Sermon Number 02
The Pauline Gospel, Part 1 (1:6-17)
Jim Bordwine, ThD
Introduction
This morning, we will continue our study of Paul's letter to the Galatians. You will recall that in my introduction to this book last week, I emphasized that Paul is confronting false teaching in this epistle. He identifies this false teaching as “another gospel,” as we are going to see today. Therefore, much of what Paul has to say as this letter begins has to do with the character of the gospel which he had delivered to the Galatian churches. In fact, Paul provides us with a lengthy treatment of his gospel beginning in 1:6, where we concluded last week, and extending through the whole of chapter two. Therefore, for the next two sermons, we will be concerned with “The Pauline Gospel” as it is presented by the apostle in 1:6-2:21.
Four characteristics concerning Paul's gospel stand out in this section of the letter. First, he speaks of the uniqueness of his gospel in 1:6-10. In speaking of the uniqueness of his gospel, Paul means to emphasize that what the Galatians were hearing was no gospel at all because there is only one. In his commentary, Luther writes that “no false teacher comes under the title of errors, and of the devil, neither does the devil himself come as a devil, and in his own likeness…” (Commentary, 21) He means that deceivers never come announcing that they are deceivers! That would be counter-productive. Deceivers come pretending to be the real thing, pretending to bring the truth. But when they come with a message contrary to what Paul had taught, then there is only one way to identify their message and that is as “another gospel” which is really not a gospel at all. This was Paul's number one priority as he begins describing his gospel-it was necessary to reveal the false teachers for what they were: distorters of the true gospel of Christ. (cf. 1:7)
The second characteristic which Paul speak of in 1:11-17 is the origin of his gospel. Where did Paul get the message which he preached? How would the origin of his gospel compare to that of the Judaizers? This unique, one of a kind gospel, also has a peculiar origin, according to Paul, and he reveals that origin in this section. Already, Paul has declared his calling to have been of direct divine origin. Now, he is going to make the same significant claim about the gospel which he had preached and which was being challenged by the Judaizers in the Galatian churches.
These are the two characteristics of Paul's Gospel which we will cover today. Then, LORD willing, in the next sermon, we will look at the next two characteristics of the Pauline gospel, which are its integrity and its heart. Paul shows that his gospel was approved by the Church and that at the core of his teaching was salvation by grace through faith alone.
01. The Uniqueness of the Pauline Gospel (1:6-10)
Let's give our attention to the first characteristic of the Pauline gospel, which is, as I said, its uniqueness. This characteristic is presented in vv. 6-10 of the first chapter:
6 I am amazed that you are so quickly deserting Him who called you by the grace of Christ, for a different gospel; 7 which is really not another; only there are some who are disturbing you and want to distort the gospel of Christ. 8 But even if we, or an angel from heaven, should preach to you a gospel contrary to what we have preached to you, he is to be accursed! 9 As we have said before, so I say again now, if any man is preaching to you a gospel contrary to what you received, he is to be accursed! 10 For am I now seeking the favor of men, or of God? Or am I striving to please men? If I were still trying to please men, I would not be a bond-servant of Christ.
Normally, Paul's greetings are followed by words of thanksgiving and praise for the progress of those being addressed. That is not the case here. Paul immediately gets to the matter of the moment and declares: “I am amazed…” (v. 6) What amazes Paul, of course, is the favorable reception the Judaizers were experiencing in Galatia. The apostle finds it hard to believe that the Galatian churches would so readily listen to and accept a message which contradicted what they had been taught by the apostle. Something had undermined the people's confidence in Paul. He was absent and the false teachers were present; moreover, as I said in the last sermon, it is likely that they attacked Paul's credibility. Since he was not around to defend himself or his prior teaching, the people were being easily persuaded that the apostle had left out a few things-things like having to be circumcised in order to be saved, things like keeping other Mosaic instructions in order to be acceptable to God.
So, Paul is astonished that those who had before professed to believe his preaching-that salvation is by grace through faith alone-were now willing to accept conditions to their salvation, conditions which required them to do something in order to win God's favor. Had they not listened to Paul? Had they not understood? How could they have been taken in by such error? To Paul, it simply doesn't seem possible that the people to whom he had preached the gospel were now turning away from the gospel-and apparently in such numbers that the stability of the Church in that region was being threatened.
Notice how Paul characterizes their behavior: “so quickly deserting Him who called you by the grace of Christ, for a different gospel.” Two matters need to be clarified here. First, the word translated “deserting” (metatithemi) means “to transfer” (as in putting one thing in the place of another); and the form of the verb means it should be read like this: “transferring yourselves.” Second, the preposition which is translated “for” (as in “for a different gospel”) should be rendered “to” or “unto.” More literally, then, the verse reads: “I am amazed that you are so quickly transferring yourselves from the one who called you in/by the grace of Christ to different gospel.” The NAS doesn't provide the best translation here (cf., however, the KJV, NKJV and NIV).
