[If you would like to receive weekly sermons by email, please contact jonrmcleod@yahoo.com]
AN OUTLINE OF GALATIANS
Paul’s letter to the Galatians can be broken into three basic parts:
• BIOGRAPHY (chapters 1-2)
• THEOLOGY (chapters 3-4)
• ETHICS (chapters 5-6)
Paul is on the defensive in the opening two chapters. The Judaizers are attacking the message and the messenger. (Like attacking someone’s spelling in a “comments” section on a web page.) The Judaizers are claiming that Paul is a second-rate apostle with a second-hand gospel.
There is a similarity between verses 1 and 12. Paul’s apostleship is not from man, and his gospel is not from man. The validity of Paul’s apostleship and the validity of his message stand or fall together. If Paul is not an apostle, then his claim to authority collapses. If his gospel proves to be a human concoction, then he forfeits the right to be called an apostle.
THE LIFE-CHANGING GOSPEL
Paul gives three truths about the gospel he preached and passed on to us:
1. The gospel of grace is a message that comes from GOD.
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 (vv.11-12).
a. Paul’s gospel was not an INVENTION (his brain had not fabricated it).
b. Paul’s gospel was not a TRADITION (the church had not handed it down to him).
In verses 16-24 Paul demonstrates his independence from the other apostles in Jerusalem. Paul preaches the same gospel as the apostles, but they did not teach it to him.
c. Paul’s gospel was a REVELATION (God had made it known to him).
When did Paul receive this revelation? On the way to Damascus (cf. Acts 9:1-5).
We deny apostolic succession; we affirm apostolic authority. The gospel Paul passed on to us is the message we must believe and share.
The gospel is not something man would invent. Why? First, it is OFFENSIVE to the PRIDE of man. According to the gospel, we are born into this world as sinners deserving punishment (hell) and needing a Savior. Insulting?
Second, it is FOOLISH to the MIND of man. According to the gospel, we can receive eternal life by trusting in a man who died on a cross. Idiotic? Prior to his conversion, this is how Paul viewed the gospel.
“For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God” (1 Corinthians 1:18).
“Jews demand miraculous signs and Greeks look for wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles” (1 Corinthians 1:22-23).
Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, for it is written: “Cursed is everyone who is hung on a tree” (Galatians 3:13; cf. Deuteronomy 21:23; Acts 5:30; 13:29).
• “Christ crucified” – the “cursed one” is the “anointed one.” “Christ crucified” is a contradiction in terms (like “godly murderer”). Christ (Messiah) meant power, splendor, triumph; crucifixion meant weakness, humiliation, defeat.
• “Stumbling block” (skandalon) – offense, scandal. “‘Scandal is in fact closer to the sense than ‘stumbling block,’ since the word does not so much mean something that one is tripped up by as something that offends to the point of arousing opposition.”1 Skandalon is also found in Galatians 5:11: “the offense of the cross.” Many Jews viewed the crucifixion as the ultimate proof that Jesus had been cursed by God for some sin of His own.
• “Foolishness” (moria) – stupidity, madness. “Gentiles wrote off the message of the cross not as eccentric, harmless folly, but as dangerous, almost deranged stupidity.”2 In the second century, Justin Martyr wrote, “They say that our madness consists in the fact that we put a crucified man in second place after the unchangeable and eternal God, the Creator of the world.”3
Paul’s gospel is no less controversial today. Many people claim that Paul invented Christianity. They say that the teachings of Paul are very different from the teachings of Jesus. (Actually, both taught that faith in Jesus brings eternal life.) Paul’s teaching is distinctive because he was the “apostle to the Gentiles” (Galatians 2:8; cf. Acts 22:21). The other apostles did not disagree with Paul on the gospel. The apostle Peter writes, “[Paul’s] letters contain some things that are hard to understand, which ignorant and unstable people distort, as they do the other Scriptures, to their own destruction” (2 Peter 3:16). Peter put Paul’s writings on the same level as the OT Scriptures!
2. The gospel of grace is a message that CHANGES lives.
For you have heard of my previous way of life in Judaism, how intensely I persecuted the church of God and tried to destroy it. I was advancing in Judaism beyond many Jews of my own age and was extremely zealous for the traditions of my fathers (vv. 13-14).
I was personally unknown to the churches of Judea that are in Christ. They only heard the report: “The man who formerly persecuted us is now preaching the faith he once tried to destroy” (vv. 22-23a).
A radical transformation had taken place in Paul’s life: (1) the church’s most feared persecutor became its greatest missionary; (2) a strict Pharisee became a preacher of grace.
“I once thought these things were valuable, but now I consider them worthless because of what Christ has done” (Philippians 3:7 NLT).
Sometimes the change is gradual; sometimes it is sudden.
• Religion: “I OBEY—therefore I am accepted by God.”
• Grace: “I am accepted by God through faith in Christ—therefore I OBEY.”
All who say, “I’m going to put my faith in Christ and then do whatever I want!” have not experienced the grace of God.
Paul was often amazed at the grace of God in his life. “For I am the least of the apostles and do not even deserve to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace to me was not without effect. No, I worked harder that all of them—yet not I, but the grace of God that was with me” (1 Corinthians 15:9-10; cf. 1 Timothy 1:13).
3. The gospel of grace is a message that leads to MINISTRY.
But when God, who set me apart from birth [from my mother’s womb] and called me by his grace, was pleased to reveal his Son in me so that I might preach him among the Gentiles… (vv. 15-16a).
“The contrast in subject between vv. 13, 14 on the one hand, and 15, 16 on the other hand, is interesting. In the first section Paul himself is the subject. The pronoun is ‘I.’ ‘I persecuted the church,’ he says. ‘I was advancing in Judaism.’ In the second section, God is the subject, and his grace is emphasized.”4
Why did God “call [Paul] by his grace”? “So that [he] might preach [Christ] among the Gentiles.”
Paul’s description of his calling is similar to the calling of Jeremiah the prophet. “The word of the LORD came to me, saying, ‘Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations’” (Jeremiah 1:5).
Paul begins his letter to the Romans by saying that he was “called to be an apostle and set apart for the gospel of God” (Romans 1:1).
A believer’s life should consist of three parts:
• FORMER WAY OF LIFE
• CONVERSION
• PRESENT CALLING
1 Gordon D. Fee, The First Epistle to the Corinthians, p. 75
2 D. A. Carson, The Cross and Christian Ministry, p. 22
3 Justin Martyr, First Apology 13.4
4 James Montgomery Boice, “Galatians” in The Expositor’s Bible Commentary, vol. 10, p. 433
