Gospel Roots - Whose Idea?
Galatians 1:11-24

 Because Paul had been accused of taking his marching orders from other people and not from God, he wants the Galatian believers to know that his efforts in the gospel have been God’s idea and no one else’s. What supporting evidence does the apostle offer?

1. Truth simply stated (1:11-12)
2. Paul’s old way of life (1:13-14)
3. Turnaround by God’s grace (1:15-16)
4. Travels since conversion (1:17-21)
5. Testimony of God’s glory (1:22-24)

Ad hominum means “against the man.” It’s a form of argument that normally is used illogically. In other words, you may be saying something that’s absolutely true but because I don’t want anyone to lay hold of that, I won’t discredit what you say, I’ll discredit you. I’m attacking the man, you see, undercutting the source, regardless of the truth.

Paul is under attack as we head into Galatians. One of the primary reasons he wrote Galatians was to set the record straight. He had presented the Galatian churches with the simple gospel of Jesus. Troublemakers had followed in his steps saying that gospel is fine, but there’s more. And in their case, the more amounted to, “But you must submit to Jewish circumcision if you really want to be right with God.

Paul, knowing that eternal issues are hanging in the balance, is coming back in this letter to the Galatians, writing to those people and those who are undercutting him, saying, “No, here’s the truth. “ In the verses we’re going to cover today, Paul is going to say, “This is true and this is how I know it’s true.” He is defending the gospel at its roots.

They’re saying, “He’s making this up. This is just Paul talking.” They say Paul is just a lap dog for the Jerusalem apostles; you don’t have to take him seriously. Paul is coming back, beginning in verse 1 of Galatians 11, saying “No.” We’ll cover five statements of evidence, you might say, that the gospel is from God, not of human origin.

Truth simply stated (1:11-12)

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.

This is truth simply stated; he is just telling them the way it is. Notice first of all that the apostle is being nice. He started off (verse 6) where he leaves off his greeting, “Hello Galatians,” to “I can’t believe you people!”

In verse 10 he says, “I’m offering you a gentle reminder, brethren” (he is being nice to them) “that the good news which I preached to you as good news is not from people. No man made this up.” Think about that. If in fact people were to invent the good news of how to get to heaven, and it’s been done many times over, I would suspect it would go one of two tracks.

Track one would go this way, “Live as you would. Everybody goes to heaven anyway.” The problem with that, as Paul knows and the Bible makes clear, is that we’re dealing with a Holy God who will not, indeed by His nature, cannot, sanction sin or anything less than His perfection. We have a problem then with everybody taking all their baggage and showing up at the door of heaven and saying, “I think I ought to live here.” That’s one way the good news might be presented.

There’s another possibility and that is, “There’s a way, but we can earn it.” Follow the rules, be this way, believe that way, look the other way, and if you perform well in however long you’re allowed to live here, then when you stand before Him, He’ll have to let you in, you’ll have earned it.

There’s a problem with that too, at least as far as the Bible is concerned. The Bible says the only way to heaven is not by earning it. Isaiah says all our righteousness is as filthy rags. We can’t do it; it’s impossible to be done. You cannot build a clean house with filthy materials. So that’s no good either. Also, in that scheme, God doesn’t get all the glory which He not only insists on getting, but which He totally deserves.

It says good news is not according to man. This is something that impresses me even more profoundly when I think in terms of a brother or sister going on to heaven. This is so important. This is God’s doing. This is God taking the initiative to invade people’s lives.  He takes the initiative. That is just remarkably wonderful. God starts the process. God’s heaven is where He lives. He prepares a place there for us, then comes and gets us and takes us there. It isn’t an issue of us getting ourselves there, He takes care of all that. It’s God’s idea.

The apostle says in verse 11, “I did not receive this from men, nor was I taught it.”  But I received it through revelation. It’s a huge word upon which Paul hangs his whole argument. “I received it from revelation. I didn’t learn it from people. I wasn’t taught it from people. I got it from a completely different route.” Revelation -- the same word as the book of the Bible. The word has an interesting meaning.

Let me share a basic definition of the word “revelation.” It means an announcement from God’s side of what lies beyond human reach. It’s as though there were parallel worlds, shall we say, and we just can’t get to the other one. We know it is there, but we can’t break through. However, someone from there has the option of breaking through to us and Paul is saying that’s what revelation is -- someone from the other side. God has come to me, to reveal to me what’s true there.

