Recently, Liberal leader Stéphane Dion — sat down with Michael Coren for a one-hour interview on his TV program, The Michael Coren Show. Within the first 10 minutes of the discussion he made several mentions of God. Coren noted: “These weren’t passing phrases or clumsy slang but obvious, absolute references to the entity so fashionably unfashionable in left-wing circles these days. You could have knocked me down with a Gospel tract!”
Dion said that: “He was, for example, anxious to “reconcile people with God’s environment” and was committed to the planet “given to us by God.” Which is somewhat surprising. The deity is not a popular debating point for Liberal leaders. Actually, the Supreme Being is mentioned by ambitious Liberal politicians about as often as Brian Mulroney’s good points. So I was rude enough to ask Mr. Dion if he was doing this — sounding religious — because he had been told that the station on which my show appears each night, CTS, was faith-based. Frankly, I expected him to deny, obfuscate or simply lie. (It says a great deal about the man’s integrity as well as his innocence that) he replied on air with a simple, “This is true.” A pause, then, “I have been told that this is important to the people who watch this show.”
(http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fullcomment/archive/2008/08/25/michael-coren-st-233-phane-dion-finds-god.aspx)
The Apostle Paul was accused by the Judiziers of telling the churches of Galatia what they wanted to hear. He was accused of watering down the gospel and a message and that he was proclaiming an unauthorized, second-hand gospel. After defining the true nature of the Gospel in the beginning of Galatians Paul must now defend the fact that his message is not an unauthorized, second-hand gospel, but one directly from Christ and uninfluenced by others.
What do we tell others about ourselves and what God expects? Do we sugar coat our sins and tell people what they want to hear, by an easy-believism message?
In Galatians 1:13-24, the apostle Paul gives an account of himself, providing insight into how God calls an individual and how we are to respond. It clarifies how we are to view our pre-converted lives, how God changes us and the testimony in understanding and vocalizing this new reality.
From the three periods of his spiritual life- 1) Preconversion, 2) Conversion, and 3) Post-conversion, Paul shows how certain events before he was saved, when he was saved, and after he was saved all prove his message was received from God and how we can testify to God’s radically changing grace.
1) PRECONVERSION PROOF (Galatians 1:13–14)
Galatians 1:13-14 [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. (ESV)
Having set forth his thesis of the nonhuman origin of the gospel in the two preceding verses, Paul now begins a demonstration of its truth in terms of historical proofs derived from his own life and ministry: He is showing that (1) Nothing in Paul’s religious background could account for his acceptance of the gospel (1:13–17). (2) Paul was not commissioned by the Jerusalem church (1:18–20). (3) Those Paul formerly persecuted glorified God because of the change wrought in him (1:21–24) (George, T. (2001, c1994). Vol. 30: Galatians (electronic ed.). Logos Library System; The New American Commentary (113). Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers.)
Here Paul describes his former standing and activities while be was in Judaism, offering them as a kind of negative proof that his message of grace had no foundation in the beliefs, circumstances, or events of his former life.
• This is very important for us in considering the proclamation of our testimony. We must make it clear in our testimony of conversion that it was not the wisdom we had, our circumstances or what we did or thought in any way that we came to faith.
Paul had been a Jew of the first order. This is how he described his pedigree:
Philippians 3:5-6 [5]circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; [6]as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless. (ESV)
His preconversion life was centered totally in law and tradition. Grace was a foreign concept to the religion of Saul the Pharisee, despite the fact that grace was as much the basis of the Old Covenant as the New. God’s redemptive work originated from His grace and has never had any other basis. But most Jews, indoctrinated by the religiously dominant scribes and Pharisees, had long since lost sight of God’s grace and had instead come to trust in their own works and goodness to please God. Accordingly, everything in the apostle’s former manner of life in Judaism had been diametrically opposed to the message of sovereign and saving grace of Jesus Christ he now proclaimed and defended.
