The Revelation of Jesus and the Testimony of Paul
The other day I was sitting in the waiting room at the DMV, waiting to get new license plates for my car. While I was sitting there, a young guy was sitting behind me, talking on the phone to someone. And let’s just say he was making no effort to be discreet in his conversation. And as much as I tried to focus on getting some work done while waiting, I couldn’t help but overhear. And it’s the DMV, so I was sitting there for 20 minutes, listening to this guy talk on the phone.
As I did, certain things became very clear. It was an emotional call. This guy was distraught; at times he was near tears; at times he was angry. The central issue that was causing distress was the loss of his best friend. He kept saying it over and over. And it was clear that it wasn’t that his friend had died, but that there had been some sort of relational falling out.
But there was also a lot that was unclear. It seemed that there may have been some sort of betrayal involved. Money troubles were mentioned. There were other complicating factors in play; maybe something to do with medication. But those things were less clear.
Now we’ve all been in that sort of situation, overhearing one side of the conversation, but unable to hear the other. Maybe you’ve overheard your spouse or your roommate have a conversation with a friend or a boss or a family member. And because you know them well, you’re able to piece together more of what the conversation is about than I was with the stranger in the DMV. But no matter how well you listen, the fact that you only have one side of the conversation means that certain things will be clear, and other things will be less so.
When it comes to interpreting Paul’s letters, we’re in that situation. We are listening to one side of a conversation. And it’s a conversation that assumes a lot of background and history, much of which we don’t have direct access to. Which means, as we interpret the book of Galatians, we’re always trying to fill in the gaps to better understand the situation in Galatia. We’re trying to account for what Paul says by filling in the gaps about what the Galatians were saying and doing, and who Paul’s opponents were, and so forth. And when we do, some things are clear. Paul believes that the Galatians are abandoning the gospel. There are some who are troubling the Galatians and preaching a different “gospel.” That at least is obvious.
But other features take more work to determine. What exactly were Paul’s opponents saying? What was their message? How were they attacking Paul? In order to answer these questions, we can look at a couple of things, and we can prioritize them in a certain way. Think of them as concentric circles. First, we can look in the letter itself. Some things Paul tells us outright. Beyond that, we can compare this letter to other letters from Paul. Sometimes they can shed light on Paul’s theology or history in order to bring clarity. We can also compare what’s happening here to other books in the New Testament. In this case, the book of Acts is particularly important, especially when it comes to Paul’s testimony. We can look more broadly in the Scriptures, as Paul makes references and allusions to other passages that shed light on his situation. And finally, we can look outside the Bible, to what we know from other ancient sources about the first century world. And at each circle, new insights may cause us to rethink what we’ve seen in earlier circles. There’s a spiral of understanding as we labor to observe and understand and evaluate rightly.
And again, as we do this, some things are going to be more clear, and others are going to be more speculative. But hopefully, the more pieces that fall into place, and the fewer pieces that are left out, the more confidence we can have that we’re on the right track.
I want to work through this passage in four stages: Situation, Accusations, Narration, and Application. First, what’s going on in the first century, in Judaism, in Jerusalem, in Galatia? What’s the situation? Second, more specifically, what are the accusations against Paul? It’s But can we reconstruct the charges? Third, Paul’s defense at this point takes the form of a story. From 1:11-2:14 (maybe 2:21), Paul gives a bunch of history, highlighting particular details about his former life, his calling as an apostle, and his relationship to the other apostles. Why does he do this? How does his narration answer those accusations? And finally, I want to draw out a few applications for us.
Situation
Let’s consider the situation in the first century. For Jews in the first century (and this was the case from Genesis 12 onward), the fundamental division in the world was between Jews and Gentiles, those in the covenant and those outside. That’s the basic division, but it was never quite that simple. There were other people descended from Abraham (Ishmaelites and Edomites), or other splinter groups (like Samaritans). In the book of Acts, we know that there were groups of God-fearers, Gentiles who worshiped Israel’s God, but did not fully adopt the Jewish law, especially food laws and circumcision. And within Judaism, there were various divisions: Pharisees, Sadducees, Herodians, Essenes, and so forth. But the basic division was Jew and Gentile.
Into that world comes the gospel, the good news that Jesus is the Messiah, Israel’s king, and indeed the Son of God, and that through his death and resurrection, he rescues both Jews and Gentiles from sin and death. And this good news, that fulfills the law and the prophets, scrambles that basic division. As a result the social picture in the first century is complex and confusing. Here is a sampling of the various groups in play.