The Galatians were eagerly believing a message other than what they had received from Paul; they were readily moving (or transferring) their allegiance from the Pauline gospel to the gospel of the Judaizers. This is what surprised him. How could such a transfer take place? How could conviction change so dramatically? Paul doesn't bother to dwell on the question of “how,” he simply pushes on and tells the Galatians that the doctrine to which they were turning was, in fact, “not another gospel.” (v. 7) The “different gospel” was not truly a gospel at all. There is only one gospel and that is the one which Paul preached and which these same people professed to believe. What was being preached in Galatia now was a counterfeit; it was a perversion, not just another way of looking at things.
Paul says that the Judaizers were “disturbing” the Galatian churches and were seeking “to distort the gospel of Christ.” He puts his gospel in direct opposition to what was being preached by the Judaizers. There are not two gospels, there is the true gospel and there are distortions of the true gospel and all such distorted gospels are, in fact, false. The word translated “distort” (metastrepho) refers to changing the character of something. What the Judaizers were teaching was not the gospel-it was a perversion of the gospel; it was a teaching which was not the same as the original. Paul's gospel, he maintains, was unique; the so-called “gospel” of the Judaizers was an altered form of the original which brought bondage, not freedom.
The fact that Paul viewed his gospel as unique is clear. However, the apostle goes way beyond anything already said or implied when he adds: “But even if we, or an angel from heaven, should preach to you a gospel contrary to what we have preached to you, he is to be accursed!” (v. 8) This is a powerful statement-as powerful a statement as could possibly be made in support of the uniqueness and singular truthfulness of the message which Paul preached previously to the Galatian citizens. Paul says that even if he should now begin preaching a different doctrine, he should be accursed (i.e., devoted to destruction). He makes the same statement regarding any angel from heaven who might come down and teach contrary to what the Galatians had previously heard. There could be no alteration of, no substitution for, the gospel which Paul delivered to the Galatians. That was a message of salvation by grace through faith alone and any tampering with it rendered the proponent damnable.
Paul considered the salvation-by-law doctrine of the Judaizers to be this kind of teaching. He cannot stress too strongly the necessity of allegiance to the message formerly delivered. Therefore, Paul expands his condemnation to include “any man” who comes preaching a gospel contrary to what they received. (v. 9) It doesn't matter who comes to you with a message, Paul tells his readers; even if the messenger is a heavenly being, if what he says is different than what you heard before, he is to be cursed and his words rejected.
The gospel preached by Paul stood alone as the gospel and it declared that a man is saved by grace through faith alone; it declared that a man does not win God's favor by keeping the Law. That is the gospel from God; that is the gospel which exalts the Christ as the sinner's Substitute; that is the gospel which magnifies the mercy and love and patience of God toward lowly sinners. Paul would not remain silent, therefore, while the Judaizers destroyed the work of the true gospel in Galatia; he would not speak softly and try to win back the people. On the contrary, Paul spoke out loudly and he spoke boldly against the false teachers for the sake of the souls which were being put in jeopardy.
The apostle declares that he has no interest in seeking the favor of men (v. 10). If he did, then he would not have spoken so bluntly and with such zeal. No, Paul was called “through Jesus Christ and God the Father, who raised Him from the dead.” He was God's spokesman and Christ's apostle. His aim was to please the One who called Him; his goal was to defend with all his might the blessed hope of Christ which rescued sinners from evil. Paul knew he could not be both a man-pleaser and a bond-servant of Christ. He openly and loudly declares his loyalty to the Savior and, as a good soldier, attacks his enemies with passion as he emphasizes the uniqueness of his gospel.
02. The Origin of the Pauline Gospel (1:11-17)
After chastising the Galatians and making his uncompromising declarations regarding the uniqueness of his message, Paul now speaks of a second characteristic of his gospel, which is its origin:
11 For I would have you know, brethren, that the gospel which was preached by me is not according to man. 12 For I neither received it from man, nor was I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ. 13 For you have heard of my former manner of life in Judaism, how I used to persecute the church of God beyond measure and tried to destroy it; 14 and I was advancing in Judaism beyond many of my contemporaries among my countrymen, being more extremely zealous for my ancestral traditions. 15 But when God, who had set me apart even from my mother's womb and called me through His grace, was pleased 16 to reveal His Son in me so that I might preach Him among the Gentiles, I did not immediately consult with flesh and blood, 17 nor did I go up to Jerusalem to those who were apostles before me; but I went away to Arabia, and returned once more to Damascus.
In the Introduction, I noted that Paul already declared his calling to have been of direct divine origin and I said that he would make the same significant claim about his gospel. Here is that claim. Paul is going to put before the Galatians the assertion that his gospel did not originate with man, but with Christ. The implication is that the origin of the Judaizers' gospel should be known, too. Paul recalls to mind his former contact with the Galatians and says that “the gospel which was preached by me is not according to man.” (v. 11) He means that the knowledge he imparted regarding how a sinner is justified before God is not of human composition. Neither Paul nor any other man had devised the notion of salvation by grace through faith alone. This wonderful doctrine, which the Galatians reported to have believed before, comes not from any human source, but from Christ Himself (v. 12).