• This is the basis for most people’s belief system. We looked at a system of evangelism in the Way of the Master to ask people do you consider yourself a good person. Most people will respond that they do.
• If you ask most people why they think God should let them into heaven, it is usually an answer of some work they do, have done or that they are better than someone else.
o This all naturally fails to realize God’s standard is perfection. He requires that we be holy as He is holy (1 Pt. 1:15). This can only be accomplished though the person and work of Christ.
The first aspect of Paul’s former … life that proved he had no previous grounding for the gospel was that he persecuted the church of God violently and tried to destroy it. His preconversion knowledge of the gospel, veiled and distorted as it was, made him realize that this radical way of salvation allowed no place for works righteousness and therefore completely undercut legalistic Judaism.
Conversely, legalistic Judaism allowed no place for a gospel of grace and therefore sought to destroy those who believed and taught it.
The original language is vivid in describing Paul’s hostility. The phrase that he persecuted is in the imperfect tense and emphasizes a persistent and continual intent to harm. The word destroy was used of soldiers ravaging a city. It is also used here in the imperfect, thereby emphasizing the persistence of Paul’s destructive effort. He was determined to utterly extinguish the church. Apparently he used the title the church of God to stress that this was not just a group belonging to Jesus, so that whoever opposed it, opposed only Jesus. Rather, whoever opposes the church opposes God.
Please turn to Acts 8
Saul the Pharisee had had such passion for traditional Judaism that he could tolerate no contradiction or compromise of it by fellow Jews.
Immediately after the martyrdom of Stephen:
Acts 8:3 [3]But Saul was ravaging the church, and entering house after house, he dragged off men and women and committed them to prison. (ESV)
Now over to Acts 9
Perhaps a year later:
Acts 9:1-2 [9:1]But Saul, still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord, went to the high priest [2]and asked him for letters to the synagogues at Damascus, so that if he found any belonging to the Way, men or women, he might bring them bound to Jerusalem. (ESV) (cf. 22:4–5; 26:10–11).
His single, overriding passion was to destroy the infant church. It was partly because of that activity that he always had a great sense of unworthiness when contemplating God’s saving grace in his behalf (cf. 1 Cor. 15:9; 1 Tim. 1:12–14).
• Although it is more unusual in these prideful days, there are some who fight professing faith in Christ expressing a sense of shame or unworthiness. This is exactly what is needed for genuine faith. Grace shows us that we are unworthy for eternally life and it is God’s graciousness that he gives eternal life.
The second aspect of Paul’s former life that proved he had no previous grounding in the gospel was his unequaled zeal for traditional Judaism. He was advancing in Judaism beyond many of my own age among my people, so extremely zealous was I for the traditions of my fathers
Advancing is from prokoptô, which literally means to chop ahead, as in blazing a trail through a forest. Saul kept on blazing his trail in Judaism, which meant cutting down anything in his path such as Jewish Christians, who in his mind were arch traitors to their ancestral traditions of his fathers. He was so extremely zealous that he said:
Acts 26:11 [11]And I punished them often in all the synagogues and tried to make them blaspheme, and in raging fury against them I persecuted them even to foreign cities. (ESV)
In his extreme zeal, he exceeded many of his contemporaries. Few Jews matched his passion for his religion and his intolerance for the truth about Jesus Christ.
Traditions of his fathers refers to the body of oral teachings about the Old Testament law that came to have equal authority with the law commonly known as the Halakah, this collection of Torah interpretations became a fence around God’s revealed law and all but hid it from view. Over a period of several hundred years it had expanded into a mammoth accumulation of religious, moral, legal, practical, and ceremonial regulations.
Living as a devout Pharisee, Paul was outdone by few
Quote: John R. W. Stott writes: “Now a man in that mental and emotional state is in no mood to change his mind, or even to have it changed for him by men. … Only God could reach him-and God did!” (The Message of Galatians [London: Inter-Varsity, 1968], p. 32).
