me, so that I could preach Him among the Gentiles, I did not immediately consult with anyone. 17I did not go up to Jerusalem to those who had become apostles before me; instead I went to Arabia and came back to Damascus.
18 Then after three years I did go up to Jerusalem to get to know Cephas, and I stayed with him 15 days. 19But I didn’t see any of the other apostles except James, the Lord’s brother. 20Now in what I write to you, I’m not lying. God is my witness.
21Afterwards, I went to the regions of Syria and Cilicia. 22I remained personally unknown to the Judean churches in Christ; 23they simply kept hearing: “He who formerly persecuted us now preaches the faith he once tried to destroy.” 24And they glorified God because of me. (Galatians~1:11-24)
Verses 11 and 12 say, “Now I want you to know, brothers, that the gospel preached by me is not based on a human point of view. For I did not receive it from a human source and I was not taught it, but it came by a revelation from Jesus Christ.” Where did Paul’s knowledge of the gospel come from? It came from Jesus Christ.
The only way of salvation that people naturally think of (without revelation from God) has to do with human effort. That’s what “human sources” that Paul talked about (“not from a human source”) normally teach.
When I was a little kid, my mom told me that I had to be good (which was definitely a human effort) if I wanted to get any presents for Christmas. (I don’t remember exactly what I was doing at the time, but it was something bad. I think I was fussing about something—a habit that I am still trying to overcome, by the way.) My mom told me that Santa had some brownies that were watching me. I told her that I didn’t see them. She said, “They’re invisible.” I tried to picture several shadowy brownies around me. But I didn’t believe my mom. (You shouldn’t lie to your children. It teaches them not to trust you and that it’s OK to lie.) Anyway, it’s normal to think that if you are good, you get a reward. And that’s frequently true. If you are good, you get a reward. But the reward is something that you have earned. It’s not a gift. (I looked up “brownies”, by the way, on the internet. It says that they were believed to inhabit people’s homes and help them in various ways. They would live in an unused part of the house and come out at night so they wouldn’t be seen. They liked to receive gifts—especially food. But if you started to say that you were paying them—rewarding them—for their work, they would leave.) Salvation is a gift. It’s not something you can earn. If you think you can purchase salvation from God, you won’t have it. Before meeting Jesus, the apostle Paul definitely didn’t think salvation was a gift from God. It was something you had to earn.
Let’s look at verses 13 and 14: “For you have heard about my former way of life in Judaism: I persecuted God’s church to an extreme degree and tried to destroy it; and I advanced in Judaism beyond many contemporaries among my people, because I was extremely zealous for the traditions of my ancestors.”
Paul says he was extremely zealous for the traditions of his ancestors. The traditions of Paul’s ancestors were the traditions of the Jewish religion, Judaism. They were not necessarily what came from God. A lot was made up by men. Paul worked hard to keep them. But, you know what? When we’ve worked hard at something and believed that we’ve met the requirements and have received (or maybe just deserved) the reward and then someone changes the rules so that what we worked hard for becomes easy—that it even becomes a gift, we say, “That’s not fair. I worked hard. Everyone else should have to work hard, too.” (And I’ve seen several examples of that in my own experience.) So why should Paul have had to have worked so hard and then salvation be just given away—paid for by someone else’s effort. I think that in some sense that’s what the false teachers were thinking about themeselve when they were teaching circumcision. But really, in Paul’s case he had been working for his own glory, to be praised by men, not for the glory of God. Paul had been working hard. But when Jesus humbled him when he was on his way to Damascus to persecute the Christians, he accepted the free gift of salvation willingly.
Listen while I read from Luke 18:9-14. This is the parable that Jesus told about the Pharisee and the tax collector. (And this is called a parable, but I think it’s a distinct possibility that it actually happened—that Jesus was giving an account of a real event. Listen:
9He also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and looked down on everyone else: 10 “Two men went up to the temple complex to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. 11The Pharisee took his stand and was praying like this: ‘God, I thank You that I’m not like other people—greedy, unrighteous, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. 12I fast twice a week; I give a tenth of everything I get.’
