Study of Galatians Part 3 - Galatians 1:1-10-16

Last week we heard Paul’s strong emphasis upon the truth of salvation coming simply by the grace of God, through faith in Jesus Christ, “who gave Himself for our sins.” Paul also warned that anyone who taught otherwise should be accursed, for there was only one true Gospel, which he had already brought to them (Galatians 1:1-9).

Beginning with verse 10, Paul reminded the churches of Galatia that he was not trying to please any other human beings, but to please God, as His servant. This is what God had called him to do. (See Acts 4:18-20 and Acts 5:28-29. Like Peter and John and the other apostles, Paul was not preaching “man’s Gospel,” but “a revelation of Jesus Christ” (Galatians 1:10-12)).

Paul was different from those original apostles in that he did not learn directly from Jesus during His three years of public ministry on this earth. In fact, Paul had been raised in Judaism and was very anti-Christian, rejecting Jesus as “Lord and Savior and the promised Messiah.” By his Jewish name, Saul, he had “persecuted the church of God violently and tried to destroy it” (Galatians 1:13, Acts 8:1,3, Acts 9:1-2). He did this because he believed strongly in the ways of Judaism and was far beyond others of his own age in his “extreme zeal” for “the traditions of his Jewish fathers” (Acts 1:14). That meant that he followed not only the Old Testament, but the teaching of later Jewish leaders who went far beyond what the Old Testament said. That included the teacher Gamaliel. (See Acts 5:34 and Acts 22:3-4.)

Paul was headed in this extreme Jewish direction, but God had a different plan for him. God had “set him apart before he was born” (literally, “from his mother’s womb”) and then “called him by His grace” on the road to Damascus to be a believer and servant of Christ (Galatians 1:15, Acts 9:3-19). (Paul told this story two more times in the Book of Acts in 22:3-21 and 26:9-20 and briefly in other places, because his coming to faith in Jesus as His Savior and being called to share this Good News with others was so important for his life.)

Note also that Paul was using language that was used by other prophets, including Isaiah in the Old Testament. See Isaiah 49:1,5, and this whole section from Isaiah 49:1-13. These verses are not just about Isaiah’s work, but go beyond as a prophecy of our Lord Jesus and His calling and being “formed from the womb” to be our Servant Savior. See how part of Isaiah 49:8 is quoted in 2 Corinthians 6:2 with reference to Jesus and His saving and reconciling work in 2 Corinthians 5, in “a day of salvation.” So, Isaiah and Jesus and Paul were set apart and called by God “from the womb” even before they were born. They were important to God even while still in the womb, as living persons.

(This is a key Biblical idea to remember in these days when many are trying to defend the “right” to an abortion, no matter what. Paul’s life was a real human life, already in the womb, as God “set him apart” even then.)

Paul told all this to emphasize that he, too, was chosen by God to be an apostle and later on specifically called by God’s grace, and Christ Jesus was revealed directly to him, and gave him what he needed to know “to preach Him, Christ, among the Gentiles" (Galatians 1:15-16). And in all this, Paul was telling the Galatian believers that he had told them what was the true Word of God, revealed by Christ Himself to Paul. He was telling them the truth from Christ, unlike the false teachers who had come later on with their own ideas.

This is something that Paul spoke about, again and again, in his preaching and writing. (See passages like 1 Thessalonians 2:13 and 1 Corinthians 11:23-26. This is the claim of all the Biblical writers. See 2 Timothy 3:14-17. We can have confidence in what we read from Paul in Galatians and from all the Scriptures and especially about the central teaching - that we have “salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.”)