Unbelieving Gentiles, pagans and idolaters of various kinds
Unbelieving Jews, divided into various parties and groups
One group of unbelieving Jews are particularly zealous for the Jewish law and its traditions. This group often expressed its zeal for God in persecution of other less zealous Jews. This is the group that would have led the persecution against the early Christians, who they regarded as unfaithful to the traditions of the fathers. And as Paul notes in this passage, this is the group that he was a part of.
Then you have the early Christians (in fact, they may have just begun to be called Christians around the time of Paul’s writing). But there are various groups that claim that name.
Jewish “Christians” who preached Jesus + Torah, Jesus + Keeping the Jewish law, including circumcision and food laws, and expected Gentile Christians to do the same. This is the Torah-observant and Torah-preaching mission to the Gentiles. And for our purposes, we’ll call them the Troublers, because they are Paul’s opponents here.
Jewish Christians who continued to practice Jewish customs themselves, but did not require Gentiles to do so.
Some, like Paul, only did so when engaged in evangelism to Jews (1 Cor. 9, Acts 22).
Others likely did so out of habit and custom all the time.
Gentile Christians who simply trusted in Jesus for deliverance from sin and death without adopting circumcision and so forth.
Gentile Christians who trusted in Jesus and observed the full range of Torah, including circumcision.
Here’s where the Galatians comes into play. Where do they stand in all of this? The Galatians were Gentiles who came to faith through the ministry of Paul. They received the Spirit through faith apart from doing the works of the Law. But now, under pressure from the Troublers, they are considering practicing the works of the Law in order to be fully acceptable to God. The Troublers may be saying something like, “Paul gave you a good start, but you’ve got to finish with the Law; you’ve got to become fully Jewish in order to be “in” the Jewish Messiah.” And a related question: where do the Jerusalem apostles stand in all of this? They likely continue to practice many of the customs of Moses themselves. But do they expect Gentiles to?
And so as we work through Galatians, we want to be aware of the kinds of interaction and pressure that would develop among these different groups.
This leads us to the Accusations.
Accusations
Now we don’t know precisely what the accusations were against Paul; we don’t have that side of the conversation. But based on Paul’s response, we can make educated guesses about what they were saying. Think of this like a hypothesis, which we’ll test in a moment.
It seems likely that the Troublers were appealing to the Jerusalem apostles to trump Paul’s apostleship. Think of three accusations along these lines.
Paul is dependent on the Jerusalem apostles. Perhaps the Troublers said something like this: After he was converted, Paul came to Jerusalem to get his commission. He knows that Jerusalem is central to God’s purposes. Jesus told his followers to wait in Jerusalem until they received power from on high. Jerusalem is the center of the world. Paul knew this and so he went to Jerusalem to receive the gospel and be sent out on mission.
Paul is inferior to the Jerusalem apostles. They are the pillars of Christ’s church. They knew Jesus personally. They ministered with him for years. They saw him after he was raised from the dead. The Spirit descended upon them at Pentecost. If it comes down to it, don’t you want to be with Jerusalem, with Peter, James, and John, and not this Johnny-come-lately named Paul?
So, if according to the Troublers, Paul received the gospel from Jerusalem and is inferior to the Jerusalem apostles, why did Paul change his message from the original Law-Observant Gospel to his new “Lawless” Gospel? Because Paul is a man-pleaser. He’s trying to make it easy on you. He won’t preach the hard truths–that you all need to get circumcised and keep the Mosaic food laws. He doesn’t want to please the God of Israel; he’s trying to please you and manipulate you. But we–the true followers of Jesus and Moses–want you to be fully acceptable to God, and these are the laws that God has laid down for everyone in his covenant.
Now there is some guesswork involved there, but let’s see if those accusations make sense of Paul’s narration.
Narration
First, Paul insists that he is not dependent upon the Jerusalem apostles. His gospel is not man’s gospel (“according to man”); he did not receive it from any man, nor was he taught it; it came directly from Jesus (1:11-12). Later he says that, after his calling and commission, he did not consult with anyone, nor did he go to Jerusalem to the apostles there, but he immediately went to Arabia, before returning to Damascus.