Paul writes: “I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ.” Paul is claiming that his gospel is nothing less than what the Savior revealed to him. He is implying, as I noted, that the Judaizers can make no such claim. They have led the Galatians to reject Paul's gospel and have substituted a message of their own making. Paul sets forth a contrast here, a contrast between a gospel given by the Savior Himself and the so-called “gospel” of the Judaizers who were saying that faith in this Savior was insufficient and who were demanding obedience (works) which would merit that which Paul claimed God was providing freely.
With such contrasting proclamations, these two gospels had to have vastly different origins and that is Paul's point here. If one gospel proclaims salvation by grace through faith alone and another so-called gospel proclaims salvation by grace and the works of the Law, can they possibly be from the same source or the same God? The answer, which the apostle is sure must be obvious, is no! One gospel is authentic and one is a fake; one gospel is true and one is false; one gospel frees and the other binds; one gospel is from heaven and one is from hell. Evidence in Paul's letters suggests that he had more than one encounter with the risen Savior. He gives an example of such contact in 1 Cor. 11 where he states that his understanding of the Lord's Supper was given to him directly by Christ. Here, he makes the same claim for the gospel which he preached to the churches.
Paul rehearses some of the facts of his life in order to emphasize the divine origin of his calling and his gospel. He tells the Galatians that he was once a persecutor of the Church (v. 13). As a devoted Jew and Pharisee, Paul confesses that he severely hounded the Church and even tried to destroy it. At that time, Paul believed the Church to be the enemy of truth and the enemy of God. Therefore, he used his time and skills and resources to eliminate Christians and their influence. Paul tells this in order to demonstrate, I believe, that he once embraced the very teaching he now is refuting-the teaching of the Judaizers. He is making the point that something changed him and when he was changed, his understanding of the nature of salvation changed, too.
My point here is supported by the next verse. Paul writes that he was “advancing in Judaism beyond many of [his] contemporaries among [his] countrymen, being more zealous for [his] ancestral traditions.” (v. 14) Paul was a dedicated Pharisee, a keeper of the Law, a strict adherent to all the Jewish traditions and manmade regulations which had been added to the oracles of God. He wasn't writing against the Judaizers as one unfamiliar with their thinking; he was writing as one who used to think that same way! But, as I said, Paul had been changed and had come to understand that salvation is not earned, but is freely provided by a merciful God. It was that merciful God, he goes on to say, “who set me apart even from my mother's womb and called me through His grace…” (v. 15) The change in Paul was supernaturally achieved. The God whom Paul thought he was serving ordained that he should be a servant of the truth. Even from the womb, the apostle declares, he was destined to preach this gospel of salvation by grace through faith alone.
And, so, in time, God was pleased to manifest His election of Paul as the apostle of grace and God did reveal His Son in Paul so that he might preach Christ among the Gentiles. (v. 16) Paul's message was one ordained by God and Paul, the messenger, was likewise ordained to that office by God. Paul was appointed and equipped to be a preacher to the Gentiles, Gentiles like those receiving this letter. The message burning in Paul's heart was not the former doctrine in which he believed; it was a new doctrine, a doctrine of freedom from the burden of the Law, a doctrine of faith, not works. Paul could not, knowing all this about himself, allow the Judaizers to vex the souls of the Galatians. They were trying to reintroduce a teaching which could lead only to misery and despair. Paul knew that there was another way to God and it was the way of God's grace. He had received that grace himself and now understood that no man approaches God on his own merit, but that God mercifully comes to man in Christ.
Having been given this doctrine from the risen Savior Himself, Paul writes that he did not consult with flesh and blood; that is, he did not submit what Christ had given him to the judgment of men, but accepted it for what it was, a doctrine from heaven. Nor did Paul feel compelled at that time to seek out the other apostles and gain their approval for his preaching ministry-again, he had been called and equipped by Christ and needed no authentication. (v. 17) Instead, Paul went away for a brief time into Arabia and then returned to Damascus where he preached the gospel in the synagogues.
Paul was fully prepared to refute the Judaizers knowing that his gospel was from Christ and knowing that he had been set apart by God for the purpose of proclaiming the good news of salvation by grace through faith alone to the Gentiles. The uniqueness of Paul's gospel and it's origin are both set forth in these verses as evidence that the apostle's message was to be believed and that the doctrine of the Judaizers was to be forsaken.
Conclusion
the uniqueness of the gospel… do you care about the gospel? are you able to define it precisely? do you recognize alterations to the gospel when you hear them? standing for the gospel as Paul does in this letter may require that you stand against well-meaning friends or even relatives who don't have a proper understanding of the gospel. understanding what is at stake (souls) motivates us to stand for the unique gospel
the origin of the gospel… how do you tell a false gospel from the truth gospel? gospels constructed by men will always involve something more than grace and faith; they will always involve some effort-perhaps a small, perhaps enormous-from the sinner
REMEMBER EXTRA HYMN