Paul’s point in reciting these two general features from his past life was that, prior to his encounter with Christ, there was not the slightest human preparation or source for his understanding, much less accepting anti proclaiming, the gospel of salvation by God’s grace working through faith completely apart from works. It was foreign to all his previous thinking.
We have seen 1) PRECONVERSION PROOF (Galatians 1:13–14) and now:
2) CONVERSION PROOF (Galatians 1:15–16a)
But when He who had set me apart, even from my mother’s womb, and called me through His grace, was pleased to reveal His Son in me, that I might preach Him among the Gentiles, (1:15–16a)
Verses 15–17 constitute one long and rather difficult sentence in Greek. Paul’s purpose was to amplify what he had said already in v. 1, namely, that his apostolic work was neither “from men nor by man, but by Jesus Christ.”
Thus he did not rehearse the specific details of his conversion experience but rather cited it as proof that his apostolic calling was due solely to the initiative of God and therefore did not depend on human validation.( George, T. (2001, c1994). Vol. 30: Galatians (electronic ed.). Logos Library System; The New American Commentary (117). Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers.)
Not until Christ sovereignly in resurrection glory confronted him on the road to Damascus did Paul respond to the great reality of the gospel: that Jesus, though put to death and buried, was now alive. He immediately realized that only a resurrected Jesus could proclaim from heaven, “I am Jesus whom you are persecuting” (Acts 9:5).
No human explanation or influence could account for the 180 degree turnaround in Saul’s life. He had been like a runaway freight train that crushes everything in its path. He had lost control of his life and was without restraint. His legalistic zeal had put him on a headlong course of destruction from which no natural force short of death could have deterred him. His apostolic calling could only have been supernatural and sovereign, completely apart from human testimony or persuasion (though he may have heard much truth from the Christians he captured).
Paul did not initiate the choice to be saved, much less the choice to be an apostle. He was “called as an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God” (1 Cor. 1:1). The phrase when He who had set me apart refers to the elective purpose of God before Paul was even able to consider a choice.
The Lord set apart Paul to salvation and apostleship not because Paul developed great leadership ability and writing skill or was a determined and hard worker. He had been set apart and consecrated by God even from his mother’s womb, long before he could have demonstrated the least potential for anything.
This purpose became historical fact on the Damascus Road and in the subsequent days, when, Paul says, God called me through His grace. By means of unmerited love and kindness God actually and efficaciously brought the already elect Saul to Himself in salvation.
God was pleased to reveal His Son to Saul in a direct and absolutely unique way: Acts 9:3-6 [3]Now as he went on his way, he approached Damascus, and suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him. [4]And falling to the ground he heard a voice saying to him, "Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?" [5]And he said, "Who are you, Lord?" And he said, "I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting. [6]But rise and enter the city, and you will be told what you are to do." (ESV)
In his testimony before King Agrippa, Paul gives further details of his first encounter with the risen Lord. After identifying Himself as “Jesus whom you are persecuting,” the Lord said
Acts 26:15-17 [15]And I said, ’Who are you, Lord?’ And the Lord said, ’I am Jesus whom you are persecuting. [16]But rise and stand upon your feet, for I have appeared to you for this purpose, to appoint you as a servant and witness to the things in which you have seen me and to those in which I will appear to you, [17]delivering you from your people and from the Gentiles--to whom I am sending you (ESV)
The phrase in me does not force us to interpret the revelation as a purely internal, subjective feeling but can mean “to me” and carry the idea of objective experience.
Please turn to 1 Corinthians 2
The call to be saved was accompanied by the call to serve, to preach Him among the Gentiles. Although the experience of Paul was utterly unique, God does not call any person to salvation whom He does not also call to service.