The other side is heaven and from there God has come directly to Paul. No human agency here. “I didn’t get this from people; I got it through revelation.” And that is exciting. An announcement of God of what lies beyond human reach. It’s by the intervention of Jesus Christ. Intervention --He just steps in for good reason.

That word intervention has come into vogue in recent years. In the world of sociology, psychology, behavioral stuff, intervention happens when someone is misbehaving. Perhaps there’s a problem in the home, maybe it has to do with domestic issues, chemical issues, but there’s a problem and so all the people who matter invade the home, unannounced. Just show up, surround the offender and say, “Have you ever heard of tough love? We’re not going to put up with this any more. We’re going to insist on change.” And in a way that’s what is happening with Paul. The situation is no good. It’s a fallen world. Sin reigns. The devil is the prince of the power of the air. Jesus steps in and says, “This is a bad situation. I’m going to intervene.”

Paul says that intervention hit him right between the landing lights. “I can take you to the place right on the road outside of Damascus where my course of life was all messed up and Jesus took me to the ground with it. Personally.” So he is saying, “Truth simply stated. I didn’t make this up. It came from God.”

Paul’s old way of life (1:13-14)

Paul says, “Don’t you remember my previous life? No one who lived like I lived would make this up. That’s absurd. I remember my former way of life and it contrasts tremendously. You’ve heard of my former life.”

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.

My ancestral traditions - the traditions of my fathers. Please understand, the traditions of my fathers is not Biblical truth. The traditions of the fathers was a body of teaching that was pulled out of Biblical truth and that various schools of thought, among them the Pharisees, rallied around and said, “This sounds good. This is the way I like to perceive the faith.” And they added all kinds of rules, put themselves in positions of power and authority and then went after anyone who didn’t agree with them.

Paul is saying, “The traditions of my fathers which helped me think that I was working my way to heaven and made me feel good about my religious life, about my performance, about the things I could do -- those traditions took me down a path that was in opposition to what God was doing.” Then he describes the opposition very graphically. “My former manner of life.” He uses verbs that mean this is an ongoing way of living it. He says, “I was persecuting the church of God. I was persecuting -- do you think I am going to make something up? I was pillaging it, literally going into people’s homes and wrecking their stuff because they were Christian. This is not the type of guy who makes up a gospel. He has one already. It’s wrong, but he’s holding tightly to it and pursuing it with fervor.

He says, “As a matter of fact, I’m leading the pack. I was advancing in Judaism in the religion of the traditions of my fathers. I was leading the way, above my colleagues in my generation, being abundantly zealous.” Paul’s old way of life would hardly lead to a gospel of grace.

Turnaround by God’s grace (1:14-16)

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,

Major interruption! Here he is referring to that Damascus Road experience. He is in the process of pursuing and pillaging and advancing and totally, literally out of the blue, light and noise! He hits the ground and hears the voice, “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting Me?” “Who are you, Lord?” “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting.”

He took away his sight for a few days, and came out of Ananias’ house in Damascus all born again. God did that. He just stepped in with His cosmic two by four. The apostle is born again. Remember what Jesus said about being born again -- “Not by will of men, nor by will of the flesh, but by God.” That’s really nothing new. I’ll go back, from our perspective, 3000 years to Psalm 139.

David, the eighth in a string of sons, the youngest and at least in accordance to appearance the least likely to be the king was nevertheless God’s choice for king. In Psalm 139 David is reflecting:

¹⁵ My frame was not hidden from You when I was made in secret, and skillfully wrought in the depths of the earth, ¹⁶ Your eyes have seen my unformed substance; and in Your book were all written the days that were ordained for me, when as yet there was not one of them.

God is way ahead on all of these things.

Jeremiah 1
¹ The words of Jeremiah the son of Hilkiah, of the priests who were in Anathoth in the land of Benjamin,² to whom the word of the Lord came in the days of Josiah the son of Amon, king of Judah, in the thirteenth year of his reign.

This is real life. This happened in history. Real people, real stuff going on.

³ It came also in the days of Jehoiakim the son of Josiah, king of Judah, until the end of the eleventh year of Zedekiah the son of Josiah, king of Judah, until the exile of Jerusalem in the fifth month.⁴ Now the word of the Lord came to me saying, ⁵ Before I formed you in the womb I knew you

God is living in a world, in an existence we can’t get to. But he can. He says “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you and before you were born I consecrated you.” Jeremiah doesn’t remember that. He doesn’t have to. God knows it. This is Him stepping in from where He lives. This is revelation. The curtain is being parted. He is stepping in from His world, in this case to Jeremiah’s and saying, “You’re mine. I have claims on you. Before you were born I consecrated you. I have appointed you a prophet to the nation.” Very similar to what He was later to tell Saul on the road to Damascus, except in a gentler fashion. This is how it is with God. That is what makes the gospel the gospel in that it is God’s way, it is His initiative.  He steps in from His good world to our bad one, rescues us and takes us out of it and Paul knew that. That’s why to him, the gospel was the most precious truth -- not to be tweaked.

