Galatians 1:11-24: The Divine Origin of the Gospel

Galatians 1:11-24: The Divine Origin of the Gospel

We’ve been working our way passage by passage through Paul’s letter to the Galatians, and today the next passage we come to is Galatians 1:11-24. It says,

11 For I would have you know, brothers, that the gospel that was preached by me is not man’s gospel. 12 For I did not receive it from any man, nor was I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ. 13 For you have heard of my former life in Judaism, how I persecuted the church of God violently and tried to destroy it. 14 And I was advancing in Judaism beyond many of my own age among my people, so extremely zealous was I for the traditions of my fathers. 15 But when he who had set me apart before I was born, and who called me by his grace, 16 was pleased to reveal his Son to me, in order that I might preach him among the Gentiles, I did not immediately consult with anyone; 17 nor did I go up to Jerusalem to those who were apostles before me, but I went away into Arabia, and returned again to Damascus. 18 Then after three years I went up to Jerusalem to visit Cephas and remained with him fifteen days. 19 But I saw none of the other apostles except James the Lord’s brother. 20 (In what I am writing to you, before God, I do not lie!) 21 Then I went into the regions of Syria and Cilicia. 22 And I was still unknown in person to the churches of Judea that are in Christ. 23 They only were hearing it said, “He who used to persecute us is now preaching the faith he once tried to destroy.” 24 And they glorified God because of me. 

May God bless the reading of his Word.

Let’s pray: Father, we’re told that there are different kinds of soils on which the seed of your Word falls—thorny soil, rocky soil, soil on a path, and good fertile soil. And it’s only when the seed falls on that last kind of soil that it actually produces fruit. So, please, help us to be that fertile soil this morning, so that the seed of your Word can take root and bear fruit in our lives. It’s in Jesus’ name we pray, amen.

Before his conversion, John Newton was notorious for his life of sin. He lived during the 1700’s and was born to a father who was the captain of a merchant ship and who took young John out to sea with him when John was only 11 years old. That would be the first of six voyages John would go on with his dad. Then, when John came of age, he joined the British Royal Navy but was eventually discharged on not-so-good terms and found himself following in his father’s footsteps as a sailor on various merchant ships—specifically ships that were involved in the slave trade. So, he basically kidnapped and enslaved fellow human beings for a living. 

He was also rebellious in just about every other way you could imagine as well. Of course, sailors aren’t typically known for their refined manners, but, by all accounts, John was something else. He lived a life of such profanity, coarseness, and debauchery that even many of his fellow sailors were reportedly shocked at his behavior. In fact, one time, the crew of his ship despised him so much that they actually left him in Africa to be the slave of a wealthy landowner there. Fortunately for him, though, his dad eventually sent someone to rescue him from that situation, and John subsequently rose in rank and became captain of his own slave ship. 

Yet, during one particularly severe storm, when John thought that the ship was surely going to sink and that all hope for survival was basically lost, he remembered some of the things his mother had taught him about Jesus when he was a young child. And in the midst of that storm, he experienced a profound change of heart. Even though, before that, he was known in the slave trading industry as “the Great Blasphemer,” he now embraced the God he had for so long rejected. And thankfully, through what can only be described as a miracle, the ship ended up weathering that storm. 

So, John Newton subsequently devoted his life to Jesus. He was eventually ordained into pastoral ministry and became a leader in the eighteenth-century evangelical movement and also played a key role in the movement to abolish the slave trade. So, talk about the grace of God changing a person—God took this profane, blasphemous, grossly immoral slave-trader and transformed him into a child of God with a new heart and a new purpose and a completely new way of living. Toward the very end of his life, as John was reflecting on all that he had been through and all that God had done in him and for him, he stated, “My memory is nearly gone; but I remember two things: That I am a great sinner, and that Christ is a great Savior.” 

It was also during that time shortly before his death that John composed his own epitaph to be inscribed on his tombstone. It reads, “John Newton, clerk. Once an infidel and libertine, a servant of slaves in Africa [talking about when he himself was enslaved there], was, by the rich mercy of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, preserved, restored, pardoned, and appointed to preach the faith he had long laboured to destroy.”