And the subject of his testimony and preaching was Him, Jesus Christ. To the Corinthians Paul wrote concerning “the testimony of God,” that it called for him
1 Corinthians 2:1-5 [2:1]And I, when I came to you, brothers, did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God with lofty speech or wisdom. [2]For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. [3]And I was with you in weakness and in fear and much trembling, [4]and my speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, [5]that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God. (ESV)
• The Judaizers needed to see that the Gentiles did not need to hear the law of Moses or the traditions of the Jewish elders-only the gospel of Jesus Christ.
• Think also then for our testimonies. As we are also commanded to proclaim the testimony of God we need to admit our own weakness and reverence for God in our words, lest people think it was because we reached a particular stature of wisdom or good works that we came to faith.
o It must also be accompanied with as Paul said, the demonstration of the Sprit and of Power. We should describe that the Holy Spirit showed us our sin and need for repentance and how He has been gracious in working through us.
o A testimony is not a story of a wild and sinful lifestyle. We should recognize yes what we have been delivered from, but also how the Lord has and presently is working in us. If we can’t recognize this, then perhaps we are allowing sin or fear from as Paul says, the demonstration of the Spirit and of power.
So the choice of Paul, his transformation, the revelation and call to preach to the nations were all done by God, not human decision. Even after that, human effort or action played no part in his preparation to fulfill his calling.
We have seen 1) PRECONVERSION PROOF (Galatians 1:13–14) 2) CONVERSION PROOF (Galatians 1:15–16a) and finally:
3) POSTCONVERSION PROOF (Galatians 1:16b-24)
Galatians 1:16-24 [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. (ESV)
Quote: John Brown commented that, beginning with the Damascus Road encounter, Christ took Paul under His own immediate tutoring. It was essential for the Lord to establish Paul’s independence as an apostle. He was not taught by the other apostles but was fully equal to them.
After spending several days “with the disciples who were at Damascus” and preaching briefly in the synagogues there (Acts 9:19–20), Paul did not immediately consult with anyone. He sought from Ananias or other Christians at Damascus no advice or understanding, no clarification of the revelation he had received. It is not that he would not have been helped by going to learn from other believers, but his being given the unique place of reaching Gentiles seemed to demand that he not be seen as being merely convinced by some Jewish converts to this doctrine. Gentiles might have been more reluctant to accept his message if they perceived of it as of Jewish origination.
In verse 17, it says that Paul went away to Nabatean Arabia, a region that stretched east from Damascus down to the Sinai peninsula. Although he does not identify the exact location, it seems likely that he stayed near Damascus, The place and purpose of his sojourn in Arabia are unknown, but that was surely the place of his preparation for ministry.
After his stay in Arabia, the apostle returned again to Damascus and continued preaching there for a period of time. He almost immediately encountered persecution from the Jewish leaders, a group that doubtlessly included some of the men with whom he himself had once planned to conspire against the Christians (see Acts 9:2).
The fact that Paul mentions in 2 Cor. 11:32 that “in Damascus the ethnarch under Aretas the king [of Nabatean Arabia] was guarding the city of the Damascenes in order to seize [Paul]”. This also suggests that the apostle also preached in Arabia and had aroused the displeasure of its king. In any case, the Gentile civil authorities of Damascus supported the efforts of the Jewish leaders to arrest and execute Paul (cf. Acts 9:23–24).
Paul’s opponents in Galatia had sought to undermine his authority and his message by claiming that he dealt in a secondhand gospel, one originally derived from the apostles at Jerusalem but then changed and compromised by Paul without their knowledge or approval.
Up to this point in chap. 1 Paul has responded to this charge by issuing his primary line of defense: he received his gospel by direct revelation from God, not through any human mediation, and furthermore, he had been set apart and called by God to carry this message to the Gentiles even prior to his birth.
Now, beginning in v. 18, Paul developed a second line of defense, a tightly woven alibi designed to show that his contacts with the Jerusalem church were such that he could not possibly have had the kind of subordinate leadership to its leaders that his opponents alleged (George, T. (2001, c1994). Vol. 30: Galatians (electronic ed.). Logos Library System; The New American Commentary (126). Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers.)
