Charles Dickens tells of how men react to bad news. Martin
Chuzzlewit learns that the 50 acre tract in America in which he had
invested all his savings turns out to be a hideous swamp. He sinks
into a fever because of his sorrow, but Mark Topley who savings
were also sunk in that same swamp refuses to be overpowered by
calamity. He gives himself a blow on the chest and says to himself,
"Things is looking as bad as they can look, young man. You'll not
have such another opportunity for showing your jolly disposition,
my fine fellow, as long as you live. And, therefore, now is the time to
come out strong, as never!"
This is the very kind of positive thinking that must have gone
through Paul's mind when he heard that his investment in the
Galatian church was threatened. He had preached his heart out to
these people, and now they were ready to forsake their freedom in
Christ and enter into the bondage of the law. Paul could have
thrown his hands up in despair and given up on the Galatians. He
could have layed down and died of grief at his loss and the terrible
fickleness of human nature, but instead he said, now is the time to be
strong. If ever I spoke with authority to defeat the forces of evil, it
must be now or never. Paul did not greet bad news with an attitude
of defeat, but with an attitude of determination to never admit
defeat. This letter was his weapon, and it has been the primary tool
for many a victory since.
Paul must have said I'll never have a greater opportunity to
defend the Gospel of grace than this, and so I must come out strong
now or never! The first thing Paul does in this letter is to defend his
authority as an Apostle. Paul usually just states the fact of his
authority, but here he is fighting those who reject his authority, and
so we see the letter is different right from the start. We usually skip
through Paul's introductions with little attention. Quite often the
preface or the introduction is skipped to get right to the body of a
book. I use to do it all the time until I realized that the key for a full
appreciation of the book is often found in the introduction.
Information on the author and his or her background, and what
they had in mind in writing the book, can make the book so much
more meaningful.
The Bible is often boring to people because its historical setting is
not grasped. We cannot see how it relates to our lives because we
have not taken the time to understand its original setting and the
purpose for which is was written. We must be able to enter into the
emotions of Paul's letter and understand what he is doing if we are
to appreciate its relevance for today. The best of Bible students have
their dry days, however. John Bunyan wrote in his Grace
Abounding, "I have sometimes seen more in a line of the Bible then I
could well tell how to stand under, and yet at another time the whole
Bible has been to me as dry as a stick; or rather my heart has been
so dead and dry unto it that I could not conceive the least dram of
refreshment, though I looked it all over."
We cannot escape the dry spells of life, but these are of little
consequence in our lives if we develop the habit of finding
refreshment at the fountain of the Word regularly. One of the ways
to add value to Bible study is to get all the information you can on
the author and his purpose. We want to do just that with this letter
to Galatians. The more we can understand Paul's feelings and
intentions the more meaningful this letter will be.
Let's begin with the name Paul. We all know that Paul's name is
Saul in the book of Acts when he first appears on the stage of
biblical history. After his conversion and his appointment as God's
ambassador to the Gentiles he is called Paul. Many have assumed
that his name was changed, but the likelihood is that he had both
names from birth. This is the conviction of men like J. Gresham
Machen and John Brown, who are great scholars on the life of Paul.
Their reasoning makes sense. As a Pharisee it was natural for Paul
to go by the name of Saul. This was his Jewish name, but when he
became Apostle to the Gentiles it was equally natural for him to go
by his Roman name of Paul. He was a Roman citizen by birth, and
so it is likely that he was given this Roman name at birth. Paul
means little or small, and is a name more likely to be given to a little
baby than one given to a grown man at the time of his conversion.
God chose this man even before his birth to accomplish the great
task of getting the Gospel to the Gentiles, and one of the ways of
preparing him was to see that he was born in Tarsus, a great
Gentile center, where he would be exposed to the very people and
culture he would spend his life reaching. He had his Roman
citizenship at birth, and likely also his Gentile name of Paul.
AN APOSTLE.
