Origin of the Gospel

Introduction

The churches in Galatia held a special place in Paul’s heart. Established during his first missionary journey, these churches demonstrated Paul’s determination to bring the gospel to the Gentiles. He and Barnabas had taken the time to establish, teach, and reteach in the cities of Galatia. You would recognize the names of these towns: Lystra, Derbe, Iconium, and Antioch of Pisidia are the ones we know about. This letter which Paul wrote was to be circulated among these churches. What Paul finds most difficult to believe is that these churches could so quickly be exchanging the gospel for something which was not the gospel at all.

Paul writes this letter to answer one question: What makes a person a Christian? Before he can answer that question, he must reestablish himself as God’s teacher. His authority has come into question. False teachers have infiltrated the churches saying that Paul is not what he claims to be. Paul must reestablish himself as God’s spokesman. Not an easy task when separated by distance. Through this letter, Paul wants to reaffirm what the true gospel is. He also wants to reconfirm that he is God’s true teacher on the subject. What he fears more than anything is that they will continue to believe these false teachers and as a result will fall from grace.

These false teachers were Jewish in origin who taught that what these new Christians needed to do was to go ahead and believe in Jesus but they needed to hold on to the law of Moses in order to be pleasing to God. It was believed by most Jews that Christianity was just another spin-off from Judaism. Christianity had its basis in the writings and traditions of the prophets and law. Therefore, Christians were being encouraged to hold on to the law. Paul understood that to hold on to the law was to deny the sufficiency of Christ to take care of sin. As he wrote in 1:4, Jesus gave himself to remove sins. But the keeping of the law meant that Jesus didn’t deal with sin. Thus, to keep the law was to reject the gospel. This is what Paul is having to deal with.

In order for these false teachers to get a hearing, one of the things they did was to discredit Paul as an apostle and one chosen by God. In the latter part of chapter one and the beginning of chapter 2, Paul will defend himself against the accusation that he is not what he claims to be. These false teachers make the accusation that Paul’s message is watered down. He is letting people off too easily. The false teachers present their message as the true one because they require more than Paul does. This emphasis on human effort Paul will deal with in Chapter 3. Let’s see how Paul defends himself.

Paul’s Defense

Paul defends himself by making four points in 1:11-2:10.

The first point found in 1:11-12 is that the message he preaches did not come by human origin. This message came as a result of a revelation about Christ. No one taught him the gospel. He saw it. He received it on the Damascus Road. This Jesus whom he refused to accept as the Son of God, this Jesus whom he was trying to destroy appeared to him on his way to a lynching. And when Paul saw him, he knew then that he was wrong. This gospel was given to him directly. When he saw Jesus on the Damascus Road, no one had to tell him about his sin and that Jesus was sufficient to deal with it. The facts he knew about Jesus turned into faith.

The second point in 1:13-17 is his changed lifestyle. Only someone who had been touched by the message of Christ could make such a dramatic change. Paul says that he intensely persecuted the church. The word for intensely means beyond measure. He would stop at nothing to destroy and annihilate the church of God. No one could have preached to Paul and persuaded him to become a Christian. There was nothing in Paul that even wanted to accept Jesus as Savior. Paul above all wanted to be as Jewish as he could be. Holding on to the traditions of Judaism was more important than anything else. But God intervened and changed his life. God revealed Jesus to him and with that revelation, Paul was never the same.

The third point found in 2:3 is that when in Jerusalem fourteen years after his conversion and almost that many since he began preaching the true gospel, the church leaders did not force Titus to be circumcised. These Jewish church leaders missed a real opportunity to alter Paul’s message and practice if circumcision was necessary for being a Christian. The false teachers were emphasizing the importance of keeping the law. Especially important was the practice of circumcision. Paul understood that making Gentiles Christians first and then Jews was to ignore the work of Christ on the cross. The false teachers taught that Jesus’s work on the cross was not enough. What the Galatians really needed was to become Jews. Paul understood to give themselves over to the law was to give up their freedom. While in Jerusalem no one insisted on circumcision for Titus; thus, Paul uses that to prove that his message is valid.

