Evidence for Paul’s Gospel
Galatians 2:11-24
Imagine you’re in some developing country and go you
go a market. You see these really upscale items: Armani, Versace, Kate
Spade, Rolex.
The
guy says these are authentic, not counterfeits.
Wouldn't you want verification? Wouldn't you want some kind of
evidence that you’re getting the genuine article? Before you spent money
and get on board the plane, wouldn't you want some assurance you have the real thing?
Or perhaps you’ve been dating a girl and you’re thinking
about proposing. You search for some assurance, some thing to make sure this is really the person
you want to spend your life with. Before
you tie the knot and make the commitment, you want to some kind of assurance.
That's what Paul is doing in this passage today. He wants to give assurance that he has the real gospel. Paul is defending the validity, authenticity of his gospel.
We’re probably cautious with our big purchases or with
our marriage decision. Paul wants us to
have real assurance that we have the right gospel. This isn’t about a $300 purchase or marriage
vow. This is about our eternal
destinies!
We get
this wrong, nothing else matters. We get
this right, nothing else matters. This
is the issue that eclipses all other issues.
Don’t you want to make sure you’ve got this right?
It’s important for us to understand the
background. As we mentioned in earlier
weeks, Paul had some opposers who were saying Paul
got it wrong. They were Jewish
Christians (Judaizers) who were emphasizing
circumcision (5:2) and the Mosaic law. They were saying that Paul is a late comer
and doesn’t really know his gospel. That
is, “Paul claims to be an apostle, but he’s not really one, and his claims to
preach the gospel, but he got it wrong.”
They suggested that Paul got his apostleship and his
gospel second-hand. He wasn’t there walking with Jesus around
So Paul is defending his apostleship so he can defend
the gospel.
The main point in this section,
the thesis statement is in vv 11-12.
I
want you to know, brothers, that the gospel I preached
is not something that man made up. I did
not receive it from any man, nor was I taught it; rather, I received it by
revelation from Jesus Christ.
Paul is refuting the
accusations: he is saying he didn’t make it up, he did
not receive this gospel from the apostles.
This is not a second-hand gospel.
He got his gospel directly from Christ.
Paul makes his defense by
telling his story. We get a little
autobiographical sketch. And in his
story, we see 2 main arguments against the charge that he got this gospel second-hand
from the apostles.
Radical Transformation
Notice this paragraph begins
and ends with Paul’s persecution of the church (vv. 13-14, 23-24).
v. 13
You’ll
remember that it was Saul (Paul) who authorized the stoning of Stephen, the
first Christian martyr. We read in Acts
9:1 that Saul (Paul) was “still breathing out murderous threats against the
Lord’s disciples.” Paul really thought
that Jesus and his movement were a dangerous and heretical thing to true
Judaism and would be better destroyed.
He was an enemy of Christ.
v. 14
Paul
was a Pharisee of Pharisees. He was a
devoted law-keeper. Paul gives his
Jewish resume:
circumcised
on the eighth day, of the people of
Paul
was not one to compromise on circumcision or the Mosaic Law. He was devoted to the Law and to the rabbinic
traditions of his forefathers.
vv. 23-24
Paul
is known as the persecutor turned preacher.
And now, Christians, instead of running away from him are praising God
for him.
So what happened???
Paul went from persecutor to preacher, from one who killed Christians to
one who was willing to be killed for being a Christian. He used to travel around trying to destroy
the church and now he travels around planting churches.
Now
he’s preaching, writing letters, being persecuted. What happened?!!
Paul was the last guy you’d expect to become a
follower of Jesus.
It’s like if Osama bin Laden
became a Christian [pictures side by side]!
They were both trying to kill Christians and so were zealous for their beliefs. It’s like bin Laden became a Christian!
In Paul’s day, there were many eyewitnesses for both
his days of persecution and his preaching.
V. 23, the report out there was that the persecutor had become a
preacher. No one was denying Paul’s
story.
To those who were suggesting that Paul got his gospel
from the apostles, Paul would have said, I’m the last guy that would have even
listened to the apostles. I was the one
trying to kill them!
Did Paul receive the gospel from the apostles in
Or did Jesus Christ meet Paul on the
An 18th century writer said that the
conversion and apostleship of Paul was itself evidence to prove that
Christianity is real and from God. (see Bruce, Paul,
75)
Limited Interaction with Apostles
Paul defends the charge that he received his gospel
from the apostles by showing them that he didn’t interact with the apostles.
vv. 15-17. Immediately
after the
Paul
didn’t receive the gospel from the apostles then. He didn’t even meet them.
v. 18. Three years later he finally went to
Paul then swears to the accuracy of this account. The implication is that others were giving a
different story.
The
point is, it wasn’t that long. Paul wasn’t training during those 15 days and
then sent out. He didn’t get the
training to write Romans, Galatians, Ephesians, etc., half the NT, in 2
weeks. It was a limited time with
limited exposure.
Then he went to
He
was not personally known to the
Paul did not get his gospel second-hand from the
apostles.
Main Point:
This Gospel is Divine.
As he said in v. 12, “I did not receive it from any
man, nor was I taught it; rather, I received it by revelation from Jesus
Christ.”
Paul says to his opposers,
your theory simply doesn’t hold water. I
did not get my gospel second-hand from the apostles.
Look at my radical transformation, look at my
itinerary. The only explanation is that
Jesus Christ Himself revealed it to me.
And so Paul claims divine revelation.