A little parenthesis here. Some people wonder why Paul went to Arabia. Some think this was a kind of monastic season of contemplation. But the book of Acts paints a different picture.
For some days he was with the disciples at Damascus. [20] And immediately he proclaimed Jesus in the synagogues, saying, “He is the Son of God.” [21] And all who heard him were amazed and said, “Is not this the man who made havoc in Jerusalem of those who called upon this name? And has he not come here for this purpose, to bring them bound before the chief priests?” [22] But Saul increased all the more in strength, and confounded the Jews who lived in Damascus by proving that Jesus was the Christ.
[23] When many days had passed, the Jews plotted to kill him, [24] but their plot became known to Saul. They were watching the gates day and night in order to kill him, [25] but his disciples took him by night and let him down through an opening in the wall, lowering him in a basket. (9:19-25)
So immediately after his conversion, Paul is preaching the gospel in the synagogues of Damascus, so much so that he eventually (after many days) angers the Jewish leaders so that they tried to kill him and he has to escape in a basket by night. 2 Corinthians 11 adds an additional significant detail about this event.
[32] At Damascus, the governor under King Aretas was guarding the city of Damascus in order to seize me, [33] but I was let down in a basket through a window in the wall and escaped his hands. (11:31-32)
The word “governor” here is the word “ethnarch” and likely refers to the leader of an ethnic community. So who is this King Aretas? He is the ruler of the Nabatean kingdom, which was southeast of Israel, across the Jordan River, and would have been considered part of the region of Arabia.
So if we put Galatians, Acts, and 2 Corninthians together, we get this picture. Immediately after his conversion and commission to take the gospel to the nations, Paul began his missionary efforts. From his base in Damascus, he was venturing into the Nabatean kingdom (Arabia) preaching the gospel, in synagogues and elsewhere. And he was so effective in his missionary efforts that he managed to anger both the Jews in Damascus as well as the ethnic rulers of the Nabateans, who conspired together to kill him in Damascus, but he escaped in a basket.
Jeremiah 1:4–5
Now the word of the LORD came to me, saying,
“Before I formed you in the womb I knew you,
and before you were born I consecrated you;
I appointed you a prophet to the nations.” (ESV)
Isaiah 49:1–6
Listen to me, O coastlands,
and give attention, you peoples from afar.
The LORD called me from the womb,
from the body of my mother he named my name.
He made my mouth like a sharp sword;
in the shadow of his hand he hid me;
he made me a polished arrow;
in his quiver he hid me away.
And he said to me, “You are my servant,
Israel, in whom I will be glorified.”
But I said, “I have labored in vain;
I have spent my strength for nothing and vanity;
yet surely my right is with the LORD,
and my recompense with my God.”
And now the LORD says,
he who formed me from the womb to be his servant,
to bring Jacob back to him;
and that Israel might be gathered to him—
for I am honored in the eyes of the LORD,
and my God has become my strength—
he says: “It is too light a thing that you should be my servant
to raise up the tribes of Jacob
and to bring back the preserved of Israel;
I will make you as a light for the nations,
that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.” (ESV)
And the relevance for the accusations is this: Paul didn’t receive his gospel from Jerusalem or the apostles there. He received it from Jesus and immediately got to work. After the escape from Damascus, he does go to Jerusalem; the church there is understandably wary of him, but, according to Acts 9, Barnabas secures a meeting between Paul and some of the apostles (Cephas and James, Galatians 1:18-19) and he begins to preach in the synagogues there, before again being forced to flee. Acts says he was sent to Tarsus before eventually ending up in Antioch (9:30; 11:30); Tarsus is a city in Cilicia; Antioch is in Syria (Gal. 1:21). Paul is adamant (“before God, I do not lie!”) that for the first fourteen years of his ministry, he was almost totally unknown by the Jewish churches in Judea; they had heard of him, and glorified God because of his conversion, but he was not dependent upon them.
What’s more, as we’ll see in the next chapter, even when he does go to Jerusalem after fourteen years to compare notes with the Jerusalem apostles, he is adamant that they added nothing to his message (2:6). Paul and the Jerusalem apostles mutually acknowledged the grace given to the other and extended the right hand of fellowship to each other (2:9). They recognized they each embraced the same gospel, but different mission fields. In other words, while Paul is not dependent upon the Jerusalem apostles for the gospel, he was in agreement with the Jerusalem apostles about the gospel.