The fourth point in 2:9 is that the Jerusalem leaders accepted him and his message as being divinely inspired. When Paul shared his message with the Jewish leaders they accepted the message and demonstrated that acceptance by shaking hands. Paul wasn’t asked to compromise his message or to alter it. The Jewish leaders agreed that Paul’s work was to preach to the Gentiles and they would continue to preach to the Jews. These four points then reflect Paul’s defense against the accusations made by the false teachers.

Paul has spent this time validating his message and his ministry. We perhaps take all this for granted. We accept that Paul was an apostle and that his message is true. So what are we to pull from this defense?

Application

The first lesson is that the gospel is not man made. Paul was accused in 1:10 of trying to please men rather than God with his preaching. The gospel has nothing to do with men but with what God has done through Jesus Christ. The gospel is about Jesus. It is about being forgiven of sins. This has nothing to do with us, but everything to do with God.

Paul knew things about Jesus. He knew some of the stories. He probably knew some factual details. But he didn’t know Jesus until God revealed Jesus to him. We are the same way. Until God acts on our behalf and reveals Jesus to us then we know nothing about the gospel. Without Jesus we cannot know the gospel. This is not mystical or hard to understand.

You see our basic bent to go away from God. Some go at a faster pace than others like Paul. But it isn’t until Jesus is revealed to us that we come to know the good news. What is the good news? That by faith in Jesus all our sins are forgiven.

When we submit to Jesus as being completely adequate and sufficient to take care of our sin problem, then God forgives us. What Paul reveals for us in his defense is that unless God acted on his behalf he would have been eternally lost. He would have pursued his Jewishness to destruction. But God saved him. That message hasn’t changed. In 1:15, God’s initiative is an act of grace. Let’s not forget.

The second lesson is that God changes lives and gives them new purpose. On that Damascus Road, Paul came face to face with Jesus and he could no longer be the same. Such an encounter was life changing. Jesus changed the way Paul looked at everything. No longer could he be a persecutor, he now had to be a preacher. No longer did he place trust in his own efforts, but now he was going to trust Jesus. We applaud Paul’s changes but see very little for us.

When you meet Jesus on whatever road, you will not be the same. Paul was going in one direction and God turned him around to go in another. It wasn’t that Paul was looking for a change to make. According to 1:14, he was quite happy and content doing what he could to advance the cause of Judaism and to destroy Christianity. Nothing human could account for the change in Paul. Paul’s change came about because of the divine initiative of God.

The changes which take place in our lives because of Jesus we cannot take credit for. It is God who changes us and to him belongs the honor. What Paul reminds us is that God is constantly at work in our lives and he busily leads us closer to Jesus. Let’s not forget.

The final lesson is one that we would do well to remember. We can be going about life believing that we are honoring God, believing that we are sincere, believing that we know what we are doing and doing it with all our might and be wrong. God’s intervention saved Paul. But unless God had intervened Paul would have continued to do what he was doing believing himself to be right and still be wrong.

There is a fine line between being confident of what we believe and being arrogant. There is a difference between believing we have truth and searching for truth. If we are truly interested in restoration, then we must never stop searching for truth and be willing to change our perspectives when truth is revealed to us.

No matter how long we have believed something, no matter how sincerely we believe it, even if our forefathers believed it, we can be wrong. We must continually be searching for truth and asking ourselves hard questions.

Paul was a righteous man. He loved God. He wanted to honor God. Do you think Paul ever questioned what he was doing? Do you think Paul asked the hard questions? No. Paul wasn’t looking to make any changes in his life. In fact he lashed out at those who tried to make changes. He abused, persecuted, criticized, demeaned, and tried to destroy anyone who suggested that Jesus could possibly be the Messiah. But he was wrong.

When you hear the words, “we have always done it that way” then you better distance yourself. Those words signal that there is no further search for truth, there are to be no more questions, and if you try to change anything you will find yourself in hot water. And there is the real possibility that they are wrong. While God is the initiator of order, he also changes people’s lives and often it produces turmoil and chaos. For Paul accepting Jesus left him with a bruised and battered body. For his faith he received great physical, mental, and emotional scars. But then the truth is worth any price. Let’s not forget.

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