You may recognize that last portion of the epitaph as almost an exact quote of verse 23 of our main passage. Just as Newton says he was “appointed to preach the faith he had long laboured to destroy,” Galatians 1:23 records that the early Christians said of Paul that “He who used to persecute us is now preaching the faith he once tried to destroy.”

And there are indeed some very notable parallels between God’s grace in John Newton’s life and his grace in the Apostle Paul’s life—as we’ll see this morning from our main passage of Galatians 1:11-24. Just like God displayed his grace in an exceptionally powerful way in John Newton, he also displayed it in an exceptionally powerful way in Paul. And Paul never got over the grace God had shown him or the way God had transformed him. 

And in this passage, Paul reminds the Galatians of just how radically God had changed his life through the gospel in an effort to persuade the Galatians that it’s this gospel and this gospel alone that they should embrace. So, perhaps there have been times when you yourself have wondered, how can we know with certainty that the gospel we believe is true? How can we know that the message we believe about Jesus and what he’s done to save us genuinely comes from God? Well, that’s a key question that’s going to be addressed in our study of this passage. 

Yet before we go any further, it’s important for us to be aware of some background information related to what was going on in the Galatian churches. Certain false teachers, called “Judaizers,” had infiltrated the churches of Galatia. And the reason they were called “Judaizers” is because they were essentially telling the Gentile—or non-Jewish—Christians that they had to convert to Judaism in order for their Christian faith to be valid. For example, these Judaizers were teaching that the Gentile Christians who were men had to undergo the Jewish ritual of circumcision in order to be saved and go to heaven. 

And the Judaizers understood that in order to successfully propagate this teaching in the Galatian churches, they’d have to discredit Paul and call into question the legitimacy of his status as an apostle. So, that’s that they did. As one commentator explains, “[T]hey spread the idea that Paul was not a legitimate apostle but was self-appointed and that his motivation was to elevate himself and build up a personal following. They accused him of putting aside the Mosaic ceremonies, standards, and practices in order to make the gospel more appealing to Gentiles by removing its Jewish associations. He also made the gospel easier for Jews to accept, they argued, because he removed the demanding requirements of traditional Judaism to which all loyal Jews subscribed.” 

So, the Judaizers basically accused Paul of trying to create a following for himself by cutting corners and compromising Jewish teaching in order to make the gospel easier for Gentiles to accept. They also accused him of not being a legitimate apostle who was receiving revelation directly from God and instead accused him of getting his information secondhand from others. 

So, Paul writes this letter—and specifically this portion of the letter—in order to refute these claims and argue that the gospel he proclaimed to the Galatians was entirely of divine origin rather than any human origin. It wasn’t something he or others created in some sort of brainstorming session or strategy meeting, nor was it something he just read about somewhere but was instead a message he received directly from God. 

Look at verses 11-12. Paul writes, 11 For I would have you know, brothers, that the gospel that was preached by me is not man’s gospel. 12 For I did not receive it from any man, nor was I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ. So, simply stated, the main idea of these verses—and really the main idea of the entire passage—is that the gospel that Paul proclaims comes from God alone. Again, the gospel that Paul proclaims comes from God alone. In the language of verse 11, it’s not “man’s gospel” but rather God’s gospel. 

Unfortunately, this is the exact opposite of the way many in our society approach spiritual matters. The tendency nowadays isn’t to look to God for what’s true or seek out any kind of revelation from God but rather to look within ourselves in order to determine what’s true. It’s now all about whatever “feels” right to us and whatever we feel like believing. And a lot of times, what that ends up being is some sort of mixture of various ideas we’ve encountered—kind of like a buffet where you take a little bit of this and then a little bit of that and maybe a generous portion of something else. And you essentially create your own religious philosophy that revolves around your own preferences and intuitions. 

Yet Paul says that that’s not at all what he did. He states that the “gospel that was preached by me is not man’s gospel” but instead says that he “received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ.” And friends, that’s the kind of gospel we need as well—a gospel that comes from divine revelation rather than human imagination. We need the gospel of Christ—the gospel proclaimed by Paul and the other apostles and perfectly preserved for us in the pages of Scripture. We need God’s gospel rather than man’s gospel. 

