Greeting everyone.
Today, I am returning to Galatians 1, to continue this examination of God's grace that the Apostle Paul writes about in this letter. When we left off in the previous post, Paul had likely flet it necessary to defend himself against charges of being a people-pleaser. He continues his letter in verses 11-12:
11 For I want you to know this, brothers and sisters: The Gospel that has been preached to you is not of human origin. 12 I didn’t receive it from a man, nor was I taught the message by a man, but rather I received it through revelation from Jesus Christ.
Paul, in spite of the criticisms, is still addressing the Galatians as brothers and sisters, and he now talks about the origin of the gospel that he presented to them. It did not have human origin, unlike this tainted gospel that they are now following.
Paul did not receive this gospel by sitting at the feet of a teacher. He didn't even get fro the othet apostles. His message is not something he made up, nor is it a hybrid of the OT message, which was being presented in this ‘other’ gospel. Instead the gospel that Paul presented to the Galatains came directly from Jesus through a divine revelation. And we know from verse 8 and 9 that any other gospel, beyond this one, is false and its teachers are accursed.
Note: Remeber how Jesus talked about old and new wineskins in Luke 5. These false teachers are trying to pour their old wine into the wineskin, blending old and new, and it won’t work.
We get the picture from Gal. 1:12 and 2 Cor. 12:1 that Paul received visions and revelations directly from the Lord. In 2 Cor. he talks about a man who had been caught up into the third heaven and heard inexpressible things and he is not permitted to tell. We can only assume that Paul is referring to himself. So, in more than one place in his letters it seems that Paul is declaring direct revelation of the gospel from God to himself.
Stott sums it up well, “Paul’s claim then, is this: His gospel, which was being called in question by the Judaizers and deserted by the Galatians, was neither an invention (as if his own brain had fabricated it), nor a tradition (as if the church had handed it down to him), but a revelation (for God had made it known to him)." (Stott, 30.)
This revelation from God was powerful. The persecutor Saul could not have understood it. In the light of the Old Law, the crucifixion and God's grace made very little sense. He rejected it. But the transformed Apostle Paul understood that message of the Cross and the meaning of grace and how it actually fulfilled the out law.
John R.W. Stott, The Message of Galatians, InterVarsity Press, Downers Grove, Illinois, 1968.