An Apostle is one sent with the authority with the
one who sends. There are other words for send in the New
Testament, but this word for Apostle stresses that the one sent has
the authority of the one who is sending, and is also fully responsible
to the sender. In Heb. 3:1 Jesus is called the Apostle and High Priest
of our confession. He spoke to us more directly from God than did
Moses, and he speaks directly to God on our behalf. The term
Apostle carries in it the idea of highest authority. Communication
with an Apostle is dealing as direct as possible, unless it be face to
face. Jesus bestowed the highest dignity on his Apostles when He
said in John 17:18, "As the Father has sent me into the world, so
send I you." An Apostle is one who speaks for Christ directly, and
with His approval and authority.
Paul says his authority is not for men. He does not waste any
time before he gets to the real issues. He begins to defend his
authority immediately. He says right off that he is not an Apostle
because of human agency, but he has his authority directly from
God. You don't go around defending your credentials like this
unless someone is attacking them. Paul is making clear he is equal
with the twelve Apostles in authority. It is obvious that the
Judaisers have tried to undermine Paul's ministry by attacking his
authority. They apparently accused him of being a maverick who
has gone off on a tangent and whose doctrines threaten to overthrow
the foundations of true religion, by which they meant the Old
Testament laws.
They could say that Paul was not chosen by Christ as were the
other Apostles. They said he received his authority from men.
These were very serious charges, and you can see how easy it would
have been to get Gentiles to question Paul's authority. Who was he
to tell them what God required when others were telling them the
law of Moses was their foundation? Paul knows that the cause of
Christian liberty in Christ depends upon the Galatians respect for
his authority. If they are not convinced that he bears the authority
of an ambassador sent directly by God, they will follow those
authorities who are coaxing them to submit to the law of Moses.
AUTHORITY
The first major issue of this letter, therefore, is the issue of
authority. Either the Galatians are obligated to obey the revelation
that God gave to Moses, or God has given a new revelation of liberty
in Christ through the Apostle Paul. Which they follow depends
upon their being convinced that Paul is truly God's spokesman, and
not just the agent of men who are sponsoring a new approach to
religion. There is probably no issue that is more relevant to every
age than the issue of authority. Everything we are and believe is
based on some authority. The authorities we accept determine what
we become.
If we accept the authority of the book of Mormon, we will be
Mormons. If we yield to the authority of the Koran, we will be
Mohammedan. If we buy into the views of Jehovah Witnesses, we
will become one. We are creatures of authority. We do not swallow
color liquid by the tablespoon because we have studied its nature.
We take it on the authority of others who say it will help a problem.
Because this is so, it is very important to determine the validity of
any authority. We cannot afford to just accept any authority. We
have an obligation to investigate and prove the worth of any
authority. Paul makes this clear by the very fact of the existence of
this letter. It is in large measure a defense of his authority. He did
not just say he was an authority. He had to prove it and
demonstrate the validity of his claim to be a spokesman for God.
We take Paul's authority for granted, but the early church did
not. They had no New Testament to go by. They had only the Old
Testament and Paul was challenging the authority of its laws. That
is why he had to show to the Galatians how God worked in his life,
and how the truth of the Gospel makes the law obsolete. He had to
show by sound argument and historical facts that it was so. He had
to show them how his battle for the truth of Christian liberty even
won out over the Apostle Peter. This was the kind of evidence that
was necessary to convince them that his authority was equal to the
Twelve.
Paul is not being proud in this letter when he speaks of the other
Apostles as adding nothing to him. If you don't know the great issue
behind this letter, you might think that Paul had little respect for the
Twelve when he visited them in Jerusalem. In chapter 2 Paul refers
to those of repute and in verse 6 says, "What they were makes no
difference to me, God shows no partiality." You can only grasp
what Paul is doing here when you know that he is defending his
authority as an Apostle equal to the other Apostles. God chose him
for an unique ministry to the Gentiles just as He chose Peter for a
ministry to the Jews. Paul is not being disrespectful, but he is trying
to show that the Judaisers are wrong when they deny his authority,
and say it is of man. He proves it is of God by showing that the
other Apostles had to acknowledge his authority.