This Gospel has authority.
I’d like to ask you, this gospel that we believe, where
do you think it came from?
Do you think the early apostles creating something on
their own? Do you think Paul came up
with it?
Or do you believe this gospel is actually from God
Himself. Do you believe that God (exists
and) entered our time/space reality to give us a message of salvation?
If you say, this Gospel is just another human idea, then you can hold a pluralist, relativist attitude: “What
works for you is great, I just have to find what works for me.” You can add to it, subtract from it to suit
your likings. You can do whatever you
want.
If you say this Gospel is from God, then you can
reject this gospel and in so doing, reject God.
That’s exactly what Paul said in 1:6, by turning to another gospel the
Galatians were turning away from God Himself.
Or you can bow and trust in it and acknowledge God.
We believe this is the Gospel of Jesus Christ. It is not Paul’s thing, or a Renewal
thing. This gospel is God’s revelation
to us. It is not another opinion we can
accept or reject at our leisure. It is
from God.
If you’re not a Christian, this is a fundamental
question: is this Gospel something Paul/early Christians made up from God? I hope you’ll stay with us through this study
because I think you’ll agree that this gospel isn’t the kind of thing man would
make up (v. 11). It’s not like any other
religion. It goes against our
instincts.
And I hope you’ll also see a beauty, a glory, a truth
that points to a Divine Author.
For the believers, there are
two more lessons that I think are important for us at a personal level.
What is the power of the gospel in our lives?
Do we have evidence of the gospel in our own lives?
Do our lives authenticate
the gospel?
Do we have a testimony of the transforming power of
God in our lives?
It may not be as dramatic as Paul’s
persecutor-to-preacher story, but do we/other see evidence of a work of God in
our lives?
If there is not evidence, it is good to question
whether we really have the gospel.
We recognize a tree by its fruit. Is there fruit?
In
particular, as we started this series, do we see gospel freedom? Let me review some points.
A freedom that comes from knowing that we are
hopelessly incapable of fulfilling the law but that in Christ we’re already
accepted and loved by God.
We realize we don’t thinking about God as we fall asleep each night. We fall short.
We don’t try to lower the standard to make it more keepable.
We realize that in Christ, we’re already
righteous. Over all our failures all he
can say is “I love you.”
A freedom that comes from knowing that we’re heirs of
a glorious inheritance, that we’ve been given a promise that cannot be broken.
If
we had Bill Gate’s estate as our inheritance, $56 billion, would that change
our lives. Paul’s prayer was that we
would understand the riches of our inheritance.
And it’s a promise that cannot be broken.
A freedom that comes from not having
to protect or promote ourselves. We are free to love others.
A
test of knowing if we have this freedom is how we treat others. Are we still trying to gain love, approval,
acceptance, significance? Are we still
protecting ourselves from rejection, shame?
Or are we free to just love people?
Do
we live in fear, anxiety, guilt, striving, performance-mode, shame, greed?
Or
do we live in security, safety, wealth, power, generosity, joy, and love?
Do
we live like we need to get love, significance, success, accomplishments, worth?
Do
we live like we already have love, significance, status, righteousness, worth?
In a world of performance, striving, grades, have we
found a safe place, a place of rest for our souls, a place of freedom, joy?
Is there deep transformation?
Have we had a direct
encounter with God?
Paul says, my source is not
the apostles in
Now for us, it is okay to have human sources. We read our NT, written by apostles. We probably did receive the gospel as well as
lots of other teaching from pastors, preachers, teachers, authors, etc.
But, have we encountered a risen Savior?
Becoming a child of God involves a spiritual
regeneration, rebirth. Something comes
alive. In the Bible we see the metaphor
of going from blindness to sight.
The god of this age
has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so that they cannot see the light of the
gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. . . For God, who said,
“Let light shine out of darkness,” made his light shine in our hearts to give
us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ. (2 Cor 4:4, 6)
God needs to open our eyes and turn on the light. Conversion means God reveals Himself to us so
that we can truly see Him, we can spiritually see.
It’s
not just saying the brown fluid in the bottle with the wax comb must be
honey. It is tasting
that honey on our tongue. It’s not just
having testimony and evidence, not drawing on inferences. It is immediate knowledge, a direct encounter.
. .
. we must apprehend and embrace the spiritual beauty
and worth of Christ through illumination of the Holy Spirit. (Piper, Future
Grace, 202, see also Piper, God is
the Gospel, 63-64)
In fact, Piper calls this the essence of saving faith:
the spiritual apprehension [grasp, perceive, understand]
of spiritual beauty. (Piper, Future Grace, 201-2, from “A Taste of
Spiritual Beauty”)
Saving faith produces worship. It is not about being happy for ourselves
(focus on us) [have you really tasted the honey?], it is about joy in God,
exalting God, worship (focus on God).
“It
begins with grace to us, ends with glory
to God, and its all because of Jesus.”
Is there evidence of the
gospel in our own lives?
Paul claims this gospel is
from God. It has authority and power and
truth.
This
gospel was not received from the apostles.
This was directly from Jesus Himself.
He points to evidence in his life. He has his transformed life,
He has his encounter with God.
Do we have this gospel?
Communion
We
affirm that we believe this Gospel is from God.
As
we look inside, I pray we see internal testimony, we see the power of the
gospel in us:
We
affirm that our lives have changed and that we have found freedom.
And
we taste His sweetness at this table. We
behold His grace, love, holiness and glory.