And I believe that the divine origin of the gospel message that we as Christians believe is self-evident. In other words, we can be certain that the Christian gospel is true because of certain qualities it possesses that simply have to be from God. Now, it can often be very helpful to look into the historical evidence for Christianity. There’s certainly a place for that. But at the end of the day, the gospel is self-authenticating, and its divine origin is self-evident. When God opens your eyes to behold the glory of the gospel, you intuitively recognize that it just has to be from God. 

We might say that the gospel bears God’s fingerprints. Fingerprints, of course, are useful because they’re unique. No two people’s fingerprints are exactly the same. So, if someone’s fingerprints are on something, that’s a pretty reliable indication that they touched that object. A fingerprint is an identifier that points to the person who bears that print. And that’s the way it is with the gospel. The gospel bears God’s fingerprints. The glory of the gospel is such that anyone whose eyes have been opened can see quite plainly that this is a glory that can only come from God. Its divine origin is self-evident. And I’ll give you three examples of that—three examples of how the gospel can only come from God and isn’t the product of human imagination. 

First of all, the holiness of God is not what a sinful human would come up with. If we were inventing a deity, that deity wouldn’t be holy to the degree that the God of the Bible is holy. You see, the Bible teaches that God’s absolutely holy and has zero tolerance for sin—and not just for sinful behaviors but even for the sins of our heart. God never winks at our sins or sweeps them under the rug but rather is compelled by his own righteous and holy nature to judge us for our sins. And that’s not something we like to think about. In fact, it makes us very uncomfortable. And the more we think about God’s holiness and study the different facets and implications of God’s holiness in the Bible, the more uncomfortable we become. Because the fact is that we’re unholy and are therefore utterly undone and exposed by the absolute holiness of the God of the Bible. 

However, that very discomfort we experience is actually a powerful indication that the whole idea of this holy God isn’t the product of human imagination. A twentieth-century theologian named A. W. Pink once said it like this: “An ineffably holy God who has the utmost abhorrence of sin was never invented by any of Adam’s descendants.” Again, “An ineffably [or unspeakably] holy God who has the utmost abhorrence [or hatred] of sin was never invented by any of Adam’s descendants.” If we were inventing a god, we’d inevitably invent a god whose holiness is far below the holiness of the God of the Bible. Our god would be one who’s more tolerant of our sin. And yet, the God we find in the Bible is a God of absolute holiness.

In addition, not only is the holiness of God not what a sinful human would come up with, it’s also true that the love of God is not what a selfish human would come up with. You see, the gospel is a message of this holy and righteous God showing incredible mercy toward those who have rebelled against him and demonstrating his love for them in an astounding way. God the Father sent his own Son Jesus into this world on a rescue mission. Jesus entered our broken world in the humblest of circumstances and then proceeded to live a life that’s never been lived before—a perfect life free from even the smallest sin. He then voluntarily allowed himself to endure the agony of crucifixion. Because our sins had to be dealt with. Somebody had to be punished. Yet Jesus endured that punishment in our place. 

Romans 5:6-8 describes it like this: 6 For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. 7 For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die— 8 but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Think about that. Even while we were still sinners—even when we were in a state of active and hateful rebellion against God—Christ died for us. 

What human mind could ever invent a love like that? We don’t have the capacity to even comprehend such love, much less invent it. I mean, just think of the different groups in our society right now that are making their voices heard. Where else in this world outside of Christianity do you see people demonstrating or even talking about the idea of having genuine, sacrificial love for one’s enemies? I don’t think I’ve ever seen that or heard anyone talk about anything like that outside of Christianity and the Christian gospel. The love we see displayed in the gospel is utterly beyond anything humans could ever come up with and is therefore unmistakably divine. 

So, the holiness of God is not what a sinful human would come up with, the love of God is not what a selfish human would come up with, and then—to give one final example—the grace of God is not what a proud human would come up with. If we were inventing a religious system, it would revolve around human merit. I mean, just look around at the religions of the world. They’re all based on some sort of human merit or human accomplishment. That’s because our hearts are proud. 