• Think of the implications here as he went to preach in Damascus. He is returning to the very region he went to persecute. This is the most humbling and courageous.
• For you own life, have you gone back to where you were most destructive to preach the gospel and testify of a changed life. The testimony that you can have here from an authentic conversion is one of the most dramatic. You will be challenged but you will also have a unique reception.
In verse 18, the two periods of preaching in Damascus and the in-between sojourn in Arabia alone with Lord Jesus-learning, meditating, and studying the Old Testament totaled three years. After that, Paul went up to Jerusalem (not to be confused with a later famine relief trip there from Antioch, mentioned in Acts 11:30, or the trip to the council of Acts 15) to visit/become acquainted with Cephas, that is, the apostle Peter. Paul makes a point of noting that he went solely for the purpose to visit/becoming acquainted with Cephas, who was the personal companion of the Lord Jesus and the most powerful spokesman in the early years of the Jerusalem church, from Pentecost on (Acts 2:14–40; 3:11–26; 4:8–20; 5:3–32; 8:20–25). He only remained/stayed with him fifteen days, obviously far too short a time to have been fully transformed from all his Jewish theology and tradition and fully instructed in the gospel.
In verse 19, it states that Paul did not see any other of the apostles except James, the Lord’s brother. Paul’s visit to Jerusalem was not to learn more about the gospel message but to meet and to visit/get acquainted with (the verb means “to visit with the purpose of getting to know someone”) these two men who had been so close to Jesus and perhaps to learn from them some of their intimate experiences with the incarnate Lord, whom he had come to love and serve, and with whom he had spent those three years getting acquainted.
Without the help of Barnabas, Paul would not have been able visit even Peter and James. He met none of the other apostles at all, who may have been too afraid or may have been away from Jerusalem at the time. (12:17).
In verse 20, to give his readers the greatest possible confidence in what he was writing, Paul made a common Jewish vow: (In what I am writing to you, before God, I do not lie!)/I assure you before God that I am not lying.
• Paul’s point in this part of the letter was to affirm that he had received his gospel directly from the Lord, not from the other apostles.
• He only visited two of them for two weeks, and only after three years had elapsed since his conversion. Any accusation that he was a second-hand apostle, receiving his message from the Jerusalem apostles, was false.
In verse 21, after Paul left Jerusalem he went into the regions of Syria and Cilicia, the latter of which included his home town of Tarsus (see Acts 9:11, 30). This move was precipitated by another group of hostile Jews who were “attempting to put him to death” (Acts 9:29). He was escorted out of Jerusalem to the port city of Caesarea, where he likely took a ship to his home town of Tarsus. He preached there until Barnabas called for him to come to Antioch in Syria.
• One of the hardest places to proclaim our testimony is where we are most known. I could imagine that in Tarsus, Paul’s hometown he was ridiculed by his pre-converted live.
• How do we respond when what we were is thrown up in our face? Like Paul, the message of the Gospel comes before our actions, but our changed life should now be evident.
During a stay of several years in those regions, Paul preached (v. 23). The other apostles were still in Judea and Samaria and had no contact with or influence on him.
• There are certain things evident in this narrative that are informative for our actions. Notice the years of training and preparation before mission work. Although there is validity in short term and accompanied team work, unaccompanied or untrained mission work is not necessarily a good thing. It is wise to show the Holy Spirit working through an individual life and learn elements of theology and other training before certain mission work.