Revelation -- he says he was pleased to reveal His Son in me. I had to take that good news out to all the nations. There’s a contrast Paul is drawing between revelation from God on one hand in this verse and the traditions of people that he had been following in his previous life. He is saying one leads to life and the other doesn’t. The other was my world then; this is my world now. I don’t need to be schooled by those people. I went to the classroom of Jesus.

Travels since conversion (1:17-20)

The longest section is the one we will deal with now. He says, “I was converted, and if I were a lap dog of those apostles to the north you would think I would go trotting up there and allow them to open my head and pour in information.” He said, “No, that’s not what happened. I didn’t go up to Jerusalem and go through orientation. I went away and I got acquainted with the Savior.”

He said in verse 16:  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. ¹⁸ Then three years later I went up to Jerusalem to become acquainted with Cephas, and stayed with him fifteen days.
¹⁹ But I did not see any other of the apostles except James, the Lord's brother.
²⁰ (Now in what I am writing to you, I assure you before God that I am not lying.)
²¹ Then I went into the regions of Syria and Cilicia.

What he has done is to share his initial travels as a new apostle with the idea of saying, “Look, I didn’t go some place and get indoctrinated.” According to Acts chapter 9, the text is very clear that he began right away preaching in Damascus. The Arabian Desert comes right up to Damascus on the south and the east side.

According to what we can understand between Acts 9, Galatians 1, and II Corinthians 11: 32, the apostle stayed in that area for some time until he was becoming enough of a problem that Aretas, the reigning governor said they had to get rid of him and that’s when they lowered Paul over the wall in a basket, and he made his way to Jerusalem.

When he went to Jerusalem the first time, as he tells us here, he got better acquainted with Cephas (Peter). He said, “I didn’t see any of the other apostles, but I did see James, the Lord’s brother. Not James, John’s brother, the son of Zebedee, but James, the Lord’s half brother who wrote the epistle James. James became the head of the Jerusalem church.

So Paul took 15 days circulating among the believers in the Jerusalem area. The word that is used is the word from which we get the English word “history.” He said I went there to get Peter’s history. Can you imagine the conversations? “Peter, tell me about this One I met on the road to Damascus. Tell me what He taught you. Tell me what He emphasized. Show me in the Scripture where He took you.”

It was probably the most meaningful 15 days of the apostle’s life to that point because Peter was there. Peter could tell him about everything right through the cross, right through the three denials, the resurrection, the resurrection appearances, and Jesus’ forgiveness and acceptance of Peter beyond that. Marvelous 15 days! And then he left. According to Acts chapter 9, he was engaging in conversation with a lot of the Helenistic Jews and so they sent him away to Caesarea and from Caesarea, which is on the coast, across the Mediterranean Sea to Cilicia and Syria which is where Tarsus is -- his home country -- where he spent the next 11 years.

His point, of course, through it all, is that this isn’t me. This is where I was and this is where I wasn’t. This is whom I learned from. This is whom I did not learn from. This is God’s word and God’s work because it’s about His heaven.  He’s going to provide the proof of the pudding in these last few verses.

Testimony of God glory (1:22-24)

If this were Paul’s thing, Paul could be a guru. Paul could be the one that people look to, the one that people could possibly bow to. He says, “No.”

²² I was still unknown by sight to the churches of Judea which were in Christ;

Interesting expression, “the churches,” the gatherings of people, the called out ones. Not the ones who were Jews, but the ones who were Christ’s. This is very, very early in the history of the church. Christians were still meeting in synagogues and they were gradually separating themselves and realizing there’s a difference. Paul said he was only there 15 days, he wasn’t well known to those people.

²³ but only, they kept hearing, "He who once persecuted us is now preaching the faith which he once tried to destroy."   ²⁴ And they were glorifying God because of me.

That’s what it’s about. God had stepped in from His world to Paul’s and used Paul to draw people’s attention back to God. That’s what it’s about. That’s what happened.

We’ve covered the verses; did we get the point? This is God’s to do. Paul understood himself as an agent of the grace of God and he said, “It worked. People came back glorifying God because of me.”  What a wonderful thing.