All through history the primary battle has been the one over
authority. Paul won out and the New Testament became the
primary authority for the church. In time there were traditions that
came to have an equal place with the Scripture as a source of
authority in the church. What the early church fathers believed was
quoted as an authoritative guide, and not because it was necessarily
biblical, but because of who they were. The church began to
substitute the authority of men for the Word of God. The church
places men's interpretation of the Word of God on a level equal to
the Word itself. This robbed the Word of its authority, and put it
into the hands of men.
One of the purposes of the Reformation was to restore the Word
of God to its place as the soul authority for faith and practice.
Whatever can be demonstrated to be biblical becomes authoritative
for the church. Many groups claim to support all kinds of
contradictory ideas on Scripture, however, and, therefore, there is
no way to escape the need to appeal to reason. We must give
sufficient evidence to show that a view is truly the message God has
conveyed through His Word. Paul defends his authority by
appealing to evidence. The mind must be convinced before any
authority can be accepted. Reason is not the ultimate authority, but
it is necessary to combine it with the revelation of God.
Our minds must be persuaded concerning any view of Scripture
before we can honestly accept a view as the Word of God. We must
demand of any interpretation what Paul gives to the Galatians to
support his teaching on justification by faith, and that is reasonable
evidence which makes it superior to any rival claim. Paul goes into
all sorts of arguments to show that faith in Christ alone is all that
God requires, and that the law is now obsolete as a means of
salvation. He gives the Galatians evidence to satisfy their minds. He
knows that the truth can only survive by minds being persuaded
that it is in fact the truth.
So often Christians give the impression that the truth of God's
Word is different than any other kind of truth, but not so. It must
appeal to and persuade the mind before it is believed and submitted
to as authority. Several centuries ago Cotton Mather, the great
American Puritan, gave this as the Puritan view of the relation of
reason and revelation: "The light of reason is the law of God, the
voice of reason is the voice of God. We never have to do with reason
but at the same time we have to do with God, and our submission to
the rules of reason is an obedience to God., As often as I have
evident reason set before me let me think upon it. Therein the great
God speaks to me."
Paul certainly believe this, even though he knew the mind of
fallen man was depraved and its wisdom folly. He urged Christians
to let the mind of Christ be in them and to be transformed by the
renewing of their minds, for it is the mind that he appeals to all
along in defending his authority. He calls them foolish for not seeing
the obvious evidence of the truth of the Gospel. He goes to great
length to make it clear to them that God has demonstrated in his life
the truth of the Gospel he preaches. Evidence and argument is what
this letter is all about. He spent his life in debate and argument
proving that Jesus was the Messiah and that we are saved by faith in
Him.
What does this mean for us today? It means that the power of
persuasion is the greatest power their is for the capturing of men's
minds. Men will accept as their authority for life that which has
enough evidence to persuade them that it is God's Word to them.
Christians who are truly concerned about the truth will be open to
new light, and be ever in search for more evidence to support his
convictions. No Christian can have a valid reason to oppose
scholarship and the search for more light to give us a better
understanding of the Word of God. It is not the Bible only that is the
Word of God, but the Bible rightly interpreted and understood.
Many texts of the Bible are used to teach error and even heresy.
Paul got his revelation direct from God, but it comes to us
through the agency of men. His Greek letters have had to come to us
by means of men who put it into English. In a day of many
translations we need to recognize that none of them are the final
authority. We need to study all that the Bible says on an issue and
not just take any text and build our theology on that. We need to
examine all the evidence and be fully persuaded in our minds that a
certain teaching is the Word of God. If opinions differ, then we need
to weigh the evidence for the different views and choose that which
is most reasonable and which has the most evidence to support it.
We are in the same boat as the Galatians who had to weight Paul's
reasons for his authority. This is part of what it means to be loving
God with all or our minds.