What about the charge of inferiority? Throughout this section, Paul uses a number of key phrases. He received the gospel through a revelation of Jesus Christ (1:12). God set him apart from his mother’s womb (1:15) and called him by his grace, and revealed his Son in him so he might preach him to the Gentiles. Now listen to these passages:
We can hear the echoes. Both Jeremiah and Isaiah were called from the womb and commissioned to preach to the nations. Thus, Paul’s testimony in this passage numbers him among the prophets. He is no second-hander. The gospel was not passed down to him. He received it directly from God and was commissioned as his prophet. In fact, even the description of going into Arabia and returning again to Damascus may fit these pattern. In 1 Kings 19, Elijah journeys into Arabia, to Mount Sinai and receives a vision and commission from God before returning to the wilderness of Damascus (1 Kings 19:15).
No, Paul is not inferior to the Jerusalem apostles. Like them, he has seen Jesus face to face, been transformed, and sent out as his prophet and herald in the world.
Finally, the man-pleasing charge. Paul’s clear declaration that those who preach another gospel are accursed demonstrates that he’s not afraid of men. He’ll seek to please God and say the hard thing, no matter the cost. And his testimony reiterates this fact. If he was a man-pleaser who avoided hard things, then he would have stayed in his former way of life. He was a rising star of the Pharisees. He outstripped them all in zeal. His future was bright; he was proving his devotion through persecution. If he simply wanted to buttress his reputation among people, he was on the right path.
But Paul left that path, and the simple reason is that God told him to. God revealed his Son to Paul, and that changed everything. Paul doesn’t care about pleasing man. Wait until you see what he says to Peter in the next chapter. Paul fundamentally wants to please God.
Application
Paul was reading his story in light of the prophets. Those stories shaped how he viewed himself and his mission. We want the Bible to shape how we view our situation as well.
Every time we hear Paul’s story we need to be reminded: Don’t write anyone off. “He who used to persecute us is now preaching the faith he once tried to destroy.” The most zealous persecutor of the gospel became the most zealous preacher of the gospel. When Jesus breaks in, all bets are off.
The complex social situation and pressures in Galatia, in Jerusalem, in Antioch are worth our reflection. Perhaps we’ll have more opportunity to do so in the coming weeks. Next week Pastor Jonathan will tell us about the pressure on Paul to circumcise Titus and for Peter to withdraw from table fellowship with Gentiles. For now, I simply want to alert you to the way that group identity is present in this book. Jew and Gentile was the fundamental division in Paul’s day. The revelation of Jesus scrambled that division. It didn’t obliterate it. Jews were still Jews and many practiced Jewish customs. Gentiles were still Gentiles and it was vital to the gospel that they not be pressured to adopt circumcision and food laws. But the revelation of Jesus subordinated those earthly identities to a more fundamental identity. As Paul will say later in Galatians 4, Jerusalem above is free, and she is our mother.
Finally, modern people are accustomed to think in terms of man’s search for God. The religions and philosophies of the world are all considered to be variations of man’s search for God. They are the traditions of men handed down. But Paul is not fundamentally interested in man’s search for God. His gospel is not about man finding God. It’s about God’s relentless pursuit of man. The gospel is not man reaching up to God; it’s God revealing his Son in us. Man is not the measure of the gospel; the gospel is not according to man. It’s not from man or ultimately taught by men. It is proclaimed, announced, heralded by men because it was first revealed in the person of Jesus.
At one level, God’s revelation to Paul was unique; he was set apart in the womb and called to be God’s prophet to the nations. That’s not true for us. We’re neither apostles nor prophets, and we did not receive the gospel directly from Jesus himself. We received it through the prophets and apostles in their inspired writings.
Nevertheless, for those who trust in Jesus, God did set us apart before we were born and call us by his grace. Like Paul, the eyes of our hearts were opened to behold the glory of God in the face of Jesus. And that makes all the difference.
The Table
Which brings us to the Table. The word for “revelation” in Galatians 1:12 is “apocalypse.” It means unveiling. It implies that something was hidden and has now been revealed, unveiled. That’s precisely what happens at this Table. Here Christ is hidden in simple bread and simple wine. But with the eyes of faith, we apprehend him, and God reveals his Son to us as the one who gave himself for our sins to deliver us from the present evil age. This is the good news. Come and welcome to Jesus Christ.