In fact, our hearts are so proud that when many people hear about the gospel of God’s grace—which teaches that God offers eternal life as a free gift through his Son Jesus—many people in their pride find that idea to be offensive. The idea of salvation by grace alone and through faith alone offends human pride and undermines the self-righteous assumptions people like to make about themselves. And yet—for those of us whose eyes have been opened by God—this just makes it all the more evident that the gospel has to be from God. 

So, I know I’ve spent a lot of time on this idea, but I hope you can see how the gospel shines with a glory that’s unlike any other. Even though there’s no shortage of other religious philosophies and religious systems in this world, there’s an inherent glory in the gospel that simply isn’t seen anywhere else—a glory that, at the end of the day, is self-authenticating. The gospel is so glorious that it just has to be from God. It’s infinitely beyond anything the human mind could ever invent. It bears God’s fingerprints. In the words of C. S. Lewis, “Christianity must be from God, for who else could have thought it up?”

Yet, returning to our main passage, the Apostle Paul is in a unique position to confirm with even greater certainty that the gospel comes from God because he himself received it directly from God. As he says in verse 12, he “received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ.” We read about that happening in Acts 9. As Paul was traveling on the road to Damascus, Jesus personally appeared to Paul and reveled the gospel to him. Paul then spends the rest of the passage here in Galatians 1 telling the story of how he came to receive that revelation and what he did afterwards. 

He begins by reminding the Galatians of what he was like before receiving that revelation. He writes in verses 13-14, 13 For you have heard of my former life in Judaism, how I persecuted the church of God violently and tried to destroy it. 14 And I was advancing in Judaism beyond many of my own age among my people, so extremely zealous was I for the traditions of my fathers. 

Now, let’s just pause there for a moment. There’s a reason why Paul reminds the Galatians of how zealous he used to be for Judaism. And there’s a reason why he also reminds them in verse 23 of what the early Christians were initially saying about him—that “He who used to persecute us is now preaching the faith he once tried to destroy.” It’s because Paul’s emphasizing the way his encounter with Jesus—and the gospel he received from Jesus—transformed him. Paul’s writing these things in order to emphasize the radical nature of his transformation. Paul went from being Christianity’s fiercest opponent to being its most zealous advocate. He went from being the most aggressive persecutor of the church to being the greatest missionary the church has ever known. 

By the way, this is a wonderful reminder for us that God can change anyone. No one is beyond the scope of God’s grace or too far gone for God to save. That includes your family member or friend or coworker or neighbor who currently seems to be lightyears away from ever becoming a Christian. 

And, if you yourself aren’t yet a Christian, that includes you. It doesn’t matter what you’ve done or what kind of messes you’ve made in your life or how far down the path of sin you’ve gone. Jesus can change anybody—including you. That’s what he does. And he can change you not just in some superficial way but in the deepest and most profound way you can imagine. He can totally transform your desires, ambitions, priorities, perspectives—the entire trajectory of your life. He’s done it to other people in this room. He’s done it in me. And he can do it in you as well.

And the reason Paul goes out of his way in this passage to emphasize the radical way the gospel has transformed him is to demonstrate the power—and, by implication, the legitimacy—of the gospel he received and that he subsequently proclaimed all over the Roman world. The Galatians should be confident that the gospel they heard from Paul is indeed the true gospel because of the radical way—and even the miraculous way—it changed Paul himself. In other words, Paul’s using his own autobiography as one of his key arguments for the truth of the gospel he proclaims. 

And there’s a lot we can learn from that. As we seek to be faithful gospel witnesses today, we’d do well to remember that a changed life is one of the most powerful arguments we can make—especially to those who are skeptical—for the truth of the gospel. When we exhibit character qualities such as sacrificial love even for our enemies and transcendent joy even in the midst of suffering and just a general godliness that’s consistent with the message we proclaim, it has a unique way of getting people’s attention. Because people can argue all day long with abstract ideas and deductive reasoning, but one thing that’s very difficult for them to argue with is a changed life. 