13 “But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even raise his eyes to heaven but kept striking his chest and saying, ‘God, turn Your wrath from me—a sinner!’ 14I tell you, this one went down to his house justified rather than the other; because everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted.” (Luke~18:9-14)
Jesus told this to illustrate that if you are confident in your own righteousness, you will not be justified—your sins will not be forgiven (and they certainly won’t be forgiven if don’t think you have any). But this parable also applies to anyone who admits he is a sinner, but insists on trying to make himself righteous instead of humbling himself and asking for forgiveness. How much we can want to do it ourselves. (Some of us older folks remember the ad on TV—it was for some pain killer—where the woman was trying to prepare a fancy dinner and her mom was trying to help her. She apparently thought her mom was just getting in the way. She said, “Please mother, I’d rather do it myself.” Then she apologized and blamed it on her terrible headache. I think her mom recommended the pain killer at that point. “I’d rather do it myself,” is not humble—especially when it comes to salvation.)
Let’s look at verse 15 and 16: “But when God, who from my mother’s womb set me apart and called me by His grace, was pleased to reveal His Son in me, so that I could preach Him among the Gentiles, I did not immediately consult with anyone.”
God chose Paul to do what he was doing from the time he was born—maybe even before he was born. Do you think God chooses everyone that way? Well, I don’t know for sure. But there’s evidence that he has planned for each person. In Acts 17:26, 27 the apostle Paul said, “From one man He (God) has made every nation of men to live all over the earth and has determined their appointed times and the boundaries of where they live, so that they might seek God, and perhaps they might reach out and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us.” He determined their appointed times and the boundaries of where they live. The saying is, “God has a plan for your life.” I think that’s true. And the idea is, “Find out what it is and follow it!” The beginning of the plan is to “pass from death to life” to use Jesus’s word in John 5:24. Verse 16 says that God chose Paul and set him apart and called him by his grace. “...by his grace...” That means it was a gift. Be sure that you have received God’s gift of salvation.
God called Paul to take the gospel... (By the way, what does the word “gospel” mean? It means “good news”.) God called Paul to take the good news to the Gentiles. To the Jews, who were proud that they were God’s chosen people, that would have been an insult. But it was God’s grace to proud Paul. He completely accepted it.
Well, let me read the rest of the passage—verses 17 through 24:
17I did not go up to Jerusalem to those who had become apostles before me; instead I went to Arabia and came back to Damascus.
18Then after three years I did go up to Jerusalem to get to know Cephas, and I stayed with him 15 days. 19But I didn’t see any of the other apostles except James, the Lord’s brother. 20Now in what I write to you, I’m not lying. God is my witness.
21Afterwards, I went to the regions of Syria and Cilicia. 22I remained personally unknown to the Judean churches in Christ; 23they simply kept hearing: “He who formerly persecuted us now preaches the faith he once tried to destroy.” 24And they glorified God because of me. (Galatians~1:18-24)
The point (which I haven’t really said too much about) is that the apostle Paul did not make up what he was teaching, that he did not get it from someone else who made it up or even get it from some that didn’t make it up, but that he got it directly from God.
Cephas that Paul went to Jerusalem to get to know was the apostle Peter. (Cephas is from the Aramaic word for “stone”. Aramaic was the language that was spoken by the Jews in Jesus’s time. Peter is from the Greek word for “stone”.)
Verses 23 and 24 say, “...they simply kept hearing: ‘He who formerly persecuted us now preaches the faith he once tried to destroy.’ And they glorified God because of me.” It’s also God’s grace that we can praise him for someone who has been imprisoning and even putting to death those whom we love, not because God killed that person, but because he let him live and granted him eternal life. Amen.
More next week, the Lord willing.
May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with all of you.
[Prayer]