Monday, August 11 –
A good
Monday morning to you. We are returning
to our readings thru the New Testament in a Year, and this morning we begin a
new letter – Paul’s letter to the Galatians.
If you want to do a little test to see the progress you’ve made, pick up
your Bible and hold your finger at Galatians 1. Then go back to Matthew 1. Look at the amount of progress you’ve made in
reading.
This morning we’ll read Galatians 1:1 – 24.
I invite you to come back, and we’ll take a second look with some
background information also for more bits of help. Thank You.
Galatia
is an area in the central part of today’s Turkey. Then it was Galatia in the Asia portion of
the Roman Empire. You’ll probably
remember that this area was on the first missionary journey Paul and Barnabas went
to in Acts 13 – 14; and, Paul took Silas along with him on his second
missionary journey beginning in Galatia before the Spirit of God led him to
Macedonia (15:16 – 16:10). It was on his
first journey that Paul preached the gospel with grave consequences as he was
driven from various cities in Galatia. At
one point, Paul was beaten and stoned – to the point that some thought he died
(Acts 14:19).
It was
after Paul left Asia and, because of the vision, sailed to Macedonia, where
eventually he went south to Athens and Corinth (for the first time), that he
received word of some Jewish agitators who had followed him into Galatia and began
to preach a false gospel in the various cities where Paul had established
churches. They attacked Paul (Gal. 4:17)
and preached a gospel that proclaimed for a Gentile to become a Christian, they
first had to become Jews – i.e., be circumcised. Evidentially, at some point, Paul heard about
the trouble they were creating. Paul sat
down, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, and penned this letter to the
Galatian churches, which, almost universally is agreed upon, is considered to
be the first letter written of the New Testament, (the exception might be that
the Gospel of Mark preceded it).
The
letter to the Galatians is not addressed to one church, but to multiple
churches – “Paul, an apostle—not from men nor through man, but through Jesus
Christ and God the Father, who raised him from the dead— and all the
brothers who are with me, To the churches of Galatia” (1:1-2).
His opening is typical as he names himself as the sender, and the Galatian
churches as his recipients. He reminds
them that his authority to write to them is his commission as an Apostle -
which came from Jesus Christ and God the Father. Apostles were unique in the church. They were few because of the
qualifications: they had to have been
eyewitnesses of the resurrected Christ (look at 1 Corinthians 1:9), and as
well, they had unique power in signs, wonders, and miracles (2 Cor.
12:12). Finally, and most importantly,
they had to be hand-selected by the Lord Jesus (Acts 1:21-26).
Paul
wastes no time in getting at the fundamental issue concerning the Gospel –
“Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ,
who gave himself for our sins to deliver us from the present evil age,
according to the will of our God and Father, to whom be the glory forever
and ever. Amen.”
This is the Gospel – Jesus Christ gave himself for our sins to deliver us
from our Sin (the present evil age). There
it is in a nutshell – Jesus died as a perfect sacrifice and paid the debt of
our sin, and His resurrection proved it was complete. That’s why Paul proclaims a doxology of glory
to God. Jesus’ work on the cross is a “finished”
work. “It is finished” was more than a statement of Jesus on the cross as He
was dying. It was also a declaration of
God’s satisfaction in all that Christ Jesus did. With this simplicity, it’s hard to think
anyone would not want to receive Christ.
The
Gospel is so pure that Paul wastes no time in admonishing them for thinking it
needed something more –
“I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting him who called you in the
grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel – not that there
is another one, but there are some who trouble you and want to distort the
gospel of Christ. But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to
you a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be accursed.
As we have said before, so now I say again: If anyone is preaching to you
a gospel contrary to the one you received, let him be accursed” (1:3-9).
The word is stark – “deserting” – which means they turned away from the
Gospel to one that was no gospel at all.
“Different” – as you may remember – from the Greek word “heteros”
was not something that was the same, but something completely different than
the real message. Paul does not appease
the false gospel, but curses it, pronouncing an invective that makes “anyone” (1:9)
who claims it is the gospel be eternally damned!
What is
at stake is people’s souls, not just their religious preferences. Paul is not arguing about organs versus
guitars, or pews versus chairs, or hymnals versus songs projected on a
screen. He knows that if this false
gospel takes root, it will destroy the church and the salvation that comes from
believing in Christ alone for salvation.
To this end, Paul takes his stand on the absoluteness of the Gospel
message, even if it cost him friendships and popularity –
“For am I now seeking the approval of man, or of God? Or am I trying to
please man? If I were still trying to please man, I would not be a servant of
Christ. For I would have you know, brothers, that the gospel that was
preached by me is not man’s gospel. For I did not receive it from any
man, nor was I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus
Christ” (1:10-12).
The Gospel is not an invention of human reasoning, and it was not received by a
man telling him about it, as well, it was not taught to him by another human –
three “nots” that together define the authenticity of the Gospel as a
revelation from Jesus Christ.
We get
a glimpse into how Paul originally received the Gospel in three specific
ways. First, in 1:13-14, Paul tells of his
life before Christ; then, in 1:15-16, he recalls his conversion to Christ; and
lastly, in 1:17-24, he describes the years that followed his conversion until
he was called to preach. Paul was a
zealous Pharisee, yet it all ended in the words, “but when he (God),” i.e.,
Paul’s conversion. He was not searching,
nor did he expect it would happen. His
conversion was a sovereign work of God’s grace entirely apart from Paul’s
works. God had called him before he was
born and set him apart by grace for the work he was to do. Paul had been resisting God, but God was not
deterred by his misguided zeal – “God was pleased to reveal his Son to me” (1:16). Paul was a new creation in Christ Jesus (2
Cor. 5:17), and so there was no need to consult with others on what happened to
him. Instead, after a time in Damascus
with other believers, he left for Arabia – the desert.
Luke
wrote in Acts 9 that Paul was in Damascus for a few days after his conversion (Acts
9:19), but then he says,
“... I went away into Arabia and returned again to Damascus. Then after three years, I went up to Jerusalem to visit Cephas and
remained with him fifteen days” (1:17-18).
Arabia was a wilderness area east of
Damascus. The three years he spent in
Arabia were set apart for Paul by the Lord so that he might fully understand
the Gospel. He received it by revelation
from Jesus himself. The early church
historian, Eusebius, described this time in the wilderness –
“In this period of withdrawal, as he meditated on the Old Testament
Scriptures, on the facts of the life and death of Jesus that he already knew
and on his experience of conversion, the gospel of the grace of God was
revealed to him in its fullness. It has even been suggested that those three
years in Arabia were a deliberate compensation for the three years of
instruction which Jesus gave the other apostles, but which Paul missed. Now he
had Jesus to himself, as it were, for three years of solitude in the wilderness”.[1]
When
Paul finally did go to Jerusalem, it was to visit with the Apostles – Cephas is
Peter. He also visited with James, Jesus’
brother, who had been converted and was at that time leading the church in
Jerusalem. Luke reminds us in Acts that
Paul began to preach the Gospel in Jerusalem but created so much of disturbance
that the Apostles sent him back to his home territory (1:21-22) – Syria and
Cilicia. After a total of three years
gone from Jerusalem, he returned for a total of fifteen days (Acts 9:30). That is why Paul said, “I was still not
known by sight to the churches of Christ in Judea” (1:22). The evidence is clear. Paul was not a Gospel lover, but a Gospel
hater, until he was converted on the road to Damascus. A few days later, Ananias visited him and
told him that God was healing him. Paul
stayed a few days in Damascus, then left for the wilderness. He was isolated from all believers for three
years while he received the Gospel as a revelation from Christ. He states it as an oath – “In what I am
writing to you, before God, I do not lie!” (1:20).
There’s
been some critical scholarship that denies Paul’s version of how the Gospel
came to him. Some say Paul made up the
Gospel message because he was tired of being a Pharisee. Paul said he was zealous to be a
Pharisee. Others say Paul was sharing
his learned opinion of what the Gospel meant – a hybrid version of
Judaism. Paul said it was a revelation
from Jesus Christ. Others say Paul was
won over by the faith of the early church and wanted to be a part of them. Paul said he went to Damascus to arrest those
who belonged to the Way. The great New
Testament scholar John R. Stott makes a true statement that should stop and make
us think – “This, then, is our dilemma. Are we to accept Paul’s account of
the origin of his message, supported as it is by solid historical evidence? Or
shall we prefer our own theory, although supported by no historical evidence?
If Paul was right in asserting that his gospel was not man’s but God’s (cf. Rom.
1:1), then to reject Paul is to reject God”.[2]Peace
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