Also, on a related note, when we’re seeking to share the gospel with someone, it’s often very helpful to share the gospel through our personal testimony. There’s something uniquely powerful about a story that really speaks to people’s hearts. And for people who are more skeptical by nature and who would otherwise try to poke holes in logical arguments for Christianity and find fault with our attempts at defending Christianity from an intellectual perspective, it’s a lot harder for them to argue with our personal experience. They’re in no position to say that we didn’t experience what we’re telling them we’ve experienced. So, a lot of times, sharing our personal testimony of how we came to know Jesus and the difference he’s made in our lives is a great way to sort of fly above all of the objections that someone might otherwise raise against the gospel. 

So, what I’m essentially suggesting is to weave the gospel into your personal testimony in such way that your testimony functions as a delivery mechanism of sorts for the gospel. You might compare it to the way a missile is used as a delivery mechanism for a warhead. The warhead, which is the component that actually does most of the damage, is attached to a missile, which is the component that carries the warhead where it needs to go. Likewise, a personal testimony is a great way to share the gospel with someone—as long as we’re deliberate, within our testimony, to clearly share not just our subjective story but also the objective truths of the gospel. 

So, here in Galatians 1, Paul leans heavily on his own story and the transformation he himself experienced as he seeks to persuade the Galatians of the truth of the gospel he proclaimed to them. As we’ve seen, he begins, in verses 13-14, by sharing what he was like before embracing the gospel. He then, in verses 15-17, continues to describe the subsequent trajectory of his life. He writes, 15 But when he who had set me apart before I was born, and who called me by his grace, 16 was pleased to reveal his Son to me, in order that I might preach him among the Gentiles, I did not immediately consult with anyone; 17 nor did I go up to Jerusalem to those who were apostles before me, but I went away into Arabia, and returned again to Damascus. 

So, when God revealed himself to Paul and commissioned him to proclaim the gospel among the Gentiles, that’s exactly what Paul did. Without consulting anyone else, Paul was obedient to what God called him to do and spent the rest of his life proclaiming that gospel message. As Paul says here, he began by spending some time in Arabia—presumably for a period of spiritual preparation—and then returned to Damascus. 

Paul then continues sharing his story in verses 18-24: 18 Then after three years I went up to Jerusalem to visit Cephas and remained with him fifteen days. 19 But I saw none of the other apostles except James the Lord’s brother. 20 (In what I am writing to you, before God, I do not lie!) 21 Then I went into the regions of Syria and Cilicia. 22 And I was still unknown in person to the churches of Judea that are in Christ. 23 They only were hearing it said, “He who used to persecute us is now preaching the faith he once tried to destroy.” 24 And they glorified God because of me. 

So, Paul’s point is that he received the gospel directly from God, was called directly by God to proclaim the gospel, and was conspicuously independent of any human influence in his subsequent obedience to God’s call. In other words, everything about the origin and transmission of the gospel was entirely divine. It all goes back to Paul’s statement in verse 11 that the gospel he preached isn’t in any way “man’s gospel.” Instead, it’s a gospel entirely from God.  

And because of the divine origin of the gospel, neither Paul nor the Judaizers nor anyone else is at liberty to change any part of it. That’s the underlying idea Paul’s seeking to communicate throughout this passage. Because the gospel comes to us from God, we don’t have the freedom to tweak it or to try to improve it or to alter it in any way. Instead, our role is simply to embrace what God’s revealed and spend our lives sharing it with other people. That’s what Paul was called to do on the road to Damacus and is what we’re called to do as well. 

In that regard, we’re a lot like the mailman. The mailman has one job, and that is to deliver the mail. He doesn’t have to stay up at night worrying about whether people will read the mail or what they’ll think of the mail. And he certainly doesn’t try to alter the contents of the mail he’s delivering. Instead, he simply carries people’s mail to their houses and puts it in their mailbox. That’s his job—to deliver the mail. 

And that’s the role we’ve been given as well. God’s entrusted us with something of infinite value—the message of the gospel. And he expects us to be faithful in relaying to others that very same gospel message without altering it in any way. Even if it’s not always the most popular or politically correct message, that makes no difference at all. Our job is simply to deliver the mail and leave the results to God.