In these closing verses of chap. 1 the perspective shifts away from Paul’s missionary activities in faraway Syria and Cilicia back to the local environment around Jerusalem. This reminds us again of why it was necessary for Paul to tell the Galatians that he went to Syria and Cilicia. Obviously he is proving that he did not have the apostles as teachers anywhere but was himself a teacher everywhere. If his preaching ministry carried him far away from Jerusalem for such an extended time, he could hardly have been working under the authority or tutelage of the apostles who were still based in Judea at that time. However, it was nonetheless important for Paul to register the reaction of the Jerusalem churches to his early ministry. He did this by referring to three facts: 1) his lack of personal acquaintance with the Judean churches, 2) the impression of his work that was conveyed to them, and 3) their jubilant reaction at the report of the persecutor-turned-proclaimer. (George, T. (2001, c1994). Vol. 30: Galatians (electronic ed.). Logos Library System; The New American Commentary (131). Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers.)
In verse 22, at this time Paul was still unknown in person/by sight to the churches of Judea that are in Christ.
• Churches is a plural designation indicating local assemblies that are part of the one church.
• Paul’s two visits to Jerusalem did not include visiting the churches of Judea, which region was usually thought of separately from its major city. Jerusalem (see Acts 1:8).
• It is very important to inform our concept of the church in the plural form. We should consider that we are a part of a wider body of all local assemblies that stand firm on gospel truth. Other churches are not our competition, we fight evil and sin not other ministry.
In verse 23, all that those churches knew about this independent apostle was what they only were hearing it said, "He who used to persecute us is now preaching the faith he once tried to destroy."
• For obvious reasons, it had been extremely difficult for believers to accept the genuineness of Paul’s conversion (see Acts 9:13–14, 21, 26). But when the Lord gave such great blessing to Paul’s ministry, resulting in his own persecution (vv. 23–24, 29), his fellow Christians could no longer doubt he was a specially chosen and gifted man of God, and they were glorifying God because of him.
• Like the challenge that Paul had in his home town, it will be difficult to overcome a reputation. Fruit of a changed life shows the genuineness of gospel transformation.
Illustration: In our own day the dramatic turnaround in the life of such a person as Charles Colson can only be explained by a divine intervention from above. While many were at first wary of Colson’s “born-again” experience, no objective observer, not even his detractors, can gainsay the sincerity of his commitment to Christ after so many years of consistent Christian living and his positive witness for the gospel in word and deed. So it was with Paul.
What Paul, the former persecutor, now proclaimed was “the faith,” not merely his faith, not yet the church’s faith, but “the” faith.(George, T. (2001, c1994). Vol. 30: Galatians (electronic ed.). Logos Library System; The New American Commentary (132). Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers.)
• This is a key distinction in proclaiming the gospel in our testimony. We must make it very clear that this is not just our personal subjective experience, or how we understand ourselves because we have joined a particular church, but the objective reality of factual faith.
As is Jude verse 3
Jude 1:3 [3]Beloved, although I was very eager to write to you about our common salvation, I found it necessary to write appealing to you to contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints. (ESV)
In the conclusion to Paul’s testimony here he make note that he and Barnabas only made two visits to Jerusalem, as it says in verse 24, being cause for glorified God. The fact that the people were praising God for the very same gospel they knew shows it was identical to that taught by the Jerusalem apostles and was truly from the Lord.
• When you hear of reports of gospel preaching elsewhere, and people coming to genuine faith in Jesus Christ, do not be jealous.
• Glorify God that he works in different areas and pray that we may see His hand working here. What is the way that God has commanded for this to occur? Have a clear testimony of Gospel grace and proclaim to everyone who will hear about the Gospel. Perhaps we don’t see God’s hand working here as it could, is because of a lack of these things.
In what we have seen from Galatians 1:13-24, Paul’s point through all of this detailed autobiography was that the charges of the Judaizers was absurd on the surface. The church in Jerusalem, which was still overseen by the other apostles and James, the Lord’s half brother, had long since recognized his apostolic office and authority and glorified God because of him.
• Let us derive our authority from scripture and pray that others may glorify God from our words and our actions.
(Format note: Outline and some base commentary from MacArthur, J. (1996, c1987). Galatians. Includes indexes. (25). Chicago: